1 GLOBALIZATION, TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

Globalization is still very partial and incomplete. While the world economy may be global, law, regulation, politics, and society are still largely national, only slowly emerging from bounds imposed by the modern international or Westphalian states system. There is a governance gap as politics lags behind markets which extend beyond the reach of nation states (Habermas 2001); global markets have grown rapidly “without the parallel development of economic and social institutions necessary for their smooth and equitable functioning ” (World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization 2004, xi). We are in the midst of a transition from an international to a transnational or post-Westphalian political-economic system and have not yet developed the modes of cooperation, institutions or even the language necessary to govern an integrated world economy effectively. My concerns in this paper are the implications of this asymmetry, and of the emergence of a transnational world order, for problems of economic governance. I will focus on problems rather than solutions, on the changing parameters of a new governance regime rather than its precise definition. My objective is to fram