Global Political Economy: Power, Labour, Politics

This discussion examines the issue of globalisation in terms of the interaction of economy, politics and power. It begins by considering the claims implied by the language of globalisation. How extensive and inclusive is the global economy? The second section goes on to outline the broad geography of globalisation in terms of a balance of power that is both highly uneven but also subject to marked changes. While the global economy as this developed since the 1970s may have reproduced established patterns of colonial and post‐war economic power, in the current century, power is shifting away from these nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century models to a new balance of regional power in which large Asian economies may dominate. Alongside these patterns of regional and national power, third, the discussion considers the uneven geography of capital and labour captured in models of an international division of labour that is organised by flows of capital investment but also of mobile workers. The final section offers an overview of the architecture of global politics, from the level of international institutions and nation‐states, to non‐governmental bodies that operate across borders to support or resist the workings of a global economy.