The Global Impact

The global financial crisis has profound implications not just for economies and states in one region but across the whole world. The degree of interdependence of this world has been disputed; if global is taken to mean unified, there is much in the global economy that is not truly global. As a process globalization is at best very uneven and incomplete, whether we take trade flows, investment flows, or migrant flows. There is not a single economy even within the United States, still less so in the EU, or Asia, or Africa. The global economy is made up of a multitude of national and regional economies which have established an increasing number of connections between them, and are increasingly subject to multiple and overlapping jurisdictions. On several measures the world is more homogeneous than it once was, but heterogeneity still flourishes, particularly in politics. The trend towards a unified world economy which has been proceeding now for three hundred years is much more advanced than the drive to create a unified jurisdiction to match it. But the degree of integration that has occurred means that there is now almost no community anywhere in the world which is not affected by what happens in other parts of the global economy. The financial crisis is global not because it is the same throughout the world, but because no country can entirely escape it. Some countries are at the centre of the storm, others quite marginal to it. It is extremely hard, however, so pervasive are the connections between all parts of the global economy, for any community to escape involvement entirely, although the fragmented nature of politics encourages all states to pursue their own interests rather than the common interest. This is true for security, for governance and for political economy.