This chapter provides a similar analysis of climate change policy in the three countries. While Sweden has a stronger record than the United States or Japan, expert opinion has come under attack in all three countries, with no obvious end in sight.

Commonly considered the heart of a century dominated by American power, values, and innovation (an “American Century,” according to American publicist Henry Luce), the latter twentieth century is, from the perspective of Japan, less an American age than one of intimate global exchange. The model of state management of the economy and “superdirect” industrial financing perfected by Japan after 1945 grounded not simply an East Asian “economic miracle” but a “Golden Age of Capitalism” (1945-1973). American pundits like Thomas Friedman celebrated the new global prosperity as the apotheosis of a unique American spirit of enterprise. But the term used to describe the phenomenon – “globalization” – was initially popularized in the 1980s to capture the incredible global reach of Japanese manufacturing, banking, and shipping.

This chapter examines the global business environment, tracing its historical development, current dynamics, and potential future trajectories. It explores the long-term evolution of global trade, investment, and economic integration, highlighting key periods such as the Age of Exploration, the Age of Imperialism, and the Era of Globalization. Key drivers of globalization are discussed, including technological advancements in transportation and ICT, political liberalization of markets, and the emergence of globally connected consumers. The chapter also analyses the current levels of globalization, addressing critiques of hyperglobalization and evidence of uneven international integration. Attention is given to de-globalization trends influenced by geopolitical shifts, global crises, and protectionist policies. By examining both opportunities and challenges, the chapter provides insights into the interplay between markets, politics, and socio-economic factors, helping students understand the forces shaping globalization, regional integration, and the uncertain prospects for the global economy in the coming decades.

The Epilogue summarizes the obstacles encountered, as well as the advances achieved, during the emergence of banking in Latin America from independence in the early nineteenth century down to the first decade of the twentieth century. This history is described as part of a long phase of slow capitalism that, eventually, led to faster economic growth and some convergence with more advanced nations, albeit subject to diverse trajectories. The Epilogue also raises questions regarding the building of authentic banking systems from the early twentieth century onwards, as well as the establishment of central banks from the 1920s and 1930s.

The seventh chapter of this book reviews the several waves of expansion of foreign banks in Latin America during the last third of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. This story is of special interest for readers interested in aspects of a complex and diverse phase of financial globalization. Foreign banks participated in several phases of capital flows from Europe, and much later from the United States and Canada, marking a new stage of capitalism that was becoming truly global. The entry of banks of different nationalities into Latin America was pioneered by British overseas banks from the 1860s, which established offices and branches in many countries. They were followed by French investment banks that participated in many public works projects such as canals and railroads, as well as in government banks. Then came the powerful German universal banks from the 1890s, which specialized in trade finance and in some foreign debt transactions. From the 1850s onwards there appeared Spanish colonial banks in Cuba and Puerto Rico that continued to operate until the Spanish American War of 1898. Last of all arrived Canadian and United States commercial banks, in the first decades of the twentieth century.

This chapter focuses on the concept of global health. It distinguishes global health from the older concept of international health, which emphasizes disease control in lower-income countries. We define global health as the health of the global population, with a focus on the cross-border transfer of health risks and the organized social response. This chapter defines key concepts including interdependence (mutual reliance) versus interconnection (shared exposure) and explores how globalization has intensified both cross-border health threats and opportunities. The chapter also explores emerging paradigms such as One Health and planetary health, which emphasize the ties between human, animal and environmental well-being, and analyzes power asymmetries in current global health governance.

Abstract: Rome’s religious history, encompassing the entire Mediterranean basin during the Roman Empire, is fundamental for the religious history of Europe. Portrayals of the religious history of this space have been confined to cumulative descriptions of individual cults and religions. This chapter suggests that the critical factor during the Roman Imperial Age was not a change or increase in the number of religions but an alteration to the phenomenon of ‘religion’ and its social significance. From a medium by which an individual could address human contingencies such as illness, insecurity, and death and create a public political identity, it became a context for human life and the formulation of group identities and political legitimation. A Mediterranean approach invites an inquiry into the interaction between changes of a local and regional, administrative, and political nature and developments that were cultural or religious. This brings us to consider how contemporaries conceptualized the processes identified, and the reciprocal consequences of changes in the concepts and social dynamics of what is conceptualized as ancient Mediterranean religion: a multilayered ‘entangled history’.

This chapter reflects on the future of governance in an era where corporate-driven, private arrangements increasingly dominate key sectors, from artificial intelligence to biotechnology and beyond. While public power still contributes through research funding and normative frameworks, the sheer scale and speed of private actors often surpass traditional regulatory capacities. Governance today rests to a considerable extent with the internal factions of corporations—engineers, compliance teams, and public relations—who shape techno-normative frameworks with little public accountability. The chapter argues that governance by emulation offers a pragmatic, albeit imperfect, path forward. Emulating public law principles—such as accountability, self-governance, and due process—into private contexts can inject public-minded values into profit-driven structures. However, traditional private law mechanisms, such as contracts and fiduciary duties, need repurposing to address the scale and public significance of corporate governance. Similarly, the role of infrastructure, code, and technical frameworks in shaping governance must be acknowledged alongside conventional normative tools. While these developments hold both promise and peril, they also mirror the incremental evolution of liberal public institutions. By embedding public law ideals into emerging governance constellations, we may foster accountability structures capable of addressing the complexities of modern global power dynamics—marking a critical step toward a more balanced and responsive future governance framework.

