ABSTRACT
When, in the 1960s, the global hegemony of the USA appeared to be still secure, its technology triumphant (e.g. in space), and its corporations conquerors of markets around the world, it became popular for the executives of US TNCs to write the obituary of the nation-state. Among many quotable comments recorded by Barnet & Muller (1974, pp. 18-21) are those lamenting the parochialism of nations, their obtuse and reactionary commitment to independence, and the obsolescence of the political divisions of the world which they perpetuate. In contrast, the commitment of the TNC to bringing about a ‘global optimization of resources’, and its functioning as an ‘instrument of world development…and the only force for peace’, was claimed to ensure that the rôle into which it was ‘being pushed by the imperatives of [its] own technology’ promised nothing less than prosperity and happiness for all. The earlier corporate ideology that ‘what is good for General Motors is good for the United States’ was being recast on a global scale. But as firms based in, and managed from, the USA became increasingly involved in the domestic economies of other states (both in the European core and the Third World periphery) as a result of their investments in foreign production facilities, governments of host countries were awakened to the need to come to grips with the impact of TNCs. The reality of potentially conflicting goals and of differential power to achieve them means that the relationships between sovereign states and powerful corporations play an important part in shaping the geography of the contemporary global economy.
