Towards a New Political Economy of Globalization

On June 6, 2017, a small group of IGLP Faculty convened at Harvard Law School for the launch of IGLP’s new research initiative, “The New Political Economy of Globalization.” This preliminary discussion helped to shape a multi-year, multi-disciplinary research agenda for the initiative.

Primarily, this meeting grappled with ideas around Rethinking the Trade and Investment Law Regime. The discussions were motivated by a sense that the machinery defining – and seeking to manage — global political economy is broken. Authoritarian nationalists press for deglobalization while liberal elites struggle to maintain a crumbling global order. Conversations at the meeting addressed the need for a new vision able to overcome the limits of the complex of liberal arrangements now in place without succumbing to the lures of ethnic and authoritarian nationalism.

Discussants questioned how to:

• facilitate capital flows without giving foreign investors power to curb legitimate national regulation  (Beyond BITs)
• encourage global trade while preserving national policy space (Beyond TPP)ensure that gains from globalization are shared more fairly (Beyond labor clauses in FTAs)
• protect the losers from economic disruption caused by movement of people and production (Beyond Trade Adjustment Assistance)
• ensure popular voice in the framing of essential global or regional-level rules (Beyond expertise)

Attendees engaged with these questions and more during this inaugural meeting of the The New Political Economy of Globalization initiative.