Paper Titles & Abstracts

After the WWII, the globalization emerged as a new concept to explain the international system in which nation-state would not be absolute actor. The new system would be a global system rather than international system since interdependence between nation-states and new transnational characteristic of many issues (e.g. security, companies, communication, pollution, migration and even identities) started to play a major role in shaping the new global system. Particularly, the end of the cold-war became a clear declaration of the new global system. In the new system, nation-states become less influential and try to develop some alternatives to survive. At this point, regional organizations (e.g. the European Union -EU-) have emerged as tools for nation-states to shape the global system and also as shelters against negative effects of the globalization. According to this picture, Britain holds in interesting position in the new global system. Firstly, the globalisation is occurring under the domination of the Anglo-Saxon norms (liberal democracy, market capitalism etc.) and this makes Britain pro-globalist. On the other hand, as a nation-state, Britain's power is limited to shape the global system, and she also needs a regional shelter because of this limited power against the side-effects of the globalization; that's why, she became an EU member. However, Britain is really sceptical about the EU and even there are discussions to end this membership. At this point, there arises a paradoxical situation for Britain: to what extent Britain could be a global actor without the EU membership. This paper will focus on this paradoxical situation and will point out many analytical findings which support the idea that Britain needs the EU to become more influential in the global system.