Globalization and public spaces: non-regulation as a strategy of global hegemony

Leonardo Avritzer

The aim of this paper is to address the recent
process of globalization from the point
of view of the relation between regulation
and emancipation. The main thesis is that
the process of globalization changes the
relation between these two categories and
requires the introduction of a third element
which the author calls non-regulation. The
argument is not that non-regulation constitutes
a completely new feature of modernity,
but rather that the way in which hegemony
occurs in the globalized public
space of the early 21st century consists in
a combination of super-regulation and
non-regulation which gives it completely
new characteristics. The second issue
addressed in this paper concerns the extent
to which the new global public spaces
that are emerging in late modernity can
confront those unregulated global spaces.