Category Archives: Globalisation

A summary of The End of Poverty Chapter Eight – The Voiceless Dying: Africa and Disease

A summary of The End of Poverty Chapter Eight – The Voiceless Dying: Africa and Disease

I’ve just finished re-reading this – It mainly focusses on how Malaria and AIDs have prevented development in Sub-Saharan Africa and what can be done about it – basically a precursor to the establishment of the Millennium Development Goals. It’s 10 years old now, but fascinating nonethless, especially if you read it along with current progress reports on efforts to combat these two diseases I’ll add in a few updates on the later l8r.

The chapter begins by reminding us that corruption alone is not enough to explain Africa’s poor economic growth in the post-colonial period. In fact, charging Africa with corruption is hypocritical – little surpasses the cruelty and depredations that the West has long imposed on Africa, firstly in the form of Colonialism itself which left Africa bereft of educated leaders and infrastructure, and with arbitrary boarder lines which divided ethnic groups, water courses and mineral deposits in arbitrary ways.

On top of this, as soon as the cold war ended, Africa became a pawn in the Cold War. Assistance was refused to governments who were seen to be pro-communist and some terribly oppressive regimes were actually supported if they were seen to be anti-communist….The most obvious example provided is the installation of Mobutu Sese Seko in the now DRC following the murder of the first Primeminister of the Congo – Patrice Lumumba by CIA and Belgian Operatives, with a similar process happening in at least Angola, Ghana, South Africa (US support for Apartheid), Mozambique and Somalia.

Sachs now cites a 1965 CIA report which summed up the potential for economic growth in Africa as minimal, and stated the view that Africa was unlikely to receive signficant enough investment from the US to make a difference – basically what Africa needed was a Marshall Plan level of investment, but the US was not prepared to invest this money in Africa.

Instead, what Africa got (during the 1980s and 1990s) was Structural Readjustment Policies which encouraged ‘budgetary belt tightening’ which left many African countries poorer by 2000 than they were in the 1960s immediately after the end of colonial rule. Sachs says that these policies had little scientific merit and produced little results

Deeper Causes of African Poverty

Sach’s starts of this section by pointing out that the corruption levels between 1980 – 2000, as measured by Transparency International, were higher in various Asian countries (for example Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) compared to various African countries (for example Malawi and Mali), and yet Asian countries grew at around 3% a year, while Africa stalled. NB – it’s worth noting as a quick aside that a 3% year on year growth rate might not sound like a lot, but over 20 years this compounds signficantly.

Sachs draws on his visits to Sub-Saharan Africa (the first in 1995) to explain the factors which have hindered economic growth…..

Environmental factors hinder attempts towards economic growth – Disease, Drought and distance from world markets are all features of the African environment – Adam Smith, in fact, noted in 1776 that Africa lacked the kind of navigable rivers which gave Europe an advantage in world trade.

To emphasise this Sachs also talks about just how dispersed the rural populations of Africa are, which, combined with poor soil fertility, hinder their ability to produce sufficient food for themselves, let alone producing enough to export.

Then he gets onto the prevalence of disease – AIDS was already rampant by the mid 90s, but he also cites Malaria – he states that all of his Africa Colleages lost a few days a year to boughts of Malaria, some of the boughts being serious and leading to hospitalisation. He says that nowhere on earth had he experienced so much illness and death as in Sub-Saharan Africa – in the year 2000, SSA’s LE stood at 47, a good 20 years below Asia’s and 30 years below Europes.

According to the historian Angus Maddison, SSA had experienced the lowest levels of economic growth in the world even before colonial times, which leads Sachs to theorise that the disease burden may be able to explain both this long-term historical low economic growth rate and the more recent low growth rate.

There are some other factors which might explain low growth – Firstly poor leadership is sufficient to explain this in the case of Zimbabwe.

Next Sachs asks why there is such a lack of Free Trade Zones for exporting in Africa, given that these were the path to growth which Asian countries used form the late 1960s onwards, which grew mainly through exporting garments. There is one African country which did the same – Mauritius in 1968 – Here one ethnic-Chinese academic on the island happened to visit his brother in Taiwan . The brother was playing a lead role in the new export processing zones which were then being established in Taiwan, and his brother took the concept back to Mauritious, and the rest is history….

