Witness the collapse of the Doha Round of trade negotiations, popular hostility to the “Washington Consensus” of development in Latin America and other underdeveloped regions, and the spread of social tensions over immigration and foreign-wage competition in both rich and poor countries. As a result, the global economy is sputtering.

Today, markets have expanded again, beyond national borders–and beyond the capacity of the world’s nation-based political institutions to manage them. Over time, the contract was extended to racial minorities, women, and others who had been previously excluded from expanding economic opportunities. Ultimately, through the Progressive and New Deal eras, the United States developed a national politics that imposed a social contract–a New Deal that provided workers, as well as business, with enforceable economic rights. Constitution permitted popular challenges to the excessive concentration of wealth and influence. Fortunately, the democratic framework of the U.S. The power of large corporations went unchecked, generating bitter and violent class conflict. Thus, in the nineteenth century, driven by improvements in transportation and communication technologies, commerce spilled across state borders beyond the capacity of states to regulate them. All markets have a politics, reflecting conflict among economic interests over the rules and policies that determine–as the American political scientist Harold Lasswell once famously put it–”who gets what.” And when markets expand, so do their politics.

Democracy 3 crashing