Globalization And The New Politics Of Embedded Liberalism

As the world economy slides into the worst recession since the 1930s, there is fear that hard times will ignite a backlash against free trade policies and globalization more generally. This book explores the political and economic institutional foundations of the bargain of embedded liberalism and the ways domestic institutions shape how governments redistribute the risks and benefits of economic globalization. The author identifies the Anglo-American democracies, because of their majoritarian polities combined with decentralized, competitive economies, as uniquely vulnerable to the contemporary challenges of globalization and the most susceptible to a backlash against it.

Many years ago, John Gerard Ruggie coined the phrase "embedded liberalism" to describe the grand post-1945 political compromise between free-market liberalism and domestic political interventionism that stabilized the multilateral economic order. In Global Liberalism and Political Order, leading scholars of political economy and international relations assess the challenges facing today's increasingly interdependent world as globalization redefines the old political order. They address the unraveling and/or reinvention of a grand compromise in global governance from a variety of theoretical perspectives and issue areas, including trade, finance, networked governance, North-South relations, and the environment. Focusing on the foundations of political authority at the global level, the contributors imagine the implications of success or failure for international economic order and political stability. Ruggie, whose work inspired many of this book's scholars, contributes a chapter on the prospects for a new global—as opposed to international—grand bargain.

The Globalization of Liberalism demonstrates that liberalism is more deeply embedded in the structure of modern international political and economic order than is usually realised, and that at present there is a contested process of the 'globalization of liberalism'. As well as exploring liberalism's usefulness for understanding how international relations work, the contributors offer critical perspectives on the liberal structure of modern international society and places international liberalism into a global context by examining responses to liberalism in China, India and the Middle East.

Focusing on the development of justificatory discourse on global governance, Steffek examines how differing conceptions of distributive and social justice have played a role in negotiations in the domains of security, economics, and protecting the environment.

This series is dedicated to theoretical contributions and systematic empirical studies of political, economic and cultural formations which cross the borders and boundaries of states. The focus is on the main areas of public policy: security, human rights, legitimacy of political systems, welfare, and developments in the Global South. This third volume looks at the role of neoliberalism in the institutionalization of differential rules for capital and migration flows in the global economy.

John Ruggie introduced the concept of embedded liberalism in a 1982 article that has become one of the most frequently cited sources in the study of international political economy. Here leading scholars combine to offer a better understanding of what embedded liberalism means, why it matters and how to reconstitute it. The contributors contextualize the current challenge historically and theoretically so that students, scholars and policy makers alike are reminded of what is at stake and what is required.

The events of September 11, 2001 were a significant watershed in the emerging global order. However, the nature and consequences of this changing global order remain unclear. This book argues that this new order is as much the result of issues relating to the evolving methods and forms of governance, as of the new role and position of the United States in the world system. Using an innovative framework, derived from the work of Carl Schmitt, Kanishka Jayasuriya explores the nexus between domestic political and constitutional structures and the global order, and examines how the post-war framework of international liberalism is crumbling under the new pressures of globalization. As well as looking at the implications of 9/11 for the global order, this new study: relates the events of 9/11 to the deep transformations of the post war global order emphasizes the importance of the rise of the new regulatory state examines the new politics of fear in liberal democracies including the US, UK and Australia studies the appropriation of the 'language of the left' by conservative forces explores the illiberal outcomes of actions undertaken in the name of liberalism. This unique and timely study will be of great interest to students and researchers of international political economy, globalization and international political theory.