Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Evolving State
- 3 The Changing Nature of Welfare
- 4 Disaster and Redemption: 1930s and Bretton Woods
- 5 The Transformation of the Bretton Woods World and the Rise of a New Economic Order
- 6 The End of Bretton Woods and the Beginning of a New Global Trading Order
- 7 The Enablement of Global Economic Opportunity
- 8 Trade and Security
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - The Evolving State
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Evolving State
- 3 The Changing Nature of Welfare
- 4 Disaster and Redemption: 1930s and Bretton Woods
- 5 The Transformation of the Bretton Woods World and the Rise of a New Economic Order
- 6 The End of Bretton Woods and the Beginning of a New Global Trading Order
- 7 The Enablement of Global Economic Opportunity
- 8 Trade and Security
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Thesis:
The trade order of states follows the constitutional order of states. The current form of the State – the nation-state – is in a process of transformation. To understand the contours of the next trade order of states, we need to identify the causes of the changing constitutional order of states and explore how that constitutional order will engender a new trade order of states.
Our book confronts a number of myths that have pervaded the intellectual conversation of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These myths all have a common denominator: they are grounded in the claim that history has ended and that with the rise of the modern liberal democracies, we have reached the final stage of development in government. These myths evince a somewhat linear progression, akin to scientific evolution, which culminates in the survival and triumph of the modern liberal democratic model. States, the story goes, went through a succession of oppressive forms of government that did not sufficiently take into account the well-being of the people. Kings, princes, emperors, dictators, and other rulers succeeded one another until Western political thought matured enough to invent “democracy” as the embodiment of the good society. After a bloody struggle against its last, ferocious fascist and communist enemies, democracy defeated the “totalitarian” ideologies, thereby ushering in the end of history.
The “end of history” thesis is widely attributed to Francis Fukuyama, who announced it in 1989.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New Global Trading OrderThe Evolving State and the Future of Trade, pp. 11 - 40Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008