The Global Political Economy

Abstract

The global political economy has evolved dramatically since World War II in terms of structures and relations, notably global governance via international financial institutions, multinational corporations, and the World Economic Forum (WEF). Together, these actors facilitate and legitimate just-in-time production and distribution involving global supply chains using airfreight and containers all linked via computer networks. Meanwhile, the early optimism of the nationalist era in the South — the 1950s and 1960s — had later yielded — in the 1970s and 1980s — to considerable scepticism given the mixed legacy of a quarter-century of neo-liberal hegemony from ‘Asian miracle’ to ‘African renaissance’.¹