Globalisation is shaping our world - but is it a force for good or ill, and what exactly does it mean? Jonathan Marcus investigates

Globalisation has become one of the buzzwords of modern times. The term came to the fore during the 1990s, and the impact of globalisation looks set to play a prominent part in shaping our world during the first decades of this new century.

So what exactly is "globalisation"? Should it be given a narrow, essentially economic definition, or can it be stretched to provide an all-embracing characterisation of the contemporary world? Is globalisation really that new? Or has it been under way for well over a century?

And what about globalisation's "dark side"; is globalisation really a force for good, as its advocates assert, or are criminals, traffickers and terrorists better able to operate in this world than national governments, whose authority stops at their borders?

Some have been fascinated by the impact of technology, especially the internet and email. They see the free flow of information as the central element of the new global world order. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, a self-confessed advocate of globalisation, told me that advances in technology had created a new and flat world; and he derided his critics, insisting that his only sin was one of optimism.

The period from the seventeenth century on, saw the rise of the West and the relative stagnation of the East. Now, perhaps, the pendulum is swinging back

But how new is all of this? Niall Ferguson argues that this is actually the second coming of globalisation. There was an earlier globalised world of the mid to late nineteenth century that perished at the onset of the First World War. Karl Marx, sitting here in London, would have understood globalisation as the ever-onward march of international capital. He, of course, thought it would collapse, to be replaced by communism.

In fact it was the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism that ushered in this new age of globalisation. Commentator Fareed Zakharia told me that the end of communism was also the end of the left-right division in politics that dates back to the French Revolution. In his view, the collapse of communism, the rise of capital markets and the information revolution came together in the early 1990s to create this new phenomenon of globalisation.

Globalisation is also about a fundamental shift in the world's economic, political and strategic geography. China and India are emerging as major economic players and the distribution of power in the international system is slowly changing.

Niall Ferguson describes this as "a great reconvergence". The period from the seventeenth century onwards saw the rise of the West and the relative stagnation of the East. Now, perhaps, the pendulum is swinging back.

For its advocates - or apostles, even, given their globalising zeal - globalisation is inevitably a good thing. But globalisation has also provided opportunities for terrorists, traffickers and other criminals. Organised crime has emerged on a global scale, taking advantage of the new information technologies and shifting markets.

This aspect of the globalised world is bleak and depressing; lives destroyed by drugs, prostitution and violence. But is this an inevitable result of globalisation, or simply an unwanted side-effect in a poorly organised world?

And here we get to the series' title "The New Rules of the Game". If the economic and political map is being re-drawn in this new globalised world, what about the institutions that seek to manage the new order? Should they be refreshed and revitalised or simply replaced by new ones?

And what of the rule of law? What of the hopes, raised and then dashed after the Second World War, of a new international order based upon legal precedents?

International bodies like the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations, for all of its problems, still have a critical role to play in the new globalised system. In this sense, there is a developing global political order as well. But international law, according to Niall Ferguson, is "a fragile thing". He argues that "the new rules of the international system are not so very different from the old rules in the sense that a relatively few great countries are able to exercise disproportionate power by dint of their economic might, their military capabilities and perhaps also by their ability to project their cultures.

"The forms of the global order", he argues, "are far more elaborate than they were a hundred years ago. But the fundamental content of international relations" he says, "is just the same as it always was."

The new rules of the game are unevenly applied. Welcome, perhaps, to the shock of the not so new.