A provocative argument that the frustrations of globalization stem from the gap between the expectations created and the lagging economic reality in poor countries. The enemies of globalization—whether they denounce the exploitation of poor countries by rich ones or the imposition of Western values on traditional cultures—see the new world economy as forcing a system on people who do not want it. But the truth of the matter, writes Daniel Cohen in this provocative account, may be the reverse. Globalization, thanks to the speed of twenty-first-century communications, shows people a world of material prosperity that they do want—a vivid world of promises that have yet to be fulfilled. For the most impoverished developing nations, globalization remains only an elusive image, a fleeting mirage. Never before, Cohen says, have the means of communication—the media—created such a global consciousness, and never have economic forces lagged so far behind expectations. Today's globalization, Cohen argues, is the third act in a history that began with the Spanish Conquistadors in the sixteenth century and continued with Great Britain's nineteenth-century empire of free trade. In the nineteenth century, as in the twenty-first, a revolution in transportation and communication did not promote widespread wealth but favored polarization. India, a part of the British empire, was just as poor in 1913 as it was in 1820. Will today's information economy do better in disseminating wealth than the telegraph did two centuries ago? Presumably yes, if one gauges the outcome from China's perspective; surely not, if Africa's experience is a guide. At any rate, poor countries require much effort and investment to become players in the global game. The view that technologies and world trade bring wealth by themselves is no more true today than it was two centuries ago. We should not, Cohen writes, consider globalization as an accomplished fact. It is because of what has yet to happen—the unfulfilled promises of prosperity—that globalization has so many enemies in the contemporary world. For the poorest countries of the world, the problem is not so much that they are exploited by globalization as that they are forgotten and excluded.

This book discusses contemporary constellations of international politics and global transformation. It offers guidance on how to conceptualize the complexity of current global changes and practical policy advice in order to promote an open global society. In the light of today’s challenges, the author re-interprets the main argument of the philosopher Karl Popper in "The Open Society and Its Enemies". Based on this framework and new empirical evidence, the book discusses the thesis of an ongoing Third World War, triggered by fundamental deficits in nation-building, occurring primarily within states and not between them, and accelerated by asymmetric forms of warfare and Islamist totalitarianism.The book also explores various threats to the global order, such as the paradox of borders as barriers and bridges, the global effects of the youth bubble in many developing countries, and the misuse of religious interpretation for the use of political violence. Lastly, the author identifies advocates and supporters of a liberal, multilateral and open order and argues for a reinvention of the Western world to contribute to a revival of a liberal global order, based on mutual respect and joint leadership.

Can politicians effectively control national borders even if they wish to do so? How do politically powerless migrants relate to more privileged migrants and to national citizens? Is it possible for capital to move to labour rather than vice versa? In this book Robin Cohen shows how the preferences, interests and actions of the three major social actors in international migration policy - global capital, migrant labour and national politicians - intersect and often contradict each other. Cohen addresses these vital questions in a wide-ranging, lucid and accessible account of the historical origins and contemporary dynamics of global migration.

The events around the WTO conference in Seattle focused attention on the rise of social movements opposing globalisation and the power of corporations. This work is the first systematic analysis of these diverse, at present uncoordinated, movements. They are a new phenomenon that has as yet received scant media or scholarly attention. But it is likely to assume much greater political prominence as the globalised economy dominated by giant corporations fails to deliver on jobs, social justice, development and th environment. The dialectic between public opposition and the corporate sector's response is likely to shape how our economic institutions will change in the coming years.

New technologies may be heralded as life-changing innovations or feared as risks to moral values, human health, and environmental safety. Anxieties surrounding technology are often heightened by perceptions that their benefits will accrue to small sections of society while the risks are more widely distributed. Innovation and Its Enemies identifies the tension between the need for innovation and the pressure to maintain continuity, social order and stability as one of today's biggest policy challenges. It looks at a number of historical examples, including coffee, electricity, margarine, farm mechanization, recorded music, transgenic crops and transgenic animals, to show how new technologies emerge, take root and create new institutional ecologies that favor their dominance in the marketplace.

A refreshing, insightful look into the political and economicdynamics driving globalization today Globalization: it's earlier than you think. That's the provocativemessage of Against the Dead Hand, which traces the rise and fall ofthe century-long dream of central planning and top-down control andits impact on globalization-revealing the extent to which the "deadhand" of the old collectivist dream still shapes the contours oftoday's world economy. Mixing historical narrative,thought-provoking arguments, and on-the-scene reporting andinterviews, Brink Lindsey shows how the economy has grown up amidstthe wreckage of the old regime-detailing how that wreckageconstrains the present and obscures the future. He conveys aclearer picture of globalization's current state than the currentconventional wisdom, providing a framework for anticipating thefuture direction of the world economy.