He then points out that free market reforms would not work in African countries which were caught in a poverty trap, especially those which are landlocked (15 countries are in Africa) – even those which had generally good governance.

 
The Malaria Mystery

Malaria is an entirely treatable disease, and yet it still claims 3 million lives a year, 90% of which are in Africa. After pointing to the correlation between low GDP and Malaria and then asks four questions….

Is it Malaria that causes poverty, or vice-versa? Or both?

Why was the Malaria problem so much worse in Africa

What was being done about the Malaria problem?

What more could be done?

 

Is it Malaria that causes poverty, or vice, versa, or both….?

Both –

Poor countries cannot afford Malarial prevention strategies – such as spraying with insecticide or putting up treated mosiquito nets, or even houses with doors and windows which keep the mosquitos out.

Malaria also prevents econommic growth – not only because of work days lost, but also because mass illness can stop infrastructure development projects in their tracks – Sachs reminds us that the building of the Panama canal was hindered because of Malaria.

Malaria also means high birth rates – when children die, parents overcompensate and have more children…. then large numbers of children and poverty means the family can only afford to educate one child, so large numbers of children enter adulthood with no education.

It also means those children who do get an education taking time of school because of sickness and poor education.

In short (p199) ‘Malaria sets the perfect trap: it impoverishes a country, making it too expensive to prevent and treat the disease. Thus malaria continues and poverty deepens in a truly vicious cycle.

Why is Africa more vulnerable than other regions?

Basically because of the disease ecology – a combination of high temperatures (the parasite develops faster), moist breeding grounds, and a variety of mosquito which prefers bighting humans rather than cattle means the transmission rate is higher in SSA than Europe and Asia (with the exception of Papua New Guinea). This all leads to the transmission rate being 9 times faster in Africa than it is in Asia.

However, Malaria is treatable and a combination of spraying, bed nets, and anti-malarial drugs means that no child at least needs to die from the disease.

What was being done (in 1995) to combat Malaria?

Hardly anything – tens of millions were being spent in aid, when $2-3 billion was required ($5billion a year in today’s money)…. The world bank was too busy arging for budget cuts and privatisation to even notice Malaria.

Africa’s AIDS cataclysm

Why is AIDs more of a problem in Africa?

No one’s really sure – the common assumption is that people have more sexual partners in Africa, although data puts this in doubt – So it might be that the patterns of copulation are different (more older men with younger women), it might be more concurrent relationships (faster turn over), it might be less use of condoms.

What are economic costs of AIDs?

This is possibly worse than Malaria, at the time 10s of millions of deaths – and many adults dying – teachers/ doctors/ civil servants, not to mention the strain on the health services, the heads of households being ill and the orphaned children. Also businesses don’t invest out of fear.

What was being done?

By the late 1990s, Anti-retroviral therapy in the West was giving people with AIDS hope – which meant more people were coming forwards to be tested for the disease, but only $70 million was being spent on combatting the disease in SSA. Apparantly the World Bank did not make one single loan specifically for combatting AIDs in the Africa from between 1995-2000.

Eventally Sachs ended up charing a WHO commission on macroeconomics and health which made the case for economic investment in health to improve economic development. They found eight major causes of disease in Africa – of which AIDs and Malaria were the top two.

The commission also suggested that $27 billion of aid focussed on health a year could save 8 million lives – equivalent to 1/000 of the combined annual income of all donor countries.

The birth of the global fund to fight AIDs, TB and Malaria

This was established in 2001, following agreement from drugs companies to provide AIDs drugs for the $500 cost price (for low income countries) rather than the $10000 market price in high income countries.However, there is still an ongoing battle to secure funding and encourage low income countries to implement the necessary procedures to make all this worthwhile.

Lessons learned

In the final section of this chapter Sachs reminds us that Africa faces other barriers to growth rather than just disease – he notes that a combination of environment and poverty creates a poverty trap – He comes back again to the point that intermittent rain fall doesn not help crop fertility, but also the fact that the most heavily populated areas are the most fertile regions in Africa – which is Rwanda (and DRC I thought) – basically inland areas furthest away from the coast.

However, he notes that there are many things which could be done to assist Africa – Poor soil can be improved by organic and artificial fertilisers, irrigation schemes could help – (Africa, basically, needs its own Green Revolution), and infrastructure improvement could connect inland rural populations.

