Globalization and Keynes’s Ideal of a “Sounder Political Economy between all Nations

This paper is a contribution to the elaboration of a narrative of the international economic disorder that followed the demise of the Bretton Woods regime. It therefore revisits some key episodes of the recent history of the world economy – the Washington Consensus saga and the widening of global imbalances – and throws light on the attempt made in the Nineties to construct a neoliberal global order entirely and exclusively based upon market discipline, with consequent shrinking in policy space. The article shows that the resulting “hyper” version of globalization is, in its essence, a complete repudiation of Keynes’s international economics, and discusses the enduring relevance of his vision of international economic relations and global reform plans to the current epoch of “gated globalization”.