Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp's Six Faces of Globalization arrives at a time when the post-Cold War international economic consensus has collapsed, and there is much confusion as to what will replace it. This important volume brings much-needed clarity to the narratives that frame political and economic debates about the future of globalization. It contributes to a large literature that focuses on the causes of the backlash and on possible ways forward, including works that analyze changes in the world's income distribution,Footnote 1 the historical rise of inequality,Footnote 2 restrictions on states’ ability to experiment with economic policy and the undermining of states’ societal norms and democratic autonomy,Footnote 3 theoretical flaws in the neoliberal agenda,Footnote 4 and proposals to reshape the international economic law architecture,Footnote 5 to name just a few. Roberts and Lamp engage with many of these ideas and offer an analysis of six different narratives about globalization, to understand current globalization debates and how they may be reshaped or radically transformed.
The authors present these six narratives as faces of a “Rubik's Cube,” with the “establishment” narrative on the top (a win-win scenario) and on the sides the “left-wing populist,” the “right-wing populist,” the “corporate power,” and the “geoeconomic” narratives (win-lose scenarios), and the “global threats” narrative at the bottom (a lose-lose). Roberts, a professor at the School of Regulation and Global Governance at Australia National University, and Lamp, an associate professor in the Law Faculty at Queen's University, Ontario, delineate each narrative carefully and empathically while deliberately declining to endorse a position or adjudicate between them. Their goal is to provide a framework that others can use to evaluate these narratives and to promote good-faith debates between sparring camps.
The establishment narrative consists of the dominant post-Cold War economic agenda, often identified as neoliberalism or the Washington Consensus. It proposes that free trade and economic liberalization, more generally, are the key to growth and prosperity. Some have proposed that they are also necessary for freedom and peace. This optimistic, “win-win” perspective on globalization reflects a general political consensus that emerged in the West and that underpins the work of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (p. 7).
In the authors’ telling, while there have always been concerns about globalization's distributional consequences and its effects on workers and the environment, these concerns had been suppressed. In the decade following the global financial crisis, however, narratives focusing on globalization's winners and losers have taken center stage. The book identifies four “win-lose” narratives that challenge the fundamental assumptions of the establishment narrative.
The left-wing populist narrative (Chapter 4) challenges the claim that globalization will make everyone better off. It claims that globalization has produced job losses, greater income inequality, and wage stagnation, and that there has not been redistribution for those who lost out. Moreover, the rules of the game and the political dynamic, globally and nationally, are stacked in favor of the elite (billionaires, CEOs, the 1 percent, and the highly educated and paid professional classes), who “pre-distribute” economic gains in their favor. Finally, the elite's embrace of economic liberalization is purposefully selective, allowing them to shield themselves from international competition and use globalization to hide assets and avoid paying a fair share at home (pp. 55–57).
The right-wing populist narrative (Chapter 5) laments globalization's displacement of secure and well-paid jobs in manufacturing, and the decimation of communities built around these industries. It is anti-trade but also deeply nationalistic and anti-immigration, suggesting that the “winners” of globalization are the political and economic elite (“globalists”) who failed to protect the middle class from an “external other.” Those who subscribe to this narrative resent the changes in cultural practices and the ethnic and racial heterogeneity resulting from immigration and the introduction of “cosmopolitan” social norms (pp. 78–79).
The corporate power narrative (Chapter 6) asserts that multinational corporations (MNCs) are the true beneficiaries of globalization. MNCs shape the rules of globalization to maximize their gains and minimize their obligations and risks. They help write rules on liberalizing trade, investment, and finance, and oppose rules on international tax cooperation that may disadvantage them (p. 9).
The geoeconomic narrative (Chapter 7) focuses on global economic and technological competition, and particularly on the claim that China's rise threatens U.S. global economic dominance and the national security of the United States and Europe. In contrast to the establishment narrative's celebration of global integration and interdependence, this narrative warns of security vulnerability and calls for greater self-sufficiency in production, resilience in supply chains, and decoupling of strategic sectors (pp. 122–23).
Finally, the global threats narrative (Chapter 8) holds that everybody loses from globalization, which exposes humanity and the planet to global threats like pandemics and climate change. It proposes international cooperation and global solidarity to address these existential challenges. (p. 11).