At the end of the day – if a combined effort of the International Community and African Countries can combat Malaria and AIDs, then the same can be done to improve farming and develop roads and electric infrastructure.

I’m reminded about one quote from near the beginning of the book – What does Africa need to focus on most urgently – health/ education/ infrastructure or what – the truth is, everything at once.

The chapter rounds off by mentioning that this was about to be put in place big time by the introduction of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 – Which Sachs played a central role in….

 

UK Tourism – Suggests globalisation is exaggerated?

 

According to World Bank data, more people visit abroad from the UK than from any other country other than China.

travel trends UK

 

The thing is, we don’t tend to travel that far from home!

tt2

 

According the ONS 2012 Travel Trends the number of visits abroad by UK residents was 56.5 million, broadly equivalent to one visit abroad per person per year (although no doubt the distribution is nowhere near equal!).

What’s interesting, however, is just how close to home most of these visits are:

  • Nearly 20 million, or 34% of all visits are to Spain or France
  • About 38 million visits, or about two thirds of total visits are to just 10 countries, made up 8 countries in Europe plus America and Turkey.
  • This means that just 20 million visits, which will be considerably less than one third of the UK population, venture to more exotic destinations, and many of those 20 million visits are likely to be ‘safe’ western-style hotels in countries such as Egypt.

Given all of this, I think it’s safe to say that tourism trends are more regional than truly global. True global travelers are very much the exception.

Ugandan Alchemy or The Resource Curse?

Here is a nice illustration of the resource curse from relatively recent history- taken from the UN

The pink line shows Uganda’s gold production

The blue line shows Uganda’s gold exports

Uganda – A Nation of Alchemists?

 

Note the way in which gold exports, but not gold production, suddenly increases immediately following the entry of  Ugandan troops into the Congo War in 1994.

Some observers might suggest this offers support for the view that Uganda’s military involvement in that war was merely a cynical attempt to extract a few tonnes of gold – 40 tonnes over the period shown.

Of course it wasn’t only Uganda – Rwanda, Burundi, Namibia, Angola and Zimbabwe were all extracting DRCs resources during this period too!

Find Out More –

The Curse of Gold – The Democratic Republic of Congo

What is Globalistaion? With Pretty Pictures

I thought this post might be of use as a starting point for anyone who wants an intro to the topic of Globalisation – I recommend reading the New Internationalist No Nonsense Guide to Globalisation for further info.

The term is used in many different ways but at the most basic level, globalisation is about the increasing connectedness between societies across the globe.

Time-Space Distanciation

It’s useful to think of there being two key features of the ‘lived experience’ of globalisation – Firstly Time- Space Distanciation, in which our relationships are increasingly  between ‘absent’ others, locationally distant from any given situation of face-to-face interaction, so that our social relations are disembedded from local contexts of interaction and rearranged across indefinite spans of time and space.

 

 

Time-Space Compression

Secondly, there is Time-Space Compression which is where the world appears to have shrunk because technology allows us to get information from across the globe more quickly and also to travel to remote places with greater speed and ease. Cochrane, Pain and Steven (2000) argue that globalisation involves the emergence of a global and economic and cultural system which is incorporating the people of the world into one society.

 

 

 

While there are many different ways of looking at globalisation – its useful as a starting point to think of there as being three dimensions of Globalisation

1. Economic Globalisation – Key features here include

  • The rapid increase in world trade
  • The spread of Transnational Corporations,
  • The increasingly international division of labour
  • The increasing importance of international economic institutions such as the World Trade Organisation and International Monetary Fund.

2. Cultural Globalisation – Key features include

  • The spread of similar goods and services (everything from Mcdonalds to Tourism) across the world leading to increasingly similar patterns of consumption
  • Modern communications technology has led to instananeeous global news and information;
  • Centuries of migration have led to diverse cultures and ‘diasporas’ (people who permanently live away from their country of origin but still maintain links with that country) and,
  • Some commentators even point to the emergence of a global culture where more people across the world share similar values and ideals

3. The Declining power of the Nation State -Key evidence here includes

  • The rise in power of Corporations.
  • The existence of the United Nations and International human rights limiting state power.
  • International Social Movements (like the Green Movement)
  • Increasingly international problems such as the Environmental crisis, and the threat of nuclear destruction all mean that the power of any one national government to control global events is declining.  

