ABSTRACT
I am using here a model of globalisation which starts with its most obvious and fundamental feature – the organisation and integration of economic activity at levels which transcend national borders and jurisdictions. I use the word jurisdictions advisedly, given the sheer force of much of the globalisation process as it transcends the taxation and regulatory discipline which is conventionally the concern and responsibility of national governments. This is the sense taken up by such analysts as Hirst & Thompson (1996) who saw in globalisation the attainment of century-old ideals of
the free-trade liberals and who looked to ‘a demilitarized world in which business activity is primary and political power has no other tasks than the protection of the world free trading system’ (p. 176). In highlighting the essentially ungovernable quality of any emerging globalised economy, I do not join those who see in globalisation the collapse of the state or the erosion of governmental participation in economic life. On the contrary, the logic of globalisation implies the active involvement of state mechanisms in order to ensure the unfettered operation of markets, both capital and labour. Reconstituted states, in fact, begin to behave like economic entrepreneurs in a free market. One of the ironies of globalisation is its reliance on the state to make possible the free operation of markets implying, as Hirst & Thompson (1996) put it, that global markets are ‘by no means beyond regulation and control’ (p. 3).