Six Faces does not attempt to pass judgment on the narratives’ merits. Indeed, the authors declare themselves agnostic as to which narrative is right or more compelling. Rather, their point is that each narrative has some elements of truth, and that it is for the reader, or the policymaker, to judge them on their merits. Roberts and Lamp suggest that some combination of these narratives may help us better understand globalization, in all its dimensions. The authors present these narratives as a way to “unscramble” globalization debates (pp. 5–12). We can see how, as these narratives are deployed in policy arenas, they include some overlap that may be helpful in finding common ground. Moreover, astute policymakers can then use narratives strategically, to look for allies from competing narratives and maximize their gains, in either domestic debates or international negotiations. The authors offer their “meta framework” as a sort of key that could help us crack the code of conflict and impasse in what otherwise might seem to be incommensurate and irreconcilable positions.
The book shows how savvy actors can move between narratives, shifting the focus to advance their interests. The book recounts the episode of Mark Zuckerberg's testimony at a U.S. Senate hearing in 2018, following the data misuse scandal by Cambridge Analytica. A journalist's photo of Zuckerberg's notes revealed some of his prepared answers. Under the “competition” heading and in answer to the question “Break up FB?,” Zuckerberg had written: “US tech companies key asset for America; break up strengthens Chinese companies” (p. 171).Footnote 6 The authors note, following Tim Wu's work, that when confronted with their anti-competitive behavior and privacy breaches, Facebook and other tech companies shift the narrative to China, suggesting that by regulating them more strictly the U.S. government may give China an advantage in global competition (p. 71). This response effectively changes the framework from a corporate power narrative to a geoeconomic narrative. The authors observe that actors may invoke these narratives genuinely or cynically, for principled or strategic reasons. No matter; Roberts and Lamp are agnostic about this and more interested in observing and describing the phenomenon than they are in probing the actors’ intentions.
The narratives may also overlap, and the book gives a good example in the case of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation, analyzing parties’ positions at the start of the negotiation and the ultimate result from the intersections among the right-wing narrative (represented by the Trump administration), the corporate power narrative (represented by labor unions, the U.S. Democratic Party, and partly the Canadian government), and the establishment narrative (represented by the business community, the U.S. Republican Party, and partly the Canadian and Mexican governments). The “new” NAFTA (the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)) changes included, inter alia, a new chapter on digital trade (appealing to all narratives), a new labor value content requirement in rules of origin for autos, and a significant reduction of investor rights and changes to investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) (appealing to the protectionist and the corporate power narratives), and additional intellectual property protections, including on biologics (appealing to the establishment narrative).
After the three countries had signed the agreement, however, the Democrats took control of the U.S. House and a corresponding rise in the political salience of the corporate power narrative followed. To secure Congress's approval, the Trump administration had to negotiate and ultimately agree to a new system for labor rights enforcement, no protection for biologic drugs, and a stronger dispute settlement system. That a new agreement could be forged and passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the midst of an otherwise acrimonious deadlock between the Trump administration and Congress says much about how proponents of different narratives were able to find common ground. The authors conclude by observing that the “overlap between the narratives can explain coalitions, contestation, and conflict over international trade policies both within and among countries” (p. 202).
The USMCA example illustrates how different narratives can at times be complementary. At other times they can be in conflict, given the diverse normative commitments they represent. Thus, while the establishment narrative prioritizes efficiency, the left-wing populist narrative prioritizes workers’ wellbeing, distributional equity, fairness, and democracy; the right-wing populist narrative prioritizes manufacturing jobs, family, community, and tradition; the corporate narrative prioritizes curbing corporate power in the market and in politics; the geoeconomics narrative prioritizes security; and the global threats narrative sustainability and survival. Once the efficiency focus of the establishment narrative loses its dominance, the central question is how to weigh the competing values underlying the alternative narratives.
