Reimagining the global economic order*

A retreat from the post-1990s model of deep economic integration was inevitable and is not necessarily a bad thing. Today’s worries about de-globalization should not blind us to the possibility that the present crisis may in fact produce a better globalization. This essay describes the frailties of the hyper-globalization model and lays out two key prerequisites for the construction of a better global economic order: the prioritization of the domestic social, economic and environmental objectives to build more inclusive societies and polities; and the avoidance of global primacy by major powers. It then discusses the limits of global governance, emphasizing the need to restrict our ambitions with respect to global cooperation to domains where it is most needed and likely to pay dividends. The normative core of the paper is a proposal for a meta-regime for the global economic order that presumes relatively little agreement among countries on desirable economic policies and focuses on minimizing worst cases of adverse cross-border spillovers while building trust (and increased cooperation) over time.