ABSTRACT
Economic globalization is not a new phenomenon, but its most recent individuation involves an unprecedented relationship between multinational corporations and governments (McNeil, 1978; Goverde et al., 2000; also see the chapters by Zoller, Desouza et al., and Wood et al. in this book). In some cases, multinationals are able to dominate national governments, either directly through economic means or indirectly through NGOs such as the WTO and IMF. In other cases, multinationals are not able to dominate governments, but are still major power centers that policy makers simply cannot ignore. In still other cases, states are sufficiently powerful to dominate multinationals, but public policy-making processes create rhetorical, political, and economic spaces within which those organizations can still exercise significant influence. Reflecting an emerging consensus (Goverde et al. 2000) Canadian sociologist Joel Bakan (2004) concludes that overall, “economic globalization and deregulation have diminished the state’s capacity to protect the public interest . . . [and] have strengthened its power to promote corporations’ interests and facilitate their profit-seeking missions” while preserving the state’s power (p. 154; also see Kain, 1974, pp. 231, 234).
