Conclusion: Developmentalist Globalisation, US Decline and Post-Listian World Order

Abstract

The main argument of this book has been that the contemporary global political economy is in a process of complex transition in which structural and agential power has become increasingly diffused (Cohen 2008). This has taken place within the overarching context of globalisation. While the diffusion of power and world order transition is most advanced at the structural level, the book has highlighted the emergence of new global actors who have both contributed to structural change while themselves responding to ongoing globalisation pressures and imperatives. Providing case studies focused on China, South America and the European Union, the book has sought to characterise these responses as forms of post-Listian developmental actorness that presage deeper world order and regime transformations. State-led developmentalism has re-emerged globally as a potent form of political economy especially at the national level. Yet the new developmentalism and its national/regional variants, unlike previous forms, have been predicated on a high degree of global economic integration and interdependency. Reflecting the post-Listian problematic faced by development actors — how to square development with globalisation – a world order shift may be occurring towards a new, more symmetrical (in power terms) ‘multipolar/multilateral governance nexus’ through which the tensions and contradictions of national development within a globalised world can potentially be resolved through new forms of global cooperation between states and regions.