The authors acknowledge that: “Integrating different values and probabilities into common frameworks is difficult and requires policymakers to make normative choices about which values to recognize, what risks to tolerate, and how to trade off competing goals” (p. 219). Yet how exactly decisionmakers are supposed to undertake this weighing and balancing is not discussed in the book. There seems to be no metanarrative from which to judge these competing values and make a choice. The authors instead offer a broad, “kaleidoscopic” method, and a series of recommendations. More generally, they urge the reader to be open-minded, empathic to competing positions, reflexive concerning their own biases and assumptions, and eclectic in method. It is an invitation to resist the pressure of narrow specialization in favor of cross-fertilization and exploration. There is much to like about this program. Inevitably, however, some questions emerge as this method to master complexity turns out to be rather complex itself.
The authors are to be commended for the breadth of research supporting this book and for bringing insights from other disciplines to the question of how to think and make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. The resulting analysis is a testament to their curiosity and ingenuity, which opens our eyes not only to different narratives of globalization but also to various ways of thinking productively about points of contact between the narratives in order to find areas of agreement.
At the same time, the authors’ approach imposes substantial demands upon anyone wishing to follow their advice. These demands raise questions regarding the audience for this approach. Is this book directed at scholars? Policy analysts? Politicians? Interest-group advocates? All of the above? The task seems more amenable to scholars and analysts, whose job it is to think and who have the luxury of time. Politicians and government officials seem so wrapped up in the news cycle and the electoral, fundraising cycle that it may be hard for them to do this. Also, it seems like the structure of incentives and rewards for policymakers may push them in the opposite direction, entrenching themselves in more rigid positions in the pursuit of votes, money, and political prominence. Returning to the point of complexity, any person following the book's approach needs to analyze the existing and competing narratives, which is where the Rubik's Cube comes in handy, but beyond, she needs to be cognitively empathic to the other narratives, taking them at face value and understanding them from within their frame of reference, even when they go against her own position, rally against her core beliefs or identity, or are dismissive of her life experience. She needs to adopt a “kaleidoscopic method” to see areas of overlap and identify new patterns of potential agreement for policymaking (ch. 13). She needs to develop “complex integrative thinking,” which entails differentiation (seeing a problem from different perspectives) and integration, drawing insights from each to form a coherent approach (pp. 16–17). She is advised to look at complex issues through “dragonfly eyes,” emulating the 360-degree viewing range of this prodigious insect, in order to expand her range and avoid blind spots, synthesizing a multiplicity of “points, counterpoints, and counter-counterpoints” (p. 17).
Moreover, following the work of liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin and of political scientist and social psychologist Philip Tetlock, the authors encourage readers to think like a “fox” and not like a “hedgehog” (ch. 15). While the hedgehog has one big idea, one central, single organizing vision, the fox “pursues many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory” and their thinking is “scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves” without trying to fit everything into a unitary vision (p. 280). In this context, the authors marshal an impressive array of thought-provoking ideas from various authors working in physics, management, developmental coaching, complexity theory, history, journalism, economics, cultural anthropology, social psychology, sociology, and philosophy. The list of concepts and ideas is dizzying, and it reads more like a catalog of greatest hits than a program that can be implemented. Perhaps that is the point. After all, the book proposes complex integrative thinking, so reader, here you go! This is a palette of ideas so you can paint on your own canvas. But one wonders if the authors could not have integrated these ideas more fully with any substantive areas they had explored in the kaleidoscopic method, such as climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic, to see them in action.
This brings me to two important normative assumptions of the project, which could give the reader pause. The overarching goal of the book is to provide a method to help actors in these competing (often conflicting) narratives find common ground to advance policy. This can be done, the authors suggest, by better understanding the other's position and through good-faith dialogue. Here, the book seems to share the liberal belief that the process of reasoning and deliberation, entered consensually, will result in a mutually beneficial compromise, or better yet, a good result for society.
As a political matter, the quest for consensus begs the question of consensus about what? What will the policy program be? Who will benefit? Who will lose? It is hard to know whether the new consensus would be desirable without knowing which parts of what narratives would be integrated. It is possible to imagine a consensus that is worse economically or politically than the current establishment narrative, or one that espouses values that are harmful to a segment of the population. The book seems to be proposing that the compromise, the new integrated synthesis, whatever its content, is itself the goal. This emphasis on process and neutrality risks replicating the lack of attention to distributional consequences that the book so aptly analyzes of the establishment narrative. Furthermore, many criticisms of the establishment narrative have centered on how that consensus limits experimentation at the level of ideas, institutions, and policies. For some countries, a new consensus may stultify the possibility of devising different market orderings with different societal tradeoffs. In a highly diverse international community, perhaps there is something to be said for dissensus and pluralism to the extent that it opens space for institutional imagination and policy autonomy.
