Globalization of Maldives - Essay Example

of the of the 27th march, Country Case Report: Maldives On the road towards internationalization, the worldwide cycle began with 16th century. The era thus held the developed capitalist world order where the companies held the power to reach out globally (Braudel, Moses and Knutsen, 368-364). The examples of such companies include the likes of Holland’s Levant Company, the East India Company, and the West India Company in the years of 1581, 1602 and 1621. After that time, the transformation gathered pace and introduced transnationalization that introduced the era of industrialization of the 19th century. The ladder of evolution thus presented a scenario where there was a fast shuffle of capital, labor, and financial arrangements between companies. However, as this century came to an end, the entire globe was engulfed in destructive world wars and huge financial crisis. This time is also referred to as the First Great Age of Global Capitalism. Then came the time of great maturation called as globalization. Also of critical importance, this stage became apparent in the world at the last quarter of the 20th century. As time passed and globalization gathered pace through the revolutionary techniques of verbal communication, the interdependence of web grew more and more. The interdependence thus related the every country in the world (Gilpin and Gilpin, Moses and Knutsen, 365). In Maldives the effect had been more or less the same. The interdependence thus introduced in the country by destroying old walls around most of the issues. The politics in Maldives can also not be separated in two separate clauses of domestic and international. As for the foreign policy, it has also moved beyond the terms of realism. Of course, like the past, one cannot ignore the increasing pace and scope of the events occurring internationally. Maldives has also been affected by the reduction of space as well as time as it has presented the country with a lot of trade-offs. More specifically, it has become difficult for countries like Maldives to focus on one area at the expense of the other area. Maldives is thus known as a Faraway Flashpoint which is undergoing fast changes in technical, social, political, and economic arenas. Maldives thus focuses on cooperation as it is necessary for its survival (Moses and Knutsen, 367). As far as the patterns of changes are concerned, it has been observed that the country holds the transformationalist Perspective. This can be determined by the trends of political change since the country has now been reconstituted and restructured in its essence. In 1930, under Sultan Muhammad Samsud-Din Iskander III a written constitution was made after a political turmoil. The constitution was further changed after World War II after which the entire constitution was liberalized after 1952. With this step, another major milestone was achieved in1968 when the Majlis was established. However, a huge centralization of power still remained. Now however, that has changed a total of 5 political parties function and political rallies are a commonplace. The media is free and the civil society is vibrant. It has also been observed that from zero NGOs the number has increased to 600 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Maldives, 3; IMF). In a G Zero world, every country is surviving by itself. In such worlds, the powers are so great that they have nothing but the option of cooperating; they count it as the most important relation. In such a situation, Maldives has done just that. When instability and cuts in public spending are seen, it has also been observed that Maldives has always followed a free open market. Tourism is a factor that has always been able to pull out these types of economies from the clause of instability. The carry over effects of tourism has thus played an important role along with the arable land. Of course, its economy’s has been affected due to the restricted access in the areas of productive sectors of the economy and to social services. In order to deal with such problems and the G zero World scenarios, the government has actually initiated policies that include the figure of 28.7 % for development. As for tourism and its effect, a total of 15,000 Maldivians are being supported after efforts like the Villingili (ISC). The land to sea ratio that Maldives currently holds is about 1:99.7 with approximately 100,000 residents. This 1km by 2km land has tourism as its main contributor when it comes to GDP and has a high literacy rate. Tourism is thus Maldives biggest competitor advantage as in the effort for a hospitality and efficiency for a complete luxury experience, Maldives has directly evolved its workforce and enhanced education. Thus, education possesses a key role in strategic planning for its industry. This is so, because mature markets need such solid measure as it also aims to increase cooperation and understanding of foreign countries and communities. Therefore with globalization Maldives has been able to use one of its biggest natural resource (i.e. fish) in the tourism and the fishing and shipping industry (ISC) It has been identified that Maldives is under the identity politics. This can be stated because Maldives has been slowly becoming a place for the jihad groups. Although this has been mentioned to rise in the country for a long time but now it seems as if they are being used as a ground for illegal activities. According to Rajagopalan, this was apparent in two places; one where the involvement of Maldivians were mentioned in the 26/11 conspiracy, and second where jihad recruitment was mentioned. Identity politics rises when a certain minority group starts to gather support in a country and influences the majority. Although this requires constant effort and determination, the Jihad group has been doing just that in the past which is now becoming apparent. It has been established that Maldives holds capitalism approach. However, economic relations between the state and corporations are of social capitalism. Mostly smaller countries are at an advantage in this because they use common wealth through having good relations with the bigger countries. A situation of Maldives working with the UK will definitely attract the attention of the UK. However, the US will be attracted to the UK and will notice Maldives at a much lesser frequency than the UK itself would be. Thus, as this form of capitalism works towards binding the societies together, bonding and bridging can both be brought into focus (Gray, 2011). Therefore the act of commonwealth and maintaining good relations with the countries has managed to boost up the tourism in Maldives and has managed to provide it the required boot after the 2008 financial crisis that gained pace back to positive after 2009. The tourist arrivals were in the beginning slow in the year of 2008 with a growth of only 9 percent. However, the presence of financial crisis managed to decrease this rate to minus 11 percent. This data has been recorded given the initial months of the year. Of course, the coming projections were way better than before, and thus increased again at the last stages of 2009. The growth in this stage was recorded as 1 and 2.5 percent in 2010 as well as 2011. The comeback can be seen in the graph stated below: Source: Maldives Fiscal and Economic Outlook (2) Works Cited Braudel, F. Perspectives of the World. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Gilpin, Robert and Gilpin, Jean M, The Challenge of Global Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000 Gray, O. What is social capital? 2011. Web. 27 March, 2012 International Monetary Fund’s reports and publications arranged by country, Web. 27 March, 2012 ISC, Maldives, Web. 27 March, 2012 Maldives Fiscal and Economic Outlook 2009 – 2011. A background paper prepared by the Ministry of Finance and Treasury for the Maldives Partnership Forum (MPF), March 2009 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Maldives, Towards a better future, The Roadmap for the Reform Agenda: A, Progress Report, 2007 Moses, J. W and Knutsen, T. Inside out Globalization and the Reorganization of Foreign Affairs, Ministries cooperation and conflict, NISA, SAGE Publications, London, 2001 Rajagopalan, S. on May 30, 2010, Asia Security Initiative, Whose Islam?: Religion and Identity Politics in the Maldives, Web. 27 March, 2012 Read More