The introduction presents the book's core puzzle of why states promote the outward investments of national firms despite the political and distributional costs of doing so. It previews a theory of globalized state-led development whereby policy-makers promote the internationalization of domestic business to pursue the structural transformation of their home economies. The chapter also describes the book's research strategy of within-country and cross-national comparisons of globalized state-led development in Brazil and China.

Chapter 2 presents a theory of globalized state-led development that helps us understand the conditions under which this model is adopted and implemented. It begins with the developmentalist dilemma faced by states: how can they help national firms benefit from global markets while managing the domestic political tensions these interventions provoke? This tension has important points of comparison with the challenges faced by the East Asian developmental states, yet has become more acute. Globalization and democracy have deepened the developmentalist dilemma by increasing the relevance of international production and innovation networks, constraining policy space, and heightening political contestation. A theory of globalized state-led development explains the conditions under which governments navigate these competing pressures by supporting national firms at home and abroad.

Building on other efforts to bring historical approaches to bear on international business scholarship, this chapter examines the business strategy of selected European multinationals in the 1992 Program. Through business historical case studies on a range of companies operating in the internal market of the EEC, it considers a wide range of firms headquartered both inside and outside the EEC and from a wide range of sectors industries, including manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, electronics, and retail, chosen for their diversity of experiences and approaches. Not only does this case study approach “bring history (back) into international business” and “put the process back in” to research on firm internationalization, but, through repetition, it also contributes to the development of explanatory theories. This, then, is methodological impressionism: Together, the collection of vignette cases presented here paints a bigger picture, revealing patterns about the growth and development of multinationals, their regionalization and the relationship between regionalization and globalization that data alone could not make clear.

Chapter 7 investigates how globalization pressures shape parties’ ideological positioning, which underpins their campaign promises. The chapter focuses on whether parties adapt their stances symmetrically across the ideological spectrum or face electoral constraints when doing so. It argues that mainstream parties – particularly on the left – are more constrained in shifting rightward than vice versa. To explore this, the chapter combines experimental and observational evidence, drawing on a survey experiment and a large-n dataset of party positions in thirty-one liberal democracies from 1970 to 2020. Although globalization can incentivize parties to recalibrate their economic and cultural positions, the chapter shows that electoral incentives mediate how and where these shifts occur. Together, the findings highlight the complex interplay between international economic pressures and domestic political competition, revealing how ideological recalibration can be both strategic and constrained by voter expectations.

This chapter investigates the electoral consequences of broken promises in the context of globalization. Combining large-n observational data with a survey experiment and a in-depth case study of French voters, it demonstrates that voters do punish governing parties for failing to fulfill campaign pledges, and this punishment intensifies in more globalized environments. Contrary to claims that globalization might provide excuses for unfulfilled promises, the findings suggest that globalization amplifies voters’ concerns about competence and follow-through. As ideological differences between parties shrink and governing space contracts, pledge fulfillment becomes a key signal of competence, heightening electoral costs for unkept promises.

This chapter examines how conservative parties strategically adapt their political appeals in response to the constraints imposed by globalization. Confronted with the challenge of reconciling their long-standing commitments to market liberalism with rising voter demands for protection and control, these parties increasingly adopt populist rhetoric to reshape the terms of political competition. Rather than abandoning core economic positions, conservative parties shift their emphasis to anti-elite, nationalist, and antiglobalist themes, recasting political debates around identity, sovereignty, and cultural belonging. These rhetorical strategies allow them to deflect attention from unpopular policy continuities and channel voter discontent away from economic grievances and toward external threats or internal scapegoats. The chapter argues that this populist turn reflects a calculated political adaptation rather than ideological transformation. It highlights how globalization not only reshapes the policy space available to democratic governments but also incentivizes new forms of narrative construction and voter persuasion, particularly among mainstream parties seeking to preserve broad electoral coalitions.

This chapter concludes the book by reflecting on the implications of the findings for democratic representation in a globalized world. It argues that globalization has introduced structural constraints that alter the relationship between voters and elected representatives, compelling mainstream parties to adapt their electoral strategies in ways that threaten democratic accountability. The chapter ties together insights from the cross-national analyses, survey experiments, and in-depth case studies to show how parties recalibrate their promises, adopt ambiguous or populist rhetoric, and shift responsibility for broken pledges to external actors. It emphasizes that although these strategies may be electorally rational, they can erode the clarity of democratic choice and the mechanisms through which voters hold politicians accountable. The chapter closes by discussing the normative and institutional implications for democratic resilience and responsiveness in an era of enduring international interdependence.