As a conceptual matter, there seems to be a tension in the book between the central role narratives play in our current debates—and the importance the book ascribes to them—and the rationalistic assumption that we can create a method that allows actors to integrate their preferred narrative with that of others and use it instrumentally to pursue common interests. As the authors explain, a narrative is a story that is shaped by our experience but also shapes our experience, identities, and interests. It belongs to the literary realm, to the world of myth, of emotion, of passion, and affiliation. The book seems to assume—or hope—that actors who inhabit these narratives will be able to step out and behave like rational actors, horse-trading aspects of their narrative to find common ground. Recent political dynamics do not, however, provide much reason to be optimistic on this score. To be sure, the narratives are a social construction and there is nothing fixed or essential in them, so perhaps they can be reshaped in other ways. Yet the question, again, would be for what purpose and to advance what interests?
The book does not address the alternative possibility that a narrative becomes dominant, not as a result of rational discourse or compromise, but as a result of power dynamics. Several of the narratives critical of the establishment narrative, such as the left-wing populist, corporate power, and right-wing populist, have existed for years in the academy, civil society, and in politics. The difference now is that they have gained political power, and what were previously marginal positions have now taken center-stage. Ideas and policy proposals that were once dismissed as unrealistic or radical now shape government policy. It is entirely possible that what becomes the dominant narrative, even if it is a synthesis, will be the result of political struggle and economic influence rather than consensus.
Another important limitation of the book's analysis is that it recounts the story of the globalization narratives in the West, with the West narrowly defined to include countries of Western Europe plus the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It is thus a story situated in a particular geography, preoccupied mostly with the globalization backlash in these wealthy countries. Readers from the rest of the world may find that they have had a very different experience of globalization.
To their credit, the authors candidly recognize this fact. Their chapter on “blind spots and biases” affirms that “many in the West still treat Western experiences as universal. We do not want to make this mistake. The narratives that we have reconstructed in this book dominate debates about economic globalization in the West but they do not reflect the experiences of many outside the West” (p. 221). In recognizing that their perspective is partial, the authors also invite others to “supplement and qualify” their understanding of how non-Western narratives confirm, contradict, or extend the six faces of globalization from which the book takes its name (p. 222).
While the authors describe several non-Western narratives, including the “neocolonial narrative,” the “narratives on the rise of Asia,” “Russian narratives against Western hegemony,” “Chinese narratives against Western hegemony,” the “Africa-rising narrative,” and a discussion of those left behind that's associated with the “bottom billion,” these discussions are not integrated into the substantive heart of the book (pp. 220–39). The authors explain that they:
focus on some non-Western perspectives that are absent from or downplayed in Western debates. Some of these reflect blindspots related to the specific historical role of the West: its subjugation and exploitation of non-Western peoples still color the perspective of many developing countries on economic globalization but do not register significantly in Western mainstream narratives. (Pp. 221–22, emphasis added.)
This is a strange framing of the bias. The idea that the experience of colonialism “still colors the perspective” of developing countries seems to locate the bias in the perspective of developing countries, whose trauma still colors the present. If the goal is to make the experience of developing countries register in the West, then the “neocolonial” name is problematic. Calling this narrative neocolonial makes it easier to dismiss in the West. It presents it as a historical trauma that developing countries have not managed to overcome, rather than a question of how the huge power differential between rich and poor countries shapes the design and operation of the international economic law regime and its institutions, and the consequences that flow therefrom.