 There are, of course, also those who suggest that the Nation State is not in significant decline!

One of the USA's Aircraft Carriers - a signifier of the Nation State in Decline?

 

Theories of Globalisation

There are a number of different views of the nature of Globalisation – Most text books divide them up as follows –

Hyper globalists or ‘Global Optimists’ Believe that globalisation is a fact and that Nation States and local cultures are being eroded and they see this as good thing.

These see globalisation as the worldwide extension of Capitalism, or the free market. They believe this will lead to economic growth, the eradication of poverty and the spread of democracy. A new world order is being promoted that will ensure peace and prosperity. They point to the examples of China and India which are now being brought into this new world system and to the emergence of global political institutions such as the United Nations as evidence for this positive view of globalisation.

Pessimist Globalists – This is basically the Marxist view of Globalisation as these believe that this is a negative process involving Western, mainly American Imperialism.

Pessimists see globalisation as a process in which Western institutions and ideas are imposed on the rest of the world. Transnational Corporations are the backbone of this new global order and these are the institutions that benefit from especially economic globalisation.

Transformationalists – See globalisation as a complex process involving a number of different exchanges between global institutions and local cultures, resulting in some parts of the world being truly part of a global system, others left outside and everything in between.

Finally ‘traditionalists’ believe that the extent of globalisation has been radically exaggerated and believe that Nation States and local communities still have the power to resist it.

Students should keep an eye out for evidence of events that suggest support for or refutations of these different theories of the nature of economic and cultural globalisation and the decline of the Nation State.

Top ten infographics for teaching international development

Firslty, like many others, I have to say ”Hats of off to Hans’ and of course everyone else who works on the ‘gapminder project’  – With his truly amazing moving data visualisations combined with his enthusiasm – front man Hans Rosling works wonders with stats and maybe makes you think being 60 odd ain’t that bad after all…?!

 

Secondly, Worldmapper which produces the wonderful maps below – which shrink or expand countries according to whatever variable is being examined – The actual original maps are now a bit dated, but this related views of the world’ site – has a much borader scope and much more up to date information! On ‘views of the world’.

 

 

Thirdly, and in at number three because they give us an immediate impression of global inequalities – I still think these colour coded maps are very useful – especially if you project up the map for income, and then HDI/ infant mortality – you can really see the high degree of correlation! The Map below shows HDI – from darkest to lightest blue – Very high to low, 2011 data

 

Fourthly, these United Nations Human Development Index data trees are cool – which have different colours for the three different elements of data shown in the HDI – Gross National Income per capita, Education levels and Life expectancy.

 

Fifthly – there is this more in depth data from the UN site – I like this because you can track compare how different elements of the HDI relate to eachother and how they change over time – for numerous countries.

Sixth , and going back to ‘simple earth modelling’ there are these wonderful pictures of ‘the world as a hundred people’

 

Seventh – there is this miniature earth video – part of the miniature earth project – related to the above obviously – This is the 2010 version – not as nice as the original, as this one’s to whale music…. but the most up to date version!

 

Eighth – there is some great material on this site – Information is Beautiful – not least the ‘International number ones’ infographic – because every country is best at something! (Click on the link above, the pic below doesn’t do it justice!)

 

Ninth, and only ninth because it’s not really a data visualistaion – but still pretty fab for inducing panic – Worldometers is a counting clock that looks population trends, spending on certain things, environmental decline, deaths from certain diseases and society and media. Some of the things you learn are –

  • The world population is 7 billion and counting
  • There are 2.3 billion Internet users – growing (rapidly) – also over 3 million blog posts today alone!
  • There are 900 billion undernourished people and
  • 1.5 billion overweight people
  • More than 4 billion a day is spent on the military and 26 billlion so far this year has been spent on drugs!.

And tenth – well I didn’t get to ten – If you really can’t deal with my stopping at 9. then why not suggest youre favourite ‘global data visualisation’?

