The process of globalisation in the last quarter of a century is without historical precedent. Do you agree?
Globalisation is a wildly popular subject of discussion in today's literature. It is a phenomenon which has many different dimensions, which include economic, cultural, environmental and political issues. There is a wide spectrum of different opinions about its origins, present effects and future outcomes. Moreover, almost every globalisation aspect is a subject of a very heated academic debate. The topic is so debatable that there is no one conventional definition of globalisation. Nevertheless, it can be narrowly defined as the international integration of markets in goods, services and capital. Thomas Friedman defines globalisation as "that loose combination of free trade agreements, the Internet and the integration of financial markets that is erasing borders and uniting the world into a single, lucrative, but brutally competitive marketplace." Whereas Dicken defines globalisation as "a more advanced and complex form of internationalization which implies a degree of functional integration between internationally dispersed economic activities" (Dicken, P.
List of countries by leading trade partners
Thomas Friedman, Miami Book Fair International, 19...
Thomas Friedman, American journalist, columnist, a...2003).
Academic debate.
There is much academic discussion about whether globalization of the last quarter of a century is a real phenomenon or only a myth. Most generally the academic debate on the topic of globalisation can be divided into three distinct camps: hyperglobalists (Ohmae, Friedman, Giddens), sceptics (Hirst and Thompson, Ruigrok and van Tulder, Sachs and Warner) and realists (Dicken). While hyperglobalists accept globalisation as a fact, sceptics argue that the characteristics of the phenomenon have already been seen at other moments in history. Many sceptics note that those features that make people believe we are in the process of globalization, including the increase in international trade and the greater role of multinational corporations, are not as deeply established as they may first appear. Realists hold the middle ground...