A ‘Borderless World’?

Abstract

It is largely, if not exclusively, at the hands of the high priests of economic globalization that the imagery of ‘a borderless world’ has been crafted (Ohmae, 1990). Their central argument is that the organization of production and exchange, in the contemporary world, pays little attention to borders of states since both have now ‘shifted’ to global forms (Dicken, 1992). Corporations base various elements of production at a number of sites around the world and compete in a global market. Capital is highly mobile and financial markets transfer prodigious volumes around the globe on a daily basis. In this context, it becomes increasingly irrelevant to think in terms of distinct national economies. If borders no longer cage anything in, they become analytically superfluous.