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Neo-liberal Recipe and Pakistan

Mustapha Kamal Pasha

Analyses of Pakistan's collective woes follow predictable avenues, matched only by the recurrent display of actual crises that have plagued the country's history. The elements of explanation remain stable: fragile political institutions; an intolerant political environment unwilling to accommodate dissent; dominance of the military in politics; corruption; ethnic and sectarian conflicts; provincial rivalries; an unresolved crisis of national identity - just to rehearse the more familiar items in the inventory.

It is usually against the promises of modernisation, though, that Pakistan's apparent deficiencies acquire definition. With readily imported terminology of the occasion, the diagnoses may get slightly modified, but the claims of modernisation do not weaken their hold on the imagination or policy. Hence, absence of transparency and a weak civil society are cited as the source of problems of governance.1 A diminishing state capacity, in the face of new domestic, regional, and global challenges, is seen as driving the country into a deep abyss.2 A traditional culture evidently continues to place limits on accumulation and the pursuit of happiness.3 The unexplained eagerness of state managers to embrace this imaginary and to consistently find their own efforts lacking is a psychological riddle fraught with interesting angles.

The latest arrival to the analytical shores is the uncharitable epithet of failed or failing state.4 Unable to fulfil the dream of a modernising entity, on this account, the nation-state drifts between bare survival and doom. Does Pakistan qualify for this recently manufactured label as many other candidates allegedly do? A mock battle wages amongst experts to answer this query, specialists who are well versed in the recently perfected art of global surveillance, monitoring all facets of the polity and economy with equipment supplied by disciplinary multilateral institutions.5 Nothing escapes the panoptical range of these bodies. Paradoxically, as is often the case with vision, the surveyor is left out of the picture. The involvement of agencies of multilateral governance in Pakistan's political economy escapes the visual field. To be concrete, the nature, character, and long-term effects of the IMF-World Bank medicine for the ailing patient is often erased from the picture. Failed growth and poverty-alleviation strategies, for instance, appear as entirely domesticated processes, outside the operational field of the global enforcement regime. In short, domestic ailments are strictly domestic, a familiar theme in the modernisation theory.6 Assaults on labour and public employees and the socialisation of private debt under structural adjustment, for instance, are simply collateral economic damage of societies taking a bold leap into a modernised world.

Expanding Market Fundamentalism
The hint that the assumed relative autonomy of the Pakistani state vis-à-vis global political economy may be vastly exaggerated draws the familiar charge of ideological hubris.7 According to this hegemonic logic, political economy bears a local, not global, stamp. The temptation to read global designs into the domestic fabric must be resisted. Like original sin, the pathologies of the post-colonial world reside in the character failings of the sinner. As with previous modernisation claims, this familiar sentiment appears to capture the verdict of post-socialist analysis and regimes of truth instantiated by neo-liberal globalisation.

To be sure, neo-liberalism promises its believers a nirvana of boundless riches, individual freedom, and personal self-fulfilment. On its watch, the limitless world of consumption, secured by laissez faire, would guarantee earthly salvation, a world in which societal gain would accumulate as the unintended effect of unrestrained private interest. This fantastic world imagined by Adam Smith's steadfast heirs has materialised on a global scale: in corridors of capitalist power, multilateral institutions, and the international development industry, but it has especially been embraced by state managers in the global south. No longer does the unbelievable fable, that unregulated (not regulated) markets produce wealth, read simply as a bedtime story - repeatedly told to soothe fears that often accompany the usual chaos and uncertainty of self-expanding capital, or to merely serve as an ideological guise adorned by capital to conceal structural inequalities and the swelling ranks of the dispossessed. Instead, neo-liberalism has acquired the status of a natural law. Collapsing normative and positive claims on the viability or desirability of a disembedded market in one sweeping stroke, neo-liberalism now entertains few distracters.8 With the collapse of the Second World, and the ascendancy of hyper power (the United States), hellfire awaits the apostates. In the worldly kingdom imagined by market fundamentalism, only the true believers can aspire to live and thrive.

