Global Business

Political risk and nationalism have had major impacts on the development and retardation of global business. Two World Wars, the protectionism of the 1930s, and subsequent waves of economic nationalism damaged the global economy severely and threw it into reverse, though temporarily and partially, and changed the trajectory of globalization during the twentieth century. Wartime blockades, interwar trade barriers, and policies of sovereign nations protecting or serving national interests dealt a blow to the global integration of the market. The two World Wars also brought about technological innovation, and partly contributed to the rise of regions that had been traditionally on the periphery, and laid the basis for today's multi-polar global economy. Under these pressures, global business looked to transform itself from being based on a unitary structure to a multi-centred one: today's multinational corporations were created to operate beyond the constraints imposed by the sovereign states. In addition, the economic entities involved in global business created international public goods on their own, such as special safe havens, rather than remaining passive to the actions of sovereign states.