Can Globalization Succeed?

Dena Freeman's study looks at neoliberal globalization: how it has changed, whether it can keep adapting, and whether it can outlast the backlash against open markets and rising nationalism. Economic integration among nations has expanded through capitalism and free-market ideas, linking people across borders in new ways. Yet many people now feel rootless and dismissed by cosmopolitan elites. The book asks whether unregulated global finance, hard-to-see systems of international governance, and large multinational firms have permanently weakened democracy and the nation state, whether the sharp growth in inequality can be undone, and whether distinct cultures can survive in an interconnected world.

The narrative begins with the first wave of European colonial expansion in the fifteenth century and follows globalization through its first phase at the close of the nineteenth century to the version that took hold in the 1980s and now seems close to collapse. It examines present-day effects such as global supply chains, tax havens, widening economic gaps, climate change and pandemics, and compares how these affect wealthy and poor nations as well as wealthy and poor people within them.

Freeman then traces the rise of opposition to globalization, from the anti-IMF protests across developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s, through the transnational movement of the 2000s, to later uprisings including the Arab Spring, Occupy, and the Gilets Jaunes, and the nationalist populism associated with President Trump and the 2016 Brexit vote. Considering that globalization may have reached a turning point, the book sets out possible futures, including nationalism, authoritarianism and democratic globalism, and closes by asking whether globalization can be made more democratic, given that effective, inclusive global governance is needed for climate action, pandemic control and universal human rights. The volume is illustrated with 150 color images.