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Seven transformative crises from European revolution to corona: globalization and state capacity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2020

Harold James
Harold James*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
*
Professor Harold James, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, 218 Dickinson Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544-1013, USA; email: hjames@princeton.edu
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Abstract

The article considers crises of globalization: the 1840s, the 1870s, the Great War, the Great Depression, the Great Inflation (1970s), the Global Financial Crisis (2008) and the Great Lockdown (2020). Each led to a reshaping of the institutions that supervised or regulated economic development globally but also nationally. In each case, a series of questions are answered: what were the origins of the crisis, what were the monetary and fiscal policy responses, how did the crisis affect the drivers of globalization, trade, migration and capital flows? And how did these different challenges affect governance and views of politics? The article concludes that supply shocks are most easily dealt with by inflationary mechanisms, allowing groups to gain some apparent compensation for their losses through the supply shock. But the resulting mobilization into groups also strains social cohesion.

Keywords

globalizationtrademigrationcapital movementprotectionismfinancial crisesstate capacitypandemic

JEL classification

F60: General F10: General F20: General F01: Global Outlook H10: General F33: International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions H12: Crisis Management
Type
The past mirror: notes, surveys, debates
Information
Financial History Review , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , August 2020 , pp. 139 - 159
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Copyright
Copyright © European Association for Banking and Financial History e.V. 2020

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Footnotes

I should gratefully like to acknowledge comments from an anonymous referee, as well as helpful suggestions at a conference of the Akademie für Politische Bildung Tutzing organized by Dr Wolfgang Quaisser, and in a webinar of the Princeton Bendheim Center organized by Professor Markus Brunnermeier.

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