The rise and fall of globalization

Since the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, globalisation has shaped important aspects of our economies. In the context of neoliberalism and financial expansion, States have agreed to an international order characterised by free trade, free capital movements and increasing international integration. The world economy has been shaped by global production networks organised by multinational corporations, by a concentration of control over technologies and the rise of global digital platforms, by a greater power of international finance. The world State system has been shaped by efforts to revive the declining hegemony of the United States. The course will address:

- the origins of neoliberal globalisation, its political and economic drivers.

- the competing projects of the 1990s for a new post-Cold war order, including the UN agendas of global rights and responsibilities and the civil society mobilisations for a ‘globalisation from below’

- the key economic processes that shaped globalisation, including production, technology, trade, labour, finance, money and currencies, and the related policy frameworks

- the main economic outcomes; they include the economic rise in production, employment and trade of some Asian countries – and China in particular – while others – in Africa in particular – have lost further ground; in terms of inequality, disparities within countries have increased dramatically while a more complex pattern emerges when world inequalities are examined.

- the main political outcomes in terms of greater social polarization, weakening of democratic processes, rise of extreme right political forces and nationalism.

- the decline of globalisation as a result of a sequence of economic crises – started in 2008 – that have requested a renewed State invervention in the economy, with large-scale public policies

- the decline of globalisation as a result of political developments – in particular with the first and second presidencies of Donald Trump in the United States – that have weakened multilateral institutions – including the WTO, the WHO, etc. –, have introduced large scale tariffs disrupting trade flows, and increased uncertainty on the future of the US currency and financial system.

- the international order that is emerging with the fall of neoliberal globalisation, in the context of the hegemonic transition associated to US decline, with the risk of spreading military conflicts.