Grahame Thompson - Globalization Revisited

Written by one of the leading scholars of global politics, Globalization Revisited is a major new book for students of globalization. It describes and explains the challenges to liberalism and the global order as a result of globalizing forces from financial interconnectedness to the growth of religious fundamentalisms.

The text:

provides a detailed analysis of the economic and financial aspects of globalization;

examines the changes to global power and governance created by globalization, including its effect on the sovereignty of the nation state;

discusses recent trends such as the increased use of networks and social media;

assesses the rise of globalizing fundamentalism;

analyses the challenges to globalization posed by contemporary events such as the global financial crisis.

This book will be essential reading for all students of globalization, and will be of great interest to students of global politics and global governance.

Grahame Thompson is Visiting Research Professor at the Department of Business and Politics, The Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, and Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the Open University, England.

Critical issues in global politics

This series engages with the most significant issues in contemporary global politics. Each text is written by a leading scholar and provides a short, accessible and stimulating overview of the issue for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of international relations and global politics. As well as providing a survey of the field, the books also contain original and groundbreaking thinking that will drive forward debates on these key issues.

Anarchy, freedom and international relations
Mervyn Frost

The rise of post-liberal governance
David Chandler

Critical encounters
William Walters

A horizontal perspective
Sandra Halperin

If its everything, is it nothing?
Heather M. Farley and Zachary A. Smith

The governance of complexity
David Chandler

Globalization Revisited

Grahame Thompson

First published 2015
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

2015 Grahame Thompson

The right of Grahame Thompson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-78289-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-78296-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74648-7 (ebk)

Typeset in Baskerville
by Out of House Publishing

Many people have contributed to my writing this volume over many years. But in particular I would like to single out the following who have made a special effort on my behalf, or closely supported the production of the book in various ways: Eddie Ashbee, John Campbell, Ciaran Driver, Ismail Eutek, Paul du Gay, Lars Bo Kaspersen, Oliver Kessler, Kasper Lindskow, Photis Lysandrou, Glenn Morgan, Mike Pryke, Jakob Vestergaard, Gary Wickham, Duncan Wigan and Karel Williams. In addition, the participants at numerous Work in Progress seminars held at the Department of Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School, deserve special thanks for listening to many of the chapter presentations and providing a rich feedback to me in the subsequent discussions.

The chapters that appear in the volume are heavily reworked versions of a number of my published articles. These are as follows: , From artisan to partisan: what would it mean to be an artisan of finance?, Journal of Cultural Economy, 7 (1), pp. 95120 (2014).

Grahame F. Thompson, Copenhagen: 1 May 2014.

AC Alternative Currency

ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations

B2B Business to Business

BIS Bank for International Settlements

BND Bank of North Dakota

BoE Bank of England

BoJ Bank of Japan

BP Bristol Pound

BS Balance Sheet

CB Central Bank

CDO Collateralized Debt Obligation

CDS Credit Default Swaps

C-GEM Computable General Equilibrium Model

CoVaR Covariance of Value at Risk

CRA Credit Rating Agency

ECB European Central Bank

EMH Efficient Market Hypothesis

EU European Union

FDI Foreign Direct Investment

Fed US Federal Reserve Bank

FS Financial System

G-20 Group of Twenty Nations

G-C Gaussian Copula

GDP Gross Domestic Product

HFT High-Frequency Trading

HRE Holy Roman Empire

ICT Information and Communication Technology

LOLR Lender of Last Resort

MERCOSUR Mercado Comn del Sur (Southern Common Market)

NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement

OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development

OMO Open Market Operations

PBoC Peoples Bank of China

PLO Palestine Liberation Organization

PNAC Project for the New American Century

QE Quantitative Easing

TARP Troubled Asset Relief Program

TB Treasury Bill

TPP Trans-Pacific Partnership

TTIP Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

UHFT Ultra High-Frequency Trading

UK United Kingdom

US United States of America

VaR Value at Risk

(excavated in 1506, attributed to between 27 BC and AD 68, Vatican Museum, Vatican City, Rome)

The issue of globalization refuses to go away. In the early 1990s when I began investigating this category, and the trends in the international economy it purports to describe, many of my academic colleagues assured me that it was only a passing phase and like other fashionable concepts of the day it would be short-lived. They have been proved wrong. Globalization has endured: both as a conceptual formulation and as an analytical description of the current condition. Indeed, if anything it has expanded its range and content way beyond economic analysis. In late 2008, for instance, my attention was drawn to a symposium on globalization at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy where the following were among the scheduled topic sessions: energy demand and supply; climate change and the environment; water management and waste management; the ageing population; corruption; big cities; terrorism; immigration; health care/epidemics/pandemics; social fragmentation; and more besides. And this was an event organized by an economics institute. If one were to enter the world of politics, technology or culture an even wider range of topics would be squeezed under the umbrella term of globalization. The category has become the ubiquitous indicator of a claimed epochal change in the modern condition, something enthusiastically embraced by politicians, journalists, management gurus, commentators and academics alike. And it is something that unites the political left and the right (and almost all those in between), even as the former are suspicious of it or condemn it while the latter welcome it or think its effects benign. It is with us and must be accepted as a valid analytical or descriptive device whatever might be ones normative attitude towards its determinants or its consequences. It has become the common-sense and taken-for-granted mantra of our times.