Introduction

Abstract

In recent years, one of the most important debates in both political science and economics has revolved around the growing power and influence of globalization, particularly economic globalization. For many, it has become the new orthodoxy. They argue that the revolutionary increase in the amount and speed of internationally mobile capital has drastically constrained national economic policies: interest rates are aimed at maintaining external balances, foreign exchange controls are lost, and Keynesian reflationary strategies are a failure. Meanwhile, governments, at the behest of increasingly independent central bankers, struggle to compete against each other to see who can achieve the lowest inflation, greatest reduction of the public sector and removal of economic barriers while racing to lower wages. Reflecting the influence of this development is the torrent of academic works that embrace this new conventional wisdom.¹