From 'hyperglobalisation' to 'slowbalisation'

• Author: Zumer, Klemen; Navarra, Cecilia; Titievskaia, Jana; Stamegna, Carla; Kononenko, Vadim
• Pages: 1-4

Slowing down or changing track?

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1. From 'hyperglobalisation' to 'slowbalisation'

Globalisation refers to the growing interdependence of

different economies, people, and cultures brought about

by cross-border movement of people, goods, services,

capital and data. Economic globalisation refers to the

interdependence of nations through international

trade and investment. Globalisation has brought about

economic growth, raised millions out of poverty, fostered

productivity gains for firms, and facilitated the spread of

people, technological development and new ideas.

Globalisation has also been accompanied by rising

inequality, encouraged production offshoring, citizen

dissatisfaction, disease transmission and challenges to

democracy.

1.1. Hyperglobalisation

The end of the Cold War set the scene for a period that is sometimes referred to as the golden era of

globalisation, or hyperglobalisation.1 Far from being the first 'globalisation' wave, it has some

specific characteristics.2 One of the most influential contributors to this narrative, the economist and

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman famously declared the post-1989 world 'to be flat'.

According to Friedman, various 'flattening forces' (e.g. new technologies, such as the internet,

global supply chains, offshoring) converged into a sort of open global platform for economic

competition. This was 'the inexorable integration of markets, nation states and technologies to a

degree never witnessed before – in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations, and nation

states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper.'3 After the end of the Cold War,

new realities of economic integration and growing contacts between countries, businesses and

people became the main framework for a new master discourse, in which global economic

integration was the central definitive concept. Hyperglobalisation represented the fusion of US-led

market globalism, economic neoliberalism and consumerist individualism.

The 1990s wave of economic integration, spearheaded by the USA, was expected to bring global

benefits, including an impetus for international cooperation. The end of the Cold War gave a new

impulse to the aspiration towards global governance institutions (e.g. the World Trade Organization

(WTO), the Kyoto Protocol). The mandate of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on cross-border

capital flows was strengthened.4 European integration proceeded with subsequent treaties, and the

deepening of the single market. Bilateral and plurilateral preferential trade agreements

proliferated, and hundreds of trade deals were concluded between the years 1990 and 2010. As a

result, the average level of tariffs fell worldwide, further boosting cross-border trade. Offshoring

production abroad contributed to the expansion of economic globalisation. Companies began

1 M. Kessler and A. Subramanian, The Hyperglobalization of Trade and Its Future, Working Paper 13-16, PIIE, 2013.

2 T. I. Palley, Three globalizations, not two: Rethinking the history and economics of trade and globalization. European

Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, 15(2), 174-192, 2018.

3 T. L. Friedman, The lexus and the olive tree, Anchor Books, May 2000.

4 J. Pisani-Ferry, Should we give up on global governance?, Bruegel 2018.