Furthermore, it frames all relations between rich and poor countries as derived from the exploitative and destructive legacy of colonialism. Likewise, it assumes that critics of neoliberal globalization in the South, including scholars, policymakers, businesspeople, and civil society organizations, perceive the relationship as semi-colonial. Of course, it is possible to trace continuities in the institutional legacy left by the colonial powers; the arbitrary territorial maps, the deliberate division between different ethnic groups that continues to fester in the former colonies, and on the rich countries’ side, the prejudice, arrogance, double-standards, meddling in domestic affairs, and promotion of their companies’ material interests even at the expense of democratic governance, and so on. It is also possible to trace how the existing wealth of several countries and institutions in the West, and their upper hand in global competition, owes a great debt to the colonial enterprise. “And how some of the international law doctrines and institutions that structure globalization have their origins in the colonial period.”Footnote 7 But the crucial point is the focus on contemporary power relations and how it shapes the rules, practices, and institutions of globalization, and with what consequences.
The authors do tell some of the common grievances of developing countries under this narrative, including the initial shaping of the international trade regime and rich countries’ selective liberalization according to their comparative advantage, conditioning membership to the World Trade Organization on accepting a new intellectual property rights agreement, and the failure of the Doha Development Round. The narrative also includes critiques of the international investment law regime and of the economic policies that international financial institutions have pushed for in developing countries (pp. 222–26). However, this perspective is not integrated in the analysis of global problems. The exception is the discussion of climate change, where a “sustainability” narrative based on the developing countries’ perspective is included and the debate suddenly acquires a global perspective, one that was missing from the Rubik's Cube discussion. The analysis includes questions about the global distribution of the effects of climate change and how the responsibility to address it need be shared. How should costs be allocated given historical responsibility of emissions, current emissions, and current capabilities? Unfortunately, this discussion is not fully integrated in the kaleidoscopic method when looking for potential alliances and common ground. It is also not an analysis that can be addressed by referring simply to the “neocolonial” narrative. However, the discussion on climate change gives a sense that this exercise could be promising if the perspectives of developing countries on questions of global distribution were to be mapped out and integrated more fully.
This critique can be stated differently. In fact, voices in the Global South have long raised and forcefully articulated several of the critiques now prominent in the West, such as the critique of multinational corporations’ influence over workers and the state, which undermines fair distributions of productivity gains and a greater tax contribution to their host society. Likewise, concerns over the loss of good jobs and of dignity in white, working-class communities in the U.S. rustbelt, and the disintegration of family values and of communities, echo concerns in the Global South over the destruction of indigenous and agricultural communities, and the disintegration of the social fabric and way of life as they lost their source of living and had to migrate to big cities or other countries. Critiques of the response to the global financial crisis in the United States and Europe—specifically the favoring of financial institutions over middle-class families in the United States and austerity programs in Europe, which fanned left and right-wing populist movements—were strikingly similar to claims advanced by developing states in crisis after crisis. This is not to say that the narratives are all the same everywhere, but to point out that similar narratives have also informed the position of developing countries in the global arena and have fueled their dissatisfaction.
Six Faces could also have productively drawn on long-standing critiques of inequality and poverty in developing countries, often exacerbated by economic liberalization policies. Much of the force of the establishment narrative and the neoliberal policy blueprint it advanced was the claim that trade liberalization and the limited role of the state in the market, as reflected in the policies of privatization and deregulation, were key to fostering economic development. It was in claiming that trade liberalization, and the rest of the neoliberal package, were the ticket to developing countries’ prosperity that the establishment narrative became globally dominant. The establishment narrative was met with criticism and resistance from the developing world, in various forms. Some of the responses took the form of local social movements like the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico, protesting NAFTA the day it became effective and then, once they had put down arms, organizing conferences such as the “Intercontinental Encounter against Neoliberalism and for Humanity.” Social mobilization against the economic policies of the establishment narrative toppled governments, as in the case of Bolivia and Argentina. More globally, the World Social Forum became a fixture of civil society organizations that were critical of the establishment narrative. These are just a handful of examples, but the scholarly focus on the West dramatically closes down the lens to see them.Footnote 8
Critiques also took the form of government proposals and formal challenges to specific institutions, such as the debates for reforming the WTO during the Doha Development Round, or the debate about access to medicines to combat the AIDS epidemic, led by Brazil and South Africa, which succeeded in the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health.Footnote 9 Developing countries also advanced criticisms of IMF and World Bank policies, as well as their institutional governance structures. The list goes on. Criticism and resistance have also taken the form of opting out of specific regimes, such as the international investment law regime and its ISDS System in countries like South Africa, Ecuador, Bolivia, and India, or not opting in as in the case of Brazil. And there has been a wealth of scholarly criticism in both the developed and the developing world critiquing the establishment narrative.
