I wrote a speculative article in 2000 on what I called “the political trilemma of the world economy”. My claim was that advanced forms of globalisation, the nation-state and mass politics could not coexist. Societies would eventually settle on, at most, two out of three.
I suggested that it would be the nation-state that would give way in the long run, but not without a struggle. In the short term, the more likely consequence was that governments would seek to reassert national sovereignty to address the
distributive and governance challenges posed by globalisation.
To my surprise, the trilemma proved to have long legs. My book,
The Globalisation Paradox, published a decade later, developed the idea further. The concept of the trilemma has become a handy way to understand the
backlash against hyper-globalisation, Britain’s exit from the European Union, the
rise of the far-right and the future of democracy in the European Union, among other issues.
Lately, another trilemma has preoccupied me. This one is the disturbing possibility that it may be impossible simultaneously to combat
climate change, boost the middle class in advanced economies and reduce global poverty. Under current policy trajectories, any combination of two goals appears to come at the expense of the third.
During the early post-war decades, policies in the developed and developing world alike emphasised economic growth and domestic social stability. The advanced economies built extensive welfare states but also progressively opened their markets to poorer countries’ exports, so long as the distributional and social consequences were manageable.
The result was inclusive growth in the rich countries, as well as significant poverty reduction in those developing countries that were pursuing the right policies. Successful as this strategy was, it sidestepped the risks of climate change. Over time, the
consequences of economic growth powered by fossil fuels have become increasingly difficult to ignore.
