World Markets and Global Transformations

Abstract

In their book Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture Held et al. identify three main perspectives in the globalization debate: the hyperglobalist thesis, the sceptical thesis, and the transformationalist thesis. Essentially the hyperglobalist thesis maintains that globalization is primarily an economic phenomenon, that an increasingly integrated world market exists today, and that the needs of multinational capitalism impose a neo-liberal economic discipline (low taxation, minimal welfare provision, privatization of public services) on all states who participate in the world economy (Held et al., 2003: 4). This approach has, to a large extent, become associated with a neo-liberal idea of cosmopolitanism: the development of an integrated world market means that individual nation states have to develop coherent social and economic strategies, to ensure that individual talent is properly utilized and to pursue the particular advantages which they may have relative to other states in the global economy. And so the economic demands which are constituted through global competition are conceived as giving rise to morally and politically coherent states in which individual freedom is recognized as the key to economic success (Fukuyama, 2000: 5). It should however be recognized that the hyperglobalist thesis does not necessarily entail an attachment to neo-liberalism; for as Held et al. point out, it is perfectly consistent to maintain that the world market has become globalized, and that nation states are under increasing pressure to lower taxes and reduce welfare spending, without subscribing to the idea that this contributes to the greater happiness and wellbeing of humanity.