Globalization Myths: Some Historical Reflections on Integration, Industrialization and Growth in the World Economy

The ‘short twentieth century’ has ended unexpectedly (Hobsbawm, 1994b). The economic shocks of the late 1960s and early 1970s not only brought to an abrupt halt three decades of unprecedented economic growth and stability, they also weakened many of the institutional structures which had come to define the century’s evolution. The subsequent emergence of a neo-liberal agenda in the leading industrial countries, reinforced by the fall of communism, made the removal of these same structures a condition of economic recovery and simultaneously identified a series of powerful economic forces pushing towards a new international economic order where national boundaries, state structures and domestic economic policies are of ever diminishing importance. Open markets, transnational corporations and new information technologies have, on this account, become the new forces for economic growth and development in a truly global economy. Through various channels these same forces have had a profound influence on the policies pursued by many developing countries (Rowthorn and Chang, 1995). Globalization entered the political and academic vocabulary, in part, to describe the speed and intensity of these changes. But it was also intended to suggest that the late twentieth century was entering a distinct and unchartered era of economic development.