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Beyond Globalization: Effective Demand and the Political Economy of Fragmentation
This monograph argues that the world economy is moving from an era of deep integration toward one of managed fragmentation, and that this shift should be understood not as a temporary disruption but as a structural condition of contemporary capitalism. Its central claim is that fragmentation is now the general case, while integration was a historically specific and politically constructed exception. The book develops a political economy of this new environment by examining how trade, finance, industrial policy, inequality, and geopolitical rivalry interact to shape growth and stability across countries and social groups.
At the heart of the argument is a Keynesian concern with effective demand, but extended into a world of blocs, sanctions, supply-chain reorganization, and contested international rules. The monograph shows that fragmentation changes how demand is generated and transmitted, how external balances constrain domestic policy, and how financial fragility spreads through trade and capital networks. It emphasizes that these are not merely technical adjustments to a neutral global market; they are outcomes shaped by power, institutions, and distributional conflict. In this sense, the book places itself in a Keynes–Myrdal–Kalecki tradition, treating cumulative causation, rent extraction, and class and bloc conflict as central to understanding the macroeconomics of fragmentation.
The book is organized around several linked themes. First, it explains how geoeconomic fragmentation alters the architecture of global production and finance, pushing the world toward partial decoupling, bloc consolidation, and regionally differentiated cycles. Second, it explores the distributional consequences of these shifts, showing how rents move along supply chains, how bargaining between capital and labor changes, and how core–periphery relations are reproduced or reworked under fragmentation. Third, it analyzes the feedback loop between domestic inequality and international alignment rising social conflict can fuel protectionism and bloc politics, which in turn intensify economic insecurity and political polarization. Fourth, it develops a stylized fragmentation-cycle narrative, with phases ranging from integration and tension to decoupling, bloc formation, and attempts at re-engagement.
A distinctive feature of the monograph is its insistence that effective demand remains central even in a highly politicized global economy. Domestic public investment, industrial policy, welfare arrangements, and macroeconomic management are presented as tools for sustaining growth when external demand becomes less reliable. But these tools work differently depending on country core powers can use them to reinforce dominance, connector economies can use them to bargain and upgrade, and peripheral countries often face tighter constraints and greater fragility. This makes development space a political issue, not just an economic one.
The final chapters turn normative. Rather than asking whether the world can simply return to the liberal globalization of the past, the book asks what kind of managed capitalism or “civilized” fragmentation is both desirable and feasible. It argues for a layered international order in which multilateral institutions, regional arrangements, and domestic social compacts together prevent fragmentation from becoming destructive. The aim is not to eliminate blocs or conflict, but to bound them with rules, insurance, and distributive compromises.
In the end, the monograph offers a framework for thinking about the future of capitalism after a world where integration is no longer assumed, fragmentation must be managed, and political economy once again becomes central to macroeconomic theory and policy.
At the heart of the argument is a Keynesian concern with effective demand, but extended into a world of blocs, sanctions, supply-chain reorganization, and contested international rules. The monograph shows that fragmentation changes how demand is generated and transmitted, how external balances constrain domestic policy, and how financial fragility spreads through trade and capital networks. It emphasizes that these are not merely technical adjustments to a neutral global market; they are outcomes shaped by power, institutions, and distributional conflict. In this sense, the book places itself in a Keynes–Myrdal–Kalecki tradition, treating cumulative causation, rent extraction, and class and bloc conflict as central to understanding the macroeconomics of fragmentation.
The book is organized around several linked themes. First, it explains how geoeconomic fragmentation alters the architecture of global production and finance, pushing the world toward partial decoupling, bloc consolidation, and regionally differentiated cycles. Second, it explores the distributional consequences of these shifts, showing how rents move along supply chains, how bargaining between capital and labor changes, and how core–periphery relations are reproduced or reworked under fragmentation. Third, it analyzes the feedback loop between domestic inequality and international alignment rising social conflict can fuel protectionism and bloc politics, which in turn intensify economic insecurity and political polarization. Fourth, it develops a stylized fragmentation-cycle narrative, with phases ranging from integration and tension to decoupling, bloc formation, and attempts at re-engagement.
A distinctive feature of the monograph is its insistence that effective demand remains central even in a highly politicized global economy. Domestic public investment, industrial policy, welfare arrangements, and macroeconomic management are presented as tools for sustaining growth when external demand becomes less reliable. But these tools work differently depending on country core powers can use them to reinforce dominance, connector economies can use them to bargain and upgrade, and peripheral countries often face tighter constraints and greater fragility. This makes development space a political issue, not just an economic one.
The final chapters turn normative. Rather than asking whether the world can simply return to the liberal globalization of the past, the book asks what kind of managed capitalism or “civilized” fragmentation is both desirable and feasible. It argues for a layered international order in which multilateral institutions, regional arrangements, and domestic social compacts together prevent fragmentation from becoming destructive. The aim is not to eliminate blocs or conflict, but to bound them with rules, insurance, and distributive compromises.
In the end, the monograph offers a framework for thinking about the future of capitalism after a world where integration is no longer assumed, fragmentation must be managed, and political economy once again becomes central to macroeconomic theory and policy.
330 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 29, 2026
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