The Failure of Globalisation

When world leaders met in March 2002 for the United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development, they revealed a new understanding of globalisation's failures. However, the policy prescriptions put forward focused on the failure of globalisation's application, rather than the model itself. At the heart of the globalisation model is a commitment to global corporations acting as the engines of economic growth and a belief that the wealth they create will trickle down to the rest of society. Instead, its policies lock wealth at the top, decreasing returns to 'unskilled' versus 'skilled' labour, increasing the number of people dislocated from their traditional livelihoods, decreasing access to food and vital social services, decreasing access of developing countries to the tools necessary to improve their social condition and strangling democracy. This article argues that the result--increased inequality and poverty--are intrinsic to the globalisation model and cannot be adequately addressed until the model itself is rejected.