Emphasizing the social processes that underpin the global economy and demonstrating how the uneven effects of global economic integration impact upon actors this book also underlines the reciprocal effects that reconfigure the terrain of global accumulation.

The rapid growth of the field of international political economy since the 1970s has revived an older tradition of thought from the pre-1945 era. The Contested World Economy provides the first book-length analysis of these deep intellectual roots of the field, revealing how earlier debates about the world economy were more global and wide-ranging than usually recognized. Helleiner shows how pre-1945 pioneers of international political economy included thinkers from all parts of the world rather than just those from Europe and the United States featured in most textbooks. Their discussions also went beyond the much-studied debate between economic liberals, neomercantilists, and Marxists, and addressed wider topics, including many with contemporary relevance, such as environmental degradation, gender inequality, racial discrimination, religious worldviews, civilizational values, national self-sufficiency, and varieties of economic regionalism. This fascinating history of ideas sheds new light on current debates and the need for a global understanding of their antecedents.

This book is, in essence, about incentives: the incentives for competing societal interest groups to cooperate with each other to benefit from a growing economic pie, rather than fighting over a bigger share of a smaller one. This is the conundrum of economic development. If elite interest groups have both incentive and ability to allocate resources toward themselves, and if such rent seeking causes a decline in economic inefficiency, how can economies ever grow? The book illuminates the mechanisms by which in one of the world’s recent economic success stories— Vietnam’s rapid industrialization and passage into the middle-income category—the interest in cooperating to grow the economy overrode the elites’ instinct to allocate resources through the use of political power. The book shows how the need to provide positive conditions for international investment altered pay-off structures and pushed the all-powerful Communist Party of Vietnam to engage in bargaining with provincial officials; provincial officials with international investors; and finally all coercive elites even with the working classes. It describes the emergence of a harmony of interest among societal groups in which each group benefits from a growing economy, and no one group can monopolize the benefits of growth without hurting itself. The Vietnam case validates Nobel-Prize winning economist Mancur Olson’s proposition that elite predation can only be kept in check when the elite itself suffers from the economic decline it causes at least as much as it gains from the rents it collects.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This exciting book provides an illuminating account of contemporary globalisation that is grounded in actual transformations in the areas of production and the workplace. It reveals the social and political contests that give 'global' its meaning, by examining the contested nature of globalisation as it is expressed in the restructuring of work. Rejecting conventional explanations of globalisation as a process that automatically leads to transformations in working lives, or as a project that is strategically designed to bring about lean and flexible forms of production, this book advances an understanding of the social practices that constitute global change. Through case studies that span from the labour flexibility debates in Britain and Germany, to the strategies and tactics of corporations and workers, the author examines how globalisation is interpreted and experienced in everyday life. Contestation, she argues, is about more than just direct protests and resistances. It has become a central feature of the practices that enable or confound global restructuring. This book offers students and scholars of international political economy, sociology and industrial relations an innovative framework for the analysis of globalisation and the restructuring of work.

Essay from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 1,8, University of Warwick (University of Warwick, UK, Dep. of Economics), course: Making of Economic Policy, language: English, abstract: “We don’t know what globalization is, but we have to act.” This sentence, from a peasant activist in North East Thailand interviewed in Bangkok on 10 June 2002, makes clear why ‘globalization’ is still one of the most contested concepts in recent international political economy. Global media has raised people’s awareness of the fact that ‘the world is moving faster than ever’. Reduced formal barriers to commerce (e.g. import tariffs) have helped world trade to grow faster than output and foreign direct investments faster than trade . Multi-national corporations with a global target market have entailed the threat of off-shoring and outsourcing, which exerts a constant downward pressure on wages in developed countries. The information and communication technology revolution as well as the decreased transportation costs due to the airplane and containerization have accelerated a new division of labour. Moreover non-economic issues as the change of the nation-state role and the growing importance of transnational institutions are feeding the talks about globalization. Yet, just as the interviewed peasant above, nobody really knows what the exact topic is.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

It explores the formation of India's rural middle class, which rests on a complex, and often contradictory, set of processes that began unfolding with growing industrialisation in rural areas. It examines its composition, characteristics and social identification from the perspectives of three major class theorists: Marx, Weber and Bourdieu.

How has globalization changed social inequality? Why do Americans die younger than Europeans, despite larger incomes? Is there an alternative to neoliberalism? Who are the champions of social democracy? Why are some countries more violent than others? In this groundbreaking book, Sylvia Walby examines the many changing forms of social inequality and their intersectionalities at both country and global levels. She shows how the contest between different modernities and conceptions of progress shape the present and future. The book re-thinks the nature of economy, polity, civil society and violence. It places globalization and inequalities at the centre of an innovative new understanding of modernity and progress and demonstrates the power of these theoretical reformulations in practice, drawing on global data and in-depth analysis of the US and EU. Walby analyses the tensions between the different forces that are shaping global futures. She examines the regulation and deregulation of employment and welfare; domestic and public gender regimes; secular and religious polities; path dependent trajectories and global political waves; and global inequalities and human rights.

For many commentators, global civil society is revolutionising our approach to global politics, as new non-state-based and border-free expressions of political community challenge territorial sovereignty as the exclusive basis for political community and identity. This challenge 'from below' to the nation-state system is increasingly seen as promising nothing less than a reconstruction, or a re-imagination, of world politics itself. Whether in terms of the democratisation of the institutions of global governance, the spread of human rights across the world, or the emergence of a global citizenry in a worldwide public sphere, global civil society is understood by many to provide the agency necessary for these hoped-for transformations. Global Civil Society asks whether this idea is such a qualitatively new phenomenon after all; whether the transformation of the nation-state system is actually within its reach; and what some of the drawbacks might be.

'Globalization' has become one of the defining buzzwords of our time - a term that describes a variety of accelerating economic, political, cultural, ideological, and environmental processes that are rapidly altering our experience of the world. It is by its nature a dynamic topic - and this Very Short Introduction has been fully updated for a third edition, to include recent developments in global politics, the global economy, and environmental issues. Presenting globalization in accessible language as a multifaceted process encompassing global, regional, and local aspects of social life, Manfred B. Steger looks at its causes and effects, examines whether it is a new phenomenon, and explores the question of whether, ultimately, globalization is a good or a bad thing. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.