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Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture David Held & Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt & Jonathan Perraton (Polity Press, 1999)
BERTRAND BADIE
A countless number of books have been devoted to globalisation, to the point where the concept itself has been trivialised and is more and more a meaningless commonplace scattered in every student paper as well as in all political discourses. This new book by Held et al. is prophylactic, not only because it brings real clarification to this huge literature, but also because it provides an accurate interpretation of the globalisation process. In particular, we appreciate the numerous tables and grids which clarify the presentation and give a deep pedagogical virtue to the book.
The introduction is particularly useful as it distinguishes between three theses which purport to address and explain the process of globalisation: `the hyper-- globalist thesis' in which traditional nation-states have become unnatural, even impossible, units in a global economy, an argument advanced by such as Kenichi Ohmae and Robert Reich; the `sceptical thesis', which claims, with Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson or Linda Weiss, the enduring power of national governments to regulate international economic activity and which stresses state capacity; and `the transformationist thesis' which takes the view that governments and societies across the globe are having to adjust to a world in which there is no longer a clear distinction between international and domestic, external and internal affairs. The authors infer five main differences between these three approaches-about the conceptualisation, causation, periodisation, impact and trajectories of globalisation. They opt for the third vision and proceed to analyse globalisation as a `process', implying complex webs of networks in all social dimensions, leading to deterritorialisation and a stronger integration of elites.
It has to be said that there is offered nothing really new at this level. The authors are unable to take a completely fresh look at a topic which inspired about one hundred books in 1998. The synthetic work is thus somewhat unrewarding insofar as we fail to track down the slightest innovation. On this point the conclusion is consistent with the body of the book: it brings out forms of globalisation (premodern, early modern, modern and...