The Rise and Apparent Decline of Globalization

The extraordinarily fast-paced trajectory of globalization (sometimes dubbed “hyper-globalization”) that started around 1990 had abruptly ended around 2008 with the onset of the Great Recession. This, however, does not mean that the world has been experiencing a deep deglobalizing reversal in the following years. Instead, contemporary globalization has just become more comparable to its earlier, more moderate period before the hyper-globalizing decades. Nevertheless, the scale of the shift presages a skeptical view of the future of global openness and interconnectedness. Related occurrences, such as the ostensible end of the US-dominated unipolar moment, the rise of China, and the illiberal populist backlash against democracy and globalization, serve as even more ominous signs of the coming end of a globalized world. This chapter presents and examines these and related phenomena to argue that, though challenged and uncertain, the future of globalization likely remains bright. Recent broad reviews of the scholarly literature and systematic data samples both reveal that Francis Fukuyama’s once-celebrated thesis about the end of history, according to which the world should in the long term become much more capitalist and democratic than it currently is, still remains convincing – even after the sudden end of hyper-globalization.