Extended as globalisation, the neo-liberal project enjoys powerful adherents located in the privileged zones of the global political economy,9 sanctioned by the industrial might of the western powers, particularly the U.S. (United States), Europe, and Japan; the disciplinary structure of global governance, notably the WTO (World Trade Organisation), the World Bank, and the IMF (International Monetary Fund); and the structure of the global political economy itself, with marked imbalances of power, wealth, and privilege, of material and symbolic production and circulation, and particularly the discursive fields of imagination and policy. The coterminous and inseparable linkage among power, discipline, and discourse presents impossible challenges to the ex-colonial world - vast zones of determinate structural obstacles to either reverse the deepening of the neo-liberal project in their midst or to mitigate its deadly effects.

Yet, nothing is as linear as it seems. Recent events demonstrate that the once impregnable fortress of neo-liberal globalisation has also attracted worldwide resistance, including opposition from forces within the citadels of capitalist power, elites who harbour an unease about the savage form capitalism has taken and the perils of an ever-widening gulf between greed and compassion, between the promise of prosperity and its denial to most.10 However, the comforting tale of resistance, a staple of liberals, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations), and ex-socialists should be equally resisted. Any allusion to the scale and substance of unequal global power, between the organised and centralised worlds of transnational capital and the mostly disorganised and administered worlds of the dispossessed, underscores the innocence of heightened expectations of a collapsing juggernaut. Rather, as historical memory would show, many previous post-mortems of capitalism's impending fall have been rudely undone.

The ideological power of neo-liberal globalisation is far-reaching and compelling, structuring vast social worlds, but also preventing other possible worlds to emerge. No less potent than the mass utopias that once gripped the Cold War protagonists and their acquiescent allies,11 market fundamentalism works not only as a natural law, but as the universal civic religion of the time. But utopias have their inner dark secrets, the potential to unravel precisely in their instantiation as totalising discourses. The neo-liberal project quickly begins to reveal serious fault lines once it abandons the safer world of fantasy to visit the cruel terrain of the ex-colonial world. However, the gulf separating the potential for humane alternatives for the many and the existing savagery of unbridled accumulation for the few remains large.

A lesser known element that explains the global reach of the neo-liberal project is its inherent malleability to work with radically different structures of political authority. The notion that economic liberalisation invariably produces political openness has materialised infrequently in the postcolonial world. Often the sources of democratic governance in certain zones predate the arrival of neo-liberal marauders. Democracy in these zones often serves the aim of resisting, or least aiming to humanise neo-liberalism (as the 2004 election results in India might suggest), not march to its drumbeat. In the mostly depoliticising climate of the global political economy, the domestic structures of authority that can better ensure the advance of neo-liberalism can hope to enjoy special global perks. Yet, those privileges are for the ruling power bloc within state structures - not the nation.

To realise its mission, the neo-liberal project violates its own theoretical precepts. In unabashed reversals of the idea of primacy of the market, for instance, it is the state, not the market, which is invited to prosecute the war on Keynesian economics, reduce the size and scope of what constitutes the public sector. This is an unheralded irony inherent to the social process, the discomforting story of the use of the instruments originally seen as fetters to the onward march. Hence the design to deregulate, privatise, and, liberalise, is assigned to the state. A solemn entreaty is made to the state in the name of progress to commit suicide and guarantee the arrival of a better world free of want and squalor, depravity and subsistence. Ensconced in the modernist imaginary of progress, the neo-liberal project spares no means to attain its lofty aims.

The changed global political context of the neo-liberal project makes a hard choice even harder. Although the structures of global political economy have remained fairly stable with the consolidation of the neo-liberal project since the 1980s, this is not true of the structure of power on a global scale. The disappearance of the Second World and its steady - if uneven - incorporation into a unified spatial zone of transnational capital has all but removed areas of reluctance, opposition, and resistance. For the Third World, especially, the principle of sovereignty often served as a surrogate for resistance. Although, the life and times of Third World sovereignty are dotted with fractures, mostly caused by invisible process of unequal global development, and in many cases blatant displays of brute northern force, the spaces of relative autonomy for domestic policy making were never so completely circumscribed. In the post-9/11 world, it remains uncertain how effective resistance can be mounted to the Washington Consensus, in the face of pre-emption and extra-territoriality. This is particularly true of states that pushed national security to its extremities without the necessary economic autonomy secured by self-sustaining growth, regionalism, or reliance on popular sovereignty. Ironically, it is their presumed one-dimensional strength, not weakness, which makes them attractive targets under the unbridled gendarme framework. Have we entered a new imperial phase? Or did we ever leave one?

