Partisan Politics in the Global Economy

This book discusses the future of the nation-state in a world of global markets.

This book argues that national politics are not dominated by global markets. Citizens' demands for government protection from market forces (economic insecurity) are rising, while countries with strong trade union movements that can restrain the wage demands of workers (corporatism) are attractive to investors.Geoffrey Garrett challenges the conventional wisdom about the domestic effects of the globalization of markets in the industrial democracies: the erosion of national autonomy and the demise of leftist alternatives to the free market. He demonstrates that globalization has strengthened the relationship between the political power of the left and organized labour and economic policies that reduce market-generated inequalities of risk and wealth. Moreover, macroeconomic outcomes in the era of global markets have been as good or better in strong left-labour regimes ('social democratic corporatism') as in other industrial countries. Pessimistic visions of the inexorable dominance of capital over labour or radical autarkic and nationalist backlashes against markets are significantly overstated. Electoral politics have not been dwarfed by market dynamics as social forces. Globalized markets have not rendered immutable the efficiency-equality trade-off.