![]() Whenever one comes across a more "populist" interpretation of globalisation, one may recall the 145-year-old fictitious petition 8 of candle-makers by the French economist Frederick Bastiat. ![]() All of these, coupled with increasing job insecurity or insecurity in general as a result of the turbulent, unpredictable and very risky developments around the world, have led many people to see globalisation as being responsible for all such evils, and to even look for solutions for instance in de-linking from the "evil" global capitalist market. At the same time, even developed countries are today suffering unemployment, rising inequality and the degradation of moral standards, growing poverty, increasing crime rates and, last but not least, drugs are becoming a widespread and dangerous "disease". But the transition from socialism to capitalism has not been as smooth as might have been expected. ![]() 6 Capitalism has won the ideological battle. Globalisation indeed goes hand in hand with increasing economic difficulties and instability, the threat of worldwide recession, the slowing down of growth rates, not to mention the spread of diseases (AIDS 4) and uneven development, 5 accompanying high general growth rates. If one is not familiar with and does not understand something then one has a prejudice against it. Recent negative attitudes towards globalisation are not surprising given the inverse relationship between knowledge and prejudice about a certain thing. Misunderstandings about globalisation and its implications largely relate to ignorance of the phenomenon and its features. Nevertheless, some ideas should be put forward in order to build a "new house" when the old one becomes unpleasant to live in, or even too unsafe due to the ever more frequent (financial) "earthquakes". 3 Getting the analyses right is itself a very difficult task, the more so when it comes to providing solutions. Not the least important weakness of such criticisms is their inconclusiveness in terms of policy recommendations, and the lack of consistency (Martin and Schumann 1997). There is also criticism of the market being seen as a sacred thing and, at least implicitly, exalting the state into a sacred object. 1 Critics of globalisation 2 who, according to Krugman (1996), all too frequently take resort in "chiropractic economics", take globalisation to be a zero-sum thing and in so doing tend to ignore, for example, the principle of comparative advantages under which international trade is in fact a positive-sum game. Journal of International Relations and DevelopmentĪ lot has been written about globalisation, which has become a fashionable subject of discussion, albeit it is not always clear what exactly the term means.
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