Globalization and Good Governance

In preparation for the paper I’m writing for a conference in Portugal, I’ve come across some rather interesting documents. Two especially interesting ones are the “Globalization Index”* published in Foreign Policy and “Racing to the Top,” a comparison of that index with a number of other indices of governance issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

*One might dispute some of the elements of the Foreign Policy index. Notably, the elements of political engagement — country membership in international organizations, personnel and financial contributions to U.N. peacekeeping missions, international treaties ratified, and governmental transfers — are not necessary elements of globalization if understood in economic and social terms; nonetheless, such factors tend to track the others, so thereââ?‰?¢s probably little difference in rankings between their globalization index and one based on the working definition of globalization on which my paper is premised: the diminution or elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that emerges as a result.