Disorder and Public Concern Around Globalization

1The New Transition

Globalization, such as it emerged at the turn of the 1990s, marked what some have called the end of history and the advent of an ultimately fully accomplished market economy.

Rather than talking about the end of history, it would be better to recognize, in this globalization, a new and undoubtedly remarkable episode, of what is at the heart of industrial capitalism, namely the recurrent emergence of novelty. Capitalism is not and has never been a stabilized state of society complying with unchanged rules or standards intended to establish an ideal model. Its forms evolved as new challenges were to be overcome. The problem posed by globalization is that of mastering the transition undertaken.

The breaks observed put the established ideas to the test every time. These ideas were too often rooted in the illusion of the optimality or simply the appropriateness of the rules and behaviors in force. Current globalization is no exception. Though the issue in the early 2000s was that of great moderation, meaning that the economy, now free of any discretionary intervention, would experience strong growth without inflation or unemployment, the crisis however contradicted this belief. Banks had to be rescued by States, which then acquired a regulatory function though questioned for several decades. The ideas in vogue, especially those that extolled the expected benefits of globalization, were at odds. Yet, they resisted because it is true that decision makers often ...