Contesting Globalization: Space and Place in the World Economy

Extract

Contesting Globalization: Space and Place in the World Economy. By Andre C. Drainville. New York: Routledge, 2004. 208p. $145.00 cloth, $41.95 paper.

The literature on globalization has come a long way. The first-generation scholarship debated the “decline of the nation-state” thesis. Globalization critics predicted widespread regulatory races to the bottom. They blamed technological innovations that allow firms to decouple various stages of the production processes for privileging capital over other societal actors. While the globalization optimists agree with the causal story of the critics, they welcomed the emergence of a “borderless world.” For them, capital mobility leads to good governance because it privileges economic efficiency over rent-seeking politics.