ULUSLARARASI EKONOMİK SORUNLAR

Özgür ÇALIŞKAN
On the other hand, in globalization process, as Stiglitz (2002) states, “the international
institutions have pushed a particular ideology (market fundamentalism) that is both bad
economics and bad politics; it is based on premises concerning how markets work that
do not hold even for developed countries, much less for developing countries. The IMF
has pushed these economics policies without a broader vision of society or the role of
economics within society. And it has pushed these policies in ways that have undermined
emerging democracies” (p.2).
From the Polanyi’s vision: Markets as a part of broader society
This dichotomy between markets and politics is a good point for recalling the
Polanyi’s vision in The Great Transformation. Polanyi (1940) saw “the market as part
of the broader economy, and the broader economy as part of a still broader society”
(p.9). For Polanyi, the human economy is not autonomous, but subordinated to politics,
religion and social relations (the conception of embeddedness). Due to the impossibility
of disembedding the economy (explained by fictitious goods-labor, land, money), fully
self-regulating market economy is an utopian project (p.18-9).
For Polanyi, the deepest flaw in market liberalism is that it subordinates human
purposes to the logic of an impersonal market mechanism. Polanyi’s vision explains
that the failure to deal with this challenge produced catastrophic implications in the past
century (Fascism in Europe) and today (inequalities and social conflicts in Africa and
Latin America). He concludes that “human beings should use the instruments of
democratic governance to control and direct the economy to meet our individual and
collective needs” (p.32).
Conclusion: It’s politics, stupid…
Consequently, the proposition that globalization make states unnecessary is not
persuasive and credible. Although globalization has reorganized the global economic
dynamics and undermined national politics, the nation-state continues to remain as the
basis of international relations and main framework for the exercise of sovereignty and
democratic governance in the changing context of globalization. So, an updated realist
perspective is needed to “bring the state back in” to understanding international
economic and political relations.
Uluslararası Ekonomik Sorunlar 39