Intimations of empire often provoke fervent disclaimers. The suggestion that the lineaments of yet another postcolonial empire could be already in place, with stark consequences for collective and individual being in the ex-Third World, seems reckless and fantastic. A stronger version of this suggestion obliterates “national” action in areas as diverse as the security, economy, politics or culture, reducing the local to the global, subordinating agency to structure. A weaker variant of the idea presents the image of restrictive pathways, but leaves the scope and content of imperial effects contingent and local, effects conditioned by social agents, notably the actions of state managers, their cognitive maps, societal base and political will. Cognitive maps are never static, yet reveal discernible patterns acquired over time. The societal base of state managers is clearly a relevant factor. Convergence between state managers and social forces in whose name action is performed, on the other hand, is equally significant. Political will is never autonomous, nor reducible to the structure. There is considerable variation in the relative distribution of these attributes among ex-colonial states.

Given the post-socialist mood, the language of empire betrays primordial attachments obsolete ideologies, a misdirected, if nostalgic, quest for explaining the distemper of our times. The universal embrace of markets and materiality, granting respectability to globalising Social Darwinism, underscores the necessity and desirability of neo-liberalism and by extension the necessity and desirability of compliance to its political and military structures. Caveat emptor! Only those who demonstrate a ready willingness to adjust to the new social laws can thrive. The reticent and the indolent have their fate sealed, a dénouement foretold, drawing few tears, except post-mortems as imploding 'failed states' incapable of aligning domestic social forces to the welcoming new world of globalisation. Against this hegemonic logic, it is neither helpful nor practical to invoke the vocabulary of 'empire' in order to examine common maladies and pathologies of the indigenous kind. After all, the pains of the feeble and the naïve are strictly self-inflicted, troubles strapped to local greed, the fragility of hapless institutions, or unbounded ambition without restraints of shame, guilt or exteriorised deterrence in the shape of accountable government, transparency or rationalised law.

The New Elixir
Pakistan, like its siblings in the ex-colonial world, is no stranger to impressive entreaties and compulsions of neo-liberal globalisation. The pretence that it can safely negotiate disciplinary neo-liberalism, however, is readily contradicted by the design and capacity of the state. It is not merely a question of pouring new wines in old bottles, globalisation being the next elixir for a decaying state. Rather, it is the actually existing character of the corporate garrison and its potential to make strategic adjustments in the face of unprecedented challenges that would dictate the future trajectory.

The official story of Pakistan's speedy reversal of its northern policy disguises the scope of troubles that lie ahead. There are historical legacies to be overcome and the need for structural transformation, not structural adjustment. But structures are resilient entities, impervious to real change. Even pious steps designed to reverse the past have an uncanny capacity to reinforce its stubborn pathways. Alternatively, short-term cures produce chronic disease.

Despite the injection of populism by the elder Bhutto in the body politic (a social mentality subsequent regimes have been unable to dislodge), his model of political economy, for instance, deepened the accumulation crisis domestically, while exposing Pakistan to new dependence consummated by labour supplies to the Gulf states. Although the long-term societal effects of migration flows are too complex to enumerate here,12 the weakening of the labour movement is clearly a significant by-product, also inadvertently undermining productive accumulation. With the deepening security crisis in the Gulf, notably Saudi Arabia, the entire labour migration strategy as a source of income generation may now be getting totally unstuck.

Ironically, the parasitic character of captains of industry is linked to the undermining of labour, but also the relative ease of administering neo-liberal medicine under successor regimes, notably during General Zia-ul-Haq's geo-strategic U.S.-sponsored frontline status. Thus, welfare retrenchment, either by design or default, is based on these inter-linked factors: the decline in the efficacy of organised labour and Pakistan's second strategic embrace of the U.S., the first alliance consummated in the Pact frenzy of the First Cold War. Again, these were short-term strategies, inviting deep future troubles. In substance, it is hard to imagine General Zia's draconian repression of political, and especially labour, dissent, without alluding to his strategic, status in the bloodiest zone of the Second Cold War. The growing militarisation of Pakistan's economy reads like a parallel hypertext to the main text of General Zia's 11-year strategic embrace, a feature of political economy no subsequent civilian government has either tried or succeeded to reverse. Against the historical backdrop, it is not too complicated to imagine whose principal short-term and long-terms interests are likely to be served under the new global dispensation.