Giddens – on globalisation and postmodernism

Hi, I’ve just started trawling through my class notes from last year on ‘Culture and Identity’ – some it might be useful to students – it’s of little use to me given that we had to abandon the culture and identity module we taught last year due to 1. The AQA’s incompetence in standardising that option appropriately last year and 2. the fact that the chief examiner Robb Webb agenda sets by exluding this particular option from his text book – meant it was rational to switch to the one unit he includes 

Anyway, I thought this summary of Gidden’s take on Globalisation might help add to an understanding of the difference between ‘postmodernism’ which is anti-theory and late-modernism (Giddens term) which holds that it’s still possible to generate theory even though we live in a postmodernised society – it’s all from his book ‘Runaway World’

Giddens recognises that Globalisation has changed our society, but criticises post-modernism in two ways:

  1. He argues that the idea that traditional institutions have lost their power to socialise us is too simplistic.
  2. He argues that the idea that people simply ‘choose their identities freely’ in a post-modern identity shopping mall is also too simplistic.

 Giddens argues the following:

  • Globalisation has undermined what Giddens calls ‘Tradition for tradition’s sake’, that is the power of traditional institutions to socialise people without them thinking about it. Instead, people reflect on traditions (such as marriage, religion, career progression) and decide for themselves whether that tradition is right for them. This Giddens calls reflexivity. BUT so many people still choose ‘traditional’ ways of being such as religion, etc. that many of our institutions still have some power to influence us. Giddens is saying that institutions are not as powerful as Marxists and Functionalists would suggest but that individuals are not as free as Postmodernists would suggest.
  • Giddens accepts that there is more choice, but this has lead to the rise of ‘expert systems’. We now turn to experts to advise us on what we should do. This starts at child birth, hence the super nanny clip. Also think of self help books that people buy and there are even experts that can tell us ‘how to be’! People still look around for guidance.
  • Globalisation has also created new risks, such that we now live in a ‘risk society. This has made us much more cautious in the way we do many things. Think of the ‘cotton wool kids’, surely these have less freedom than their parents had when they were being socialised?
  • Uncertainty in society has created two major problems: Firstly, Fundamentalism and secondly an increase in addiction. Giddens sees both of these as attempts by individuals to create a sense of stability and certainty in their lives. Giddens argues that people do not simply choose to become Fundamentalists, and people do not choose to become shopaholics. These are responses to living in an uncertain world.

Global inequalities and social exclusion

I just read in the week that 40% of 8-15 year olds in the UK have never been on a plane. Now this might be due to parental choice, but I imagine it also has something to do with parents not being able to afford it. Think about it – surely 40% of families don’t choose to avoid a fly-to destination for 8-15 years? The poverty hypothesis also seems sensible given that 12.5 million people in the UK live below the government’s poverty line.  

While the measure lacks validity on its own, in combination with other evidence, I take this as another indicator of the extent of inequality in the United Kingdom. It is also a useful demonstration of how few people are able to afford even a sniff of luxury.

Obscene - The world's most expensive house
Obscene - The world's most expensive house

Meanwhile, also in the week, two examples of people having too much money – firstly, Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, has built the world’s most expensive house , overlooking the slums of Mumbai – no doubt increasing the sense of social exlusion that the slum dwellers already experience there.

Different pieces of evidence demonstrating that the degree  of inequality in this world has just gone way too far.

The Hague – where leaders of poor countries face trial for war crimes

A couple of items from ‘The Week’ highlighting two recent court cases demonstrate how power can distort international criminal justice –

Jean-Pierre Bemba
Jean-Pierre Bemba - ex vice president of the DRC and on trial for war crimes

In the first case, Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has gone on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. He is the most high profile figure to be tried by this court since it was established in 2002. The charges relate to atrocities, including mass rapes, by Bemba’s personal militia, in the neighbouring Central African Republic in 2002-03.

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Israel, two Israeli soldiers, convicted at a military trial of using a nine-year old Palestinian as a human shield have avoided jail. The soldiers had forced the child at gunpoint to search bags for booby traps in a basement shelter towards the end of the Israelis’ 22 day assault on Gaza in January 2009. The men faced a maximium prison sentence of 3 years for ‘inappropriate conduct’ but were let off with suspended sentences and demoted.

