ABSTRACT

During the past several years, a number of publications have discussed the link between globalization and inequality. According to these scholars, there seems to be a relative consensus that within-nation inequality has increased almost everywhere in the last 20 years. According to Milanovic and Dollar international inequality has decreased since the end of the 1970s if one includes China and India (Held and Kaya 2007: 5-6). If one excludes China and India, the tendency is that international income inequality has increased, because of the fact that the high impact of China and India with more than one fi fth of the world population can change this relation. Nevertheless, global income inequality between nations is very high today according to the Gini index: around 62 to 66 (Held and Kaya 2007: 5). The gap between the richest and the poorest has been very high since the 1980s. According to Held and Kaya (6): “the world Gini coeffi cient is at a level ( . . . ) that now exceeds all but two (Namibia and Lesotho) of the most unequal countries by several points.” Such a high-income Gini within nations should mean for individual countries that governments would fi nd it too destabilizing, as populations may protest. Yet, on an international level, there are rarely social movements to be expected. Instead, on the top level, elites react currently to this high Gini by trying to change global governance in international institutions (e.g., Doha Development Round or the G20), and on the bottom level, political groups infl uenced by fundamentalist movements attack tourists, expatriates, and symbols of globalization.