Despite pledges of radical societal reform, the state shows little inclination for self-reflexivity in arenas which matter the most, notably, the distribution of power and resources. But to lament these infirmities is to rehearse moralism, not recognise the necessary, effects of history, locality and, above all, the instantiation of the political at multiple levels. Alternatives emerge from the resolution of contradictory trends. Yet, there are strict curbs on what is possible. Perhaps an appreciation of these curbs can help escape the prison-house built by the modernist imaginary.

First, the social rigidity of the power bloc places imposing limits. The rentier fraction in the power bloc remains dominant, as a claimant both on politics and economic resources. Even by the logic of neo-liberal economics, this situation cannot sustain viable growth. When the pie is sliced into pieces, the larger share invariably goes to the non-accumulating classes. The historical possibility of self-transformation is negated by the expanding role of more parasitic layers on top of others. This is not the usual case of an emerging military-industrial complex found in the advanced sectors of the global political economy. Rather, it is a case of identifying which social force drives the state, and especially in the economic domain, society. The less autonomous the accumulating classes, the greater their political frailty. Productive classes in Pakistan have been unable to offer direction either to the state or civil society. The much-heralded recent celebration of NGOs as engines of social transformation has to be placed in this larger context. They cannot be substitutes for collectivities drawn from the productive arenas of civil society.

Second, the social rigidity of the power bloc becomes more visible against the backdrop of a chronic structural crisis of the economy.13 A low savings and investment rate, a culture of tax evasion, a looming irrigation crisis, over-dependence on a poorly diversified export sector (mostly at mercy of international quotas as in the case of textiles and regimes of labour enforcement, as in the case of sporting goods) and an underdeveloped infrastructure accentuate the lingering effects of illiteracy and a bifurcated educational system. Although, military regimes have recorded better economic performance than their civilian counterparts, development of the physical infrastructure (including communication) has not fared better under their presumably watchful eye.

Third, poor expenditures in secondary and post-secondary education over several decades have finally caught up with the state. The yawning gap between elite education, on the one hand, and the restrictive worlds of so-called vernacular education and madrassah instruction, on the other, has left more than a literacy problem for one of South Asia's fastest growing populations. It is the increasing consolidation of bifurcated cultural world that spells danger. The world of privilege and access to global culture (with all its mixed blessings) is diverging too rapidly from the introverted world of rising frustrations amongst a population with few prospects to procure dignified existence. In no small measure, the appeal of bigotry often resides in the disenchanted spaces of a divided world.

Fourth, the heightened dependence on the decision-making institutions of global multilateral institutions and growing alignment as a pliant vassal in the newly constituted empire, drastically circumscribe the arena of autonomy and independence. Seduced by jingoist lullabies seemingly produced by deterrent capacity, state managers, with able and willing assistance from fungible opinion-makers (the organic intellectuals in the service of the state), send contradictory messages. For the nation and the region, there is the recurring assurance of invulnerability. Beyond the neighbourhood, there is the ever-ready aspiration to serve. Often, the latter is justified in the name of securing the nation and the state. In the post-9/11 environment of binary and incommensurate worlds, the first casualty is historical memory; the second, the contradictory push and pull of neo-liberal globalisation and the doctrine of pre-emption. Swiftly forgotten are the bad old days of disillusionment with unreliable sponsors. The urgency to first secure the nation and the state overrides the living legacy of the past. Expediency subordinates strategic thinking.

Fifth, despite the illusion of consensus, the political classes (within and outside the state apparatus) do not form a cohesive group. Rent-seeking states can be quite fractious. The struggle over the spoils of service and servitude are not in question here. Instead, the strategic location within the power bloc, particularly secured by global attachments can often become the rationale for some to extend their claims over the 'national' surplus and social spaces for reproduction as an autonomous political class, usually at the expense of contenders. Rising defence expenditures do not tell the complete story, a common mistake of critics of the military establishment, nor do controversies over the uniform. State power is the focal point.

