In such a context part of the problem with understanding globalisation is the nature of the populist, sometime hysterical, discourse on the subject to be found not only in the media but also in a range of so-called scholarly texts that reduce 'globalisation' to a set of slogans to be either exhorted or demonised.1.
Throughout the 1980-90s for many of its advocates--and when understood economically as trade liberalisation, financial deregulation and privatisation--globalisation has been an uncontestably good thing. More recently globalisation has come to be associated with financial collapse and economic turmoil. Our ability to solve Keynes' three problems under conditions of globalisation appear as remote now as at the time he was writing. Neither markets nor the extant structures of governance appear capable of providing for all three conditions at once. Any cost benefit analysis would start from a recognition that globalisation has indeed improved economic efficiency and it has provided enhanced individual liberty for many; but in its failure to ensure social justice on a global scale, it also inhibits liberty for many more. .
Even leading globalisers--proponents of continued global economic liberalisation occupying positions of influence in either the public or private policy domain--now concede that there are major structural questions, not just mere adjustment questions, that need to be addressed if we are to deliver a more just global economic order. As James Wolfenson, President of the World Bank, noted '.[i]f we do not have greater equity and social justice, there will be no political stability and without political stability no amount of money put together in financial packages will give us financial stability'.2 .
Wolfenson's words, even if they appear to invert justice and stability as 'means' and 'ends', are a sign of the times in the international financial institutions.
