In conversation, our panel of Jamie Martin, Abraham Newman and Stephanie Rickard will discuss the future of globalisation and international economic governance, particularly since the 2022 Russian attack on Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine raises questions about whether states must be ‘strategic’ about their national economic policies due to geopolitical risks. The scramble for supplies to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, long-term trends of growing competition between the United States and China and the rise of populism had already fuelled geopolitical tensions, along with fears that globalisation is eroding. As a result, some of the global economy’s most prominent players prioritise economic resilience and reshoring global supply chains with ‘friendly’ allied states. The potential outcome is a fracturing of a globalised economy based on these alliances or outright deglobalisation. All of this is culminating in escalating economic disruptions for lower-income countries, with countries in sub-Saharan Africa facing possible default on their sovereign debt. Added to this, the war in Ukraine has caused the most significant commodity shock since the 1970s. International institutions, like the World Trade Organization, continue to defend global trade and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank continue to champion international cooperation to address economic and social welfare.
What are the political, social, and economic implications of these challenges for the global economy? How should international laws and institutions address these challenges to economic integration? How do precedents for twentieth-century international economic institution building help us contextualise today’s challenges?
Meet our speakers and chair
Abraham L Newman (@ANewman_forward) is Professor of Government and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. His research focuses on the politics generated by globalisation and is the co-author Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Struggle over Freedom and Security, winner of the 2019 Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize. He has published forty peer-reviewed articles in journals including Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, International Security, Nature, Science, and World Politics.
Jamie Martin (@jamiemartin2) is Assistant Professor of History and Social Studies at Harvard University. He is an international historian focusing on the history of global political economy and empire, particularly during the era of the world wars. He is the author of The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance, a history of the origins and rise of the first international institutions to govern global capitalism after World War I – and the political resistance they faced. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The London Review of Books, The Nation, n+1, Dissent, Bookforum, and The Guardian.
Stephanie J Rickard (@SJRickard) is a Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of politics and international economics. For over fifteen years, she has researched issues related to the international political economy, including trade agreements and international financial rescues. In her award-winning book, Spending to Win, Rickard investigates how economic geography influences countries' economic policies and international economic relations. Rickard comments on current events in the global economy for various media outlets including the BBC and Bloomberg.
Mona Paulsen (@loyaladvisor) is an Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science Law School. She researches and teaches in the fields of international trade and investment law, international development, international political economy, and economic security. She is the Co-Editor in Chief of the World Trade Review. Her forthcoming book charts the concept-building of international investment law in the early twentieth century and shows how this history reveals the unsettled foundations around economic development, security, and corporate power that continue to exist in tension today. She has published in the World Trade Review, Michigan Journal of International Law, and the Journal of World Investment & Trade.
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