The principal question, then, is whether a particular fraction within the state apparatus has produced self-sustaining mechanisms to both reproduce and expand as a political class? An answer in the affirmative could possibly reveal the character of civil-military relations, with a more sanguine understanding of democratic consolidation. Clearly, this alternate passage to understanding would radically diminish the formulaic analyses of political scientists lured by structural-functionalism or systems analysis. Yet, there are enormous difficulties of ascertaining the mechanisms that help reproduce non-accumulating elements within the power bloc, particularly the size, durability, and salience of external support. Only in the conspiratorial world certainty is possible, the assignment of mysterious and ubiquitous powers to alien forces. More modest attempts to determine the nature of strategic alliances confront the humility speculation often produces. Yet, given time, the patterns can become more apparent.

To begin with the obvious, military intervention in politics has been the norm, not the exception, either directly or indirectly. The bifurcated arrangement between the political forces and the military-civilian establishment has also been an abiding feature of the state. The military is the senior partner in the state structure with the capacity to condition the scope and content of democratic activity. The recent institution of the National Security Council merely reflects the de facto scheme of things. As mentioned, there is the preponderant claim on the national budget, second only to debt servicing in recent years. The military, not the civilian wings of the state, has been the architect and custodian of national security and foreign policy, especially in dealing with India and Afghanistan. But there is also notable expansion, well reflected in the new constellation at the sociological, ideological, and structural levels.

The military is now also an integral part of the economy in areas of employment in the private and public sectors.14 From positions in the civilian bureaucracy to ambassadorial appointments to positions in national universities, the presence of serving and retired military officers is vast. Industrial, landed, and commercial interests show a similar presence in areas as diverse as oil and gas, power generation, sugar, cement, and rich production, pharmaceuticals, shoe factories, commercial banks, insurance companies, and above all, the growing zone of private security. The frontiers of opportunity are not restricted to the domestic scene. Overseas service in the Gulf and United Nations (UN) peace-keeping may be small, but not insignificant in reinforcing the structure of the military's reproduction as an independent entity. The military's presence on land, especially urban property for ex-servicemen, continues to dot the economic landscape. Though the size and scale of these activities is not totally clear, the symbiotic relationship between the corporate military interests and the economy has disproportionately grown since the beginning of General Zia's tenure.

The cumulative effect of these developments can inevitably produce de-professionalisation and re-professionalisation, a consequence of the inherent tension between the defence of the realm and the exchange principle. The former would suggest the possible shift in expected standards, while the latter refers to the growing re-skilling of former military officials as intellectuals, opinion-makers, entrepreneurs, private security personnel, and other specialised fields of a diversifying political economy. Apparently, this is just another case of revolving doors. In the context of Pakistan's political economy, however, the field can get easily crowded, stifling the aspirations of civil society.

On face value, the consolidation of the military component in the power bloc has brought rich economic dividends. One instance is the linkage between a concessionary lending regime and geo-strategic service, mostly noticeable under military-led governments. Often, though, the security and defence apparatuses of the state can fatten on a greasy diet; the fate of millions hangs in the balance without an expanding producing structure. Without seeking to remove the structure of debt in the first place, its capable management simply postpones the problem to the next generation.

As the General Zia's regime successfully managed to exploit its newly acquired status with massive infusions of aid and assistance, the present national constellation has received pledges and assurances to rescue Pakistan's debt-ridden economy. The short-term prospects of an economic recovery seem promising. But is economic recovery durable, and more significantly, capable of producing self-sustaining expansion? The long-term economic prospects are not simply confined to economic indicators, except in textbooks or fairy tales, but the political environment. Uncertainty in that area, enhanced by regional and global entanglements, continues to cast its shadow.

Looking beyond a narrow economic lens, the linkage between authoritarianism and societal involution has been quite direct. The credit given for current efforts to stem the tide of obscurantism, bigotry, and violence conveniently erases past footprints. In this regard, the inextricable nexus between authoritarianism and fundamentalism deserves special mention.

During General Zia's tenure, the nexus between authoritarianism and fundamentalism was unmediated. Borrowing a leaf out of the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's ostensibly secular book, he manipulated religion as symbol, text, and sentiment by adopting an imported brand of Wahabbism directly into the state. The triangular strategic alliance among the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan ensured the fertilisation of bigotry as national and regional ideology, serving the twin purpose of waging the holy war in Afghanistan and deepening the strategic hold of fundamentalists in both state and civil society.

