ABSTRACT
One of the most visible features of the process of globalisation is the rise of giant companies which operate in and influence national economies throughout the world. By the early 1990s, there were around 37,000 transnational corporations (TNCs) controlling over 200,000 foreign affiliates worldwide, generating sales of more than $4.8 trillion (UNCTAD 1994:86). The combined sales of the world’s largest 350 TNCs totalled nearly one-third of the combined GNPs of the ‘advanced’ capitalist countries (New Internationalist 1993:18). According to some commentators (Ohmae 1991), these institutions now wield such power in the world economy that we can no longer talk about ‘national economies’, and instead need to focus on how these institutions undermine national sovereignty and invest wherever they like in a footloose manner.