The book situates the important critiques on the establishment narrative as a result of the global financial crisis of 2008 and refers to earlier criticisms as “bumps in the road” that the establishment narrative dismissed (p. 4). But it is important to note that in the West, too, there were important criticisms from scholars and civil society, prior to the crisis, often reflecting on what had happened in the Global South.Footnote 10 Indeed, some advocates of the establishment narrative felt the need to defend globalization against what they perceived to be unjustified attacks.Footnote 11 Perhaps, once again, the 2008 financial crisis was the salvo of the unraveling of the establishment narrative in the West, but the critiques were readily available before then in the Global South and even the West.
It is tempting to think that if neoliberalism is going to die, its burial place will have to be in the West. Perhaps it is irrelevant that many critiques of the establishment narrative first emerged in the Global South, or were based on experiences in the Global South. The establishment narrative and its economic model can only crumble now after the West has experienced a financial crisis, austerity programs, the unforgiving effects of globalization in the communities that have lost, and its own run-in with social upheaval and political instability. As suggested by my discussion of the role of power dynamics above, perhaps whatever new paradigm replaces it would also be formed in the West, out of the narratives the book has so artfully mapped out. It would follow the same patterns of diffusion and influence as the establishment narrative: the Western governments' policies at home and abroad; these countries’ influence in the agenda of international organizations and international financial intuitions; the socialization and spread of ideas via Western universities to developing countries’ elites; and so on.
A central aim of the book is to enable the identification of potential areas of overlap between the six faces of globalization narratives to forge a new consensus that would replace the establishment narrative. But we do not have a good map of the narratives in developing countries to see areas of potential overlap and agreement with the Western narratives.
Even if some coherent compromise were to be forged in the West, nothing guarantees this will be the new global consensus. The previous decade has shown that emerging economies can resist the American and European agenda in multilateral fora in ways they could not have previously done. Moreover, the establishment narrative consolidated when this form of liberal capitalism took hold in the footsteps of the Soviet Union's collapse. We have seen the end of this unique period of a unipolar world, and it is hard to think that whatever consensus is forged in the West will automatically become the global consensus. This underscores the need to pay greater attention to the Global South.
The authors have written so powerfully and convincingly about the importance of having dragonfly eyes and developing integrative thinking, that one wishes they could have more fully brought that method into the analysis of globalization, incorporating the developing world's perspective. The trouble is that the book's analysis reproduces the centrality of these few countries, in a way that, just like focusing on a single narrative, runs the risk of providing a one-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional picture of globalization. It is as if we are looking at a traditional world map, created for navigation purposes by European cartographers in the sixteenth century, rather than a map drawn attempting to represent countries’ real-size proportion and location, like the Peters Projection.Footnote 12
Taking a cue from the authors, one could try to envision the narrative that the authors have woven in this fascinating book. As the authors tell us, a narrative is a framing device. It sets the scene and includes actors, a plot, and a moral. At the same time, a narrative necessarily leaves things out. The big narrative that Six Faces of Globalization tells is a story about globalization as seen by the rich North Atlantic democracies in the last fifteen years or so. The opening scene is the challenge to the “establishment” narrative of globalization that has reigned supreme in the last thirty years. One central story focuses on the internal threats, particularly the revolt of populism in the rich North Atlantic countries, showing how the domestic political challenges to the reigning establishment narratives in these countries are reshaping domestic and international economic policy. Another story focuses on external threats, showing how geoeconomic competition with China or global threats like climate change or pandemics shatter the assumptions of the establishment and the capacity of existing global institutions. The moral of the story is that in the midst of these competing and conflicting narratives, there can be room for good-faith understanding, deliberation, and agreement. It is undoubtedly an important and timely narrative.
Roberts and Lamp's captivating book will make readers feel they have new glasses to see through the fog of current globalization debates in the West. Despite its limitations, it is a wonderful example of openness and engagement, rigor, and clarity.