The making of Pakistan as a jihad export processing zone, a process in which civilian and military regimes equally share the burden, underscores both the self-sustaining character of entanglements within the ruling power bloc, but especially between weak clients and powerful patrons. Recent analyses of blowback highlight the disastrous international effects of marriages of convenience.15

Less noticeable is the polarisation within Pakistan's civil society, assuming the generally insulated nature of the country's professional forces from societal divisions. Unlike General Zia, President Musharraf faces the awkward task of undoing the legacy of the Afghan campaign, a task complicated by three specific factors. First, the social structure is bifurcated not simply on class lines, but on the basis of cultural sentiment drawn by variants of the faith. The more politicised protagonists of religion are also the more illiberal, extracting support from the lumpen sectors.

Second, Musharraf's secular-modernist war against fundamentalism appears as an extension of the U.S.-led war in the Afghanistan and Iraq. The truncated edifice of representative democracy furthers the cause of fundamentalism, preventing other social forces to capture the political imagination. Though the official word repeatedly stresses the limited appeal of fundamentalism, sectarian violence and gruesome acts of bigotry against religious minorities deepen the social divide.

Third, the consolidation of the power bloc without basic social reform within the ruling elites themselves dissolves the possibility of addressing the sources of alienation and disenchantment. In this regard, one-dimensional attacks on the madrassah system, recognising neither the social underpinnings for its sustenance nor its historical location within the cultural economy of colonial/postcolonial, offer the wrong pill for a mis-diagnosed ailment. Without widening the compass of reform, which must also encompass the state apparatus itself, social polarisation as cultural polarisation is only likely to exacerbate. The new global constellation, however, makes the prospects of internal state reform more difficult, if not altogether, impossible.

Conclusion
To offer yet another commentary on the enormous and unprecedented challenges to the nation and state of Pakistan is to rehearse the banal. The hurdles are tall and sturdy. Yet, social processes are also full of surprises. These surprises rarely emanate as miraculous rewards for temperance and forbearance, but as effects of everyday struggles outside the complacent chambers of power. The democratic task is primarily a political one, to consolidate these efforts, give them definition. Part of a new definition is, perhaps, to rethink the spatial frontiers of struggles.16



(Mustapha Kamal Pasha is Professor of International Relations at American University in Washington, D.C. He is currently based as a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) in Tokyo, Japan)

References

1. Institute for International Cooperation, Japan International Cooperation Agency, Country Study for Japan's Official Development Assistance to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Development Toward a Sustainable Society-Medium-and Long-Term Perspectives, November 2003. Tokyo.
2. International Crisis Group, Pakistan: Transition to Democracy? 3 October 2002. ICG Asia Report No. 40. Islamabad/Brussels.
http://www.crisisweb.org/projects/showreport.cfm?reportid=788. Accessed on 10/29/02.
3. The invocation of traditional culture acquired official blessings with President Aye's ghostwritten autobiography and more recently, in public speeches of President Musharraf on the need to reform society. The State's own rigidity rarely enters the pronouncements.
4. Notable in this vein is Daniel Kux and recent articles by Stephen Cohen., op. cit.
5. The work of Transparency International is relevant here. Unencumbered by monitoring itself, its index on corruption provides global certification of mostly Third World governments as worthy/unworthy members of the civilised world.
6. For a provocative critique of modernisation theory, see Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995.
7. This charge escapes the reflexive move of recognising neoliberalism primarily as an ideology. See Manfred Bieinfeld, “The Significance of the Newly Industrialising Countries for the Development Debate,” Studies in Political Economy, Vol. 25: 7-39. I have examined these issues in more detail in “Globalisation and Poverty in South Asia, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3 (1996): 635-656; and “Liberalisation, State Patronage and the `New Inequality' in South Asia,” Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2000): 71-85.
8. Karl Polanyi's classic book, The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1944, offers a scathing critique of an unregulated, disembedded market.
9. One familiar example is Thomas L. Friedman. See his unqualified defence of globalisation in The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. Revised edition.