Right about the big things
Chris Patten is right about the universal superiority of liberal market democracy, but is wrong about the causes of the Asian crisis
Age of uncertainty
Financial crises like that in Asia will become more common unless global financial regulation is improved. Even former advocates of a fully liberalised global capital market now accept that the issue is how to give international institutions such as the…
The French resistance
Does France have anything useful to say in the debate on globalisation? The French have inflated expectations of politics but can still ask some of the right questions about the limits of the free market
Quashing speculation
The international financial markets are suffering another wobble. Ruth Kelly asks whether we should consider a "Tobin" tax on foreign currency speculation - or does George Soros have a better idea?
A Western theme
The west is not as dominant as it once was. But neither is it threatened by rival power centres, as the economic turmoil in east Asia underlines. Instead, argue Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal, we are moving into a "Westernistic"…
Global Claptrap
Two ill-informed books about globalisation have won acclaim by appealing to the prejudices of their respective audiences: continental Europe's political class and the US left. The facts suggest a more complex, and benign, reality
Tigers at bay
The east Asian economic shock reminds both Asians and westerners that the tiger economies are subject to normal economic laws. Gerald Segal hopes we will now hear less about Asian values
The nowhere man
The transcontinental tribe of wanderers is growing, global souls for whom home is everywhere and nowhere. Pico Iyer, one of the privileged homeless, considers the new kind of person being created by a new kind of life
The world we’re in
Nico Colchester was one of the finest economics journalists of his generation. Just before his death in September he delivered these five theses on the world economy, peering behind the "fractions of unimaginable things"
The great reckoning
The global free market economy will inspire a countermovement-just as it did 100 years ago. David Marquand and the political economists he reviews here agree about that. But will we have to chose between the free market and the free…
Let goods be homespun
The protectionist debate in Britain is just starting-in the rest of Europe and the US it is noisily joined. A case can be made linking the ills of rich countries to trade with poor ones. Most economists are sceptical, but…
Globaloney
It is a commonplace of left and right that global markets are rendering national economies ungovernable. Unconstrained markets are said to increase wealth while polarising its distribution and destroying political authority. But how global has the market become? Paul Hirst…