Home
News
In Focus
Business
Metro
Nation
World
Sports
Feature
Opinion
View more »Opinion Columns
Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
Forum emphasizes BRI cooperation between China and Arab countries
Rights to lower sleeper berths should be softened by empathy for fellow passengers
Sunday
- Subscribe
Related News
Home » Opinion » Book review
Finding order in chaotic milieu
By David Maguire |
April 18, 2009, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THOSE crisis managers who study the conditions and outcomes of chaos understand that there is an underlying order somewhere within the instability. A new order eventually evolves out of the chaos and the system adjusts around new conditions, but is never able to return precisely to its original state.
Such is the current condition of the world economy, evolving through a stage of chaos in which global financial institutions are being reshaped, economies shaken, not stirred, and the rules rewritten, seemingly on the run like changes to a movie script after production has begun.
Meanwhile, workers are being laid off in their millions, consumer spending power is plummeting, money supply is strangled, trade flow is drying up and companies are slashing production.
A critical force within this chaotic milieu is the changing global political economy, the subject of a timely new book by Andrew Walter and Gautam Sen who have both lectured at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Study of the international political economy is a relatively new academic discipline within the social sciences that analyzes international relations within the context of the political economy.
It is concerned, the authors write, "with the way in which political and economic factors interact at the global level," something that is happening to an acute degree now.
The discipline emerged in the early 1970s as the 1973 oil crisis and breakdown of the Bretton Woods monetary management system highlighted both the fragility of the economic world order and the limitations of the academic field of international relations, which was more concerned with law and politics.
Walter and Sen's "Analyzing the Global Political Economy" (Princeton University Press) is more of an academic text than an assessment of the current crisis but it concisely explains the building blocks of the system and gives a historic and philosophical context to our understanding of its evolution and relevance in today's climate.
They outline the genesis of the world's transformation to a multilateral trading system, the fragility of which they believe "has much to do with the fact that domestic interests and institutions often lead governments to restrict trade."
This is evident in the seeds of free trade contraction now being touted by some countries in response to the current crisis.
They assert that international monetary arrangements "have always been politically controversial" but that multilateralism here has been in retreat since the 1960s, overtaken by domestic macroeconomic management which has had "profound effects" on the international monetary system in general.
These include the growing politicization of international monetary and financial arrangements, the undermining of an anchor role for gold and a shift from public to private international finance.
Noting that financial integration has increased the frequency of "deep financial crises in the developing world," they add that it has reinforced rather than reduced "the asymmetries of power in the international political economy."
In terms of the current crisis, the authors believe "it has brought home once again the lesson that financial sector actors prefer rapid and deep state intervention during crises."
The underlying factor throughout the book is the evolution of "globalization" in trade and monetary matters, and how its nuances permeate the political economy to varying, but not yet total, degrees in individual nations.
The authors' verdict?
"We do not live in a completely globalised world, nor is steady progression towards such a world an inevitability. We live in a very imperfectly or weakly globalised world, in which national economies are variably independent but where states, geography and distance still matter enormously."
Such is the current condition of the world economy, evolving through a stage of chaos in which global financial institutions are being reshaped, economies shaken, not stirred, and the rules rewritten, seemingly on the run like changes to a movie script after production has begun.
Meanwhile, workers are being laid off in their millions, consumer spending power is plummeting, money supply is strangled, trade flow is drying up and companies are slashing production.
A critical force within this chaotic milieu is the changing global political economy, the subject of a timely new book by Andrew Walter and Gautam Sen who have both lectured at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Study of the international political economy is a relatively new academic discipline within the social sciences that analyzes international relations within the context of the political economy.
It is concerned, the authors write, "with the way in which political and economic factors interact at the global level," something that is happening to an acute degree now.
The discipline emerged in the early 1970s as the 1973 oil crisis and breakdown of the Bretton Woods monetary management system highlighted both the fragility of the economic world order and the limitations of the academic field of international relations, which was more concerned with law and politics.
Walter and Sen's "Analyzing the Global Political Economy" (Princeton University Press) is more of an academic text than an assessment of the current crisis but it concisely explains the building blocks of the system and gives a historic and philosophical context to our understanding of its evolution and relevance in today's climate.
They outline the genesis of the world's transformation to a multilateral trading system, the fragility of which they believe "has much to do with the fact that domestic interests and institutions often lead governments to restrict trade."
This is evident in the seeds of free trade contraction now being touted by some countries in response to the current crisis.
They assert that international monetary arrangements "have always been politically controversial" but that multilateralism here has been in retreat since the 1960s, overtaken by domestic macroeconomic management which has had "profound effects" on the international monetary system in general.
These include the growing politicization of international monetary and financial arrangements, the undermining of an anchor role for gold and a shift from public to private international finance.
Noting that financial integration has increased the frequency of "deep financial crises in the developing world," they add that it has reinforced rather than reduced "the asymmetries of power in the international political economy."
In terms of the current crisis, the authors believe "it has brought home once again the lesson that financial sector actors prefer rapid and deep state intervention during crises."
The underlying factor throughout the book is the evolution of "globalization" in trade and monetary matters, and how its nuances permeate the political economy to varying, but not yet total, degrees in individual nations.
The authors' verdict?
"We do not live in a completely globalised world, nor is steady progression towards such a world an inevitability. We live in a very imperfectly or weakly globalised world, in which national economies are variably independent but where states, geography and distance still matter enormously."
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