 

 

In both cases we have countries using military force against another

Shimon Peres - president of Israel - probably won't be going to The Hague!
Shimon Peres - president of Israel - probably won't be going to The Hague!

country without UN sanction, both engaged in illegal wars/ occupations -but it is only the African president that is held to account by the Hague, while in the case of Israel there is no International trial of the president – the soldiers are tried in Israel itself and essentially let off.

This is clearly a very good example of how the amount of power a country has on the international stage, and maybe how close that country is to the US, influences the likelihood of the leader of that country being tried by the International Court of Justice – so I guess one could argue that the ICC is a place where leaders of poor countries get tried for war crimes, while the leaders of rich countries are allowed to pursue illegal wars with impunity.

In fairness, the ICC might catch up with Israel, and maybe even Britain and America (Iraq) in the next ten years, but I’d put money on the fact that we won’t be seeing Shimon Peres, George Bush, or Tony Bliare in the dock anytime soon!

The Institutions of Economic Globalisation

The institutions of Economic Globalisation

Economic globalization refers to increasing economic interdependence of national economies across the world through a rapid increase in cross-border movement of goods, services, technology and capital

Most social scientists would point to four ‘institutions’ that oversee international trade and investment, and that attempt to steer the global economy on a path of continued economic growth. It is important for students to understand something about these institutions because all supporters and critics of economic globalisation refer to these institutions (Hyper globalists are the supporters, Marxists and the broader anti-capitalist movement the critics).

You should read this through once when directed and refer back to it when we look at material that either supports or criticises the spread of global capitalism

The four institutions that make up economic globalisation are The World Trade Organisation, The International Monetary Fund and World Bank, The G8 and Transnational Corporations.

1. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) – was founded in 1949, has 149 member states and 149 states are WTO members, constituting over 90% of all world trade with a further 31 in the process of joining.

 The WTO is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.” [1]

The WTO functions through a number of meetings involving high- up officials from Nation States often referred to as a trade ‘round’ where they agree on the future terms of trade (for example how much to tax import and exports of goods and services)

2. The International Monetary Fund and The World Bank

 The IMF has 187 members. It monitors the world’s economies, lends to members in economic difficulty, and provides technical assistance ([2]). The IMFs mission is to facilitate international trade, promote high employment, achieve sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world. If a country gets into too much debt and can’t pay it off, it is the IMF that lends the country, setting conditions the country must abide by in order to receive that loan.

The World Bank was established in 1944, is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and has more than 10,000 employees in more than 100 offices worldwide. Like the IMF it has 187 member states  

The World Bank works closely with IMF. It provides low-interest loans to developing countries for a wide array of purposes that include investments in education, health, infrastructure, and natural resource management. ’It says that is mission is to ‘fight poverty with passion and professionalism for lasting results and to help people help themselves and their environment by providing resources, sharing knowledge, building capacity and forging partnerships in the public and private sectors.’ The World Bank is thus the largest single organisation responsible for bringing undeveloped countries whose populations make up at least 2/3rds of the world’s population into the global economy.

The World Bank believes that economic growth through industrialization and free trade are essential for countries to develop. They argue that there are sees the five key factors necessary for economic growth: 

3. The Group of Eight (G-8) is a forum for the leaders of eight of the world’s most industrialized nations, aimed at finding common ground on key topics and solutions to global issues. The G-8 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. While the leaders of these countries are in regular contact, they meet in summit format as the G-8 once a year.[3] ALSO [4]

4.    Transnational Corporations

 Transnational Corporations are some of the largest include Shell, ICI and Microsoft. Since world war two these have expanded massively.

 Held and Mcgrew point out that Transnational Corporations account for more than 25 percent of world production, 80% of world industrial output, approximately 40% of world merchandise trade and 10 percent of world GDP. They also suggest that they have become powerful in determining where in the world production takes place and have played a major role in reordering the productive relationships between nation states[5]

Transnational Corporations have benefited hugely from the trade rules established by the WTO. Ellwood (2000) argues that these are now the driving force behind economic globalisation, wielding more power than many nation states. Today, 51 of the 100 largest economies in the world are run by TNCs rather than Nation States.

 


 

[1] http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/whatis_e.htm

[2] http://www.imf.org/external/about.htm

[3] http://g8.gc.ca/about/

[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/g8

[5] Held D and Mcgew, A (2007) – Globalisation/ Anti Globalisation: beyond the great divide – Polity.