How Far Does the Author Support of Refute the Idea That the Nation State Is Dead?

8.1.1 Introduction.

Perraton with his article “The Global economy-myths and realities” investigate the main position of Hirst and Thompson’s that the globalisation today denies the autonomy of the national government. His disquisition center on the fives main claims of the essay of Hirst and Thompson’s “Globalisation in Question: The international Economy and the Possibilities of Governance” which they publish in Cambridge Political Press in 1999.

8.1.2 Claim 1.

(1) “The contemporary levels of international integration are not unprecedented, and in some ways they fall short of levels during the classical Gold era” (Perraton, j. 2001).

Perraton underlined the fact that the trade gross domestic product shares are not the perfect measure of trade openness, because it depends from the forces of supply and demand, he is approaching the trade openness from the constant prices of trade GDP shares which reflects the structure of production (Feenstra, 1992). His conclusion is that the numbers of the trade goods, relative with the production output, today are higher from the Gold era.

Also he deems that the mobility of the investments flows in the Gold era is less from today’s globalisation. In the past the investments concentrated a few sectors and countries. Today the investments activities conclude all the economic sectors, and the international financial flows include a greater range of assets and countries (Perraton, J. 2001).

8.1.3 Claim 2.

(2) “Genuinely transnational companies appear to be relatively rare. Most companies are based nationally and trade multi-nationally of a strength of a major national location of assets, production, and sales, and there seems to be no major tendency towards the growth of truly international companies” (Perraton, j. 2001).

Today most of the multinational companies they do not have a truly international operating system. The directions of their activities becomes from a home base “generalships”. These generalships are the centers of the decisions and for many multinational companies are the reasons of their specific advantages (Perraton, j. 2001). But that fact do not gives to those companies a national character. In many cases the progress and the activities of the department which is in the foreign country, define the decisions of the home base generalship and the course of the company. That is more visible to the multinational companies where their activities depend to the technological progress. The foreign department most of times gets “power” from some innovation. Those departments get “stronger” and convert to generalships.

8.1.4 Claim 3 and 4.

(3) “Capital mobility is not shifting economic activity to developing countries on a large scale: most foreign direct investment (FDI) is concentrated in developed economies and a small number of leading developing economies” (Perraton, j. 2001).

(4) “International economic activity rather than truly global, remains regionally concentrated in a “Triad” of developed Europe, NAFTA and Japan with the leading East Asian economies” (Perraton, j. 2001).

The international economic activities created a strong links between the developed and some of the developing countries. Perraton doesn’t accept that as a strong evidence for regionalization. Of course exist some allies between the countries of the Triad and that is against the “principals” of the Globalisation. But the flows from trade and investments are growth with out to restrict only between the “privileged” countries of the Triad. For example only a quarter of EU total trade activities concern the Triad countries (Sapir, 1998).

Perraton marks the third