Hegemony and Control, was "question folks"

I have not followed "question folks" debate at all and read only the
Mendonsa post, so I may be repeating earlier posts. Apologies, in advance.
Here, nonetheless, is my quick response.

In a debate entitled question, folks: Eugene L. Mendonsa wrote:

So is it fair to say that no one country controls the global economy, but
that
its course it periodically altered, sometimes unintentionally, by the
interplay
of national policies and plans?

Since the plans might be planned, but the unintended consequences of the
interplay are not, then it would be correct to say that the global economy
is
out of control, not being rationally directed.

Ismail wrote:
I want to suggest that an argument can be made that one country in the 20th
Century DID in fact establish the prevailing international superstructure
by creating a global ideological and cultural hegemony shaped around: Free
Markets and Western Liberal Democracy - the latter being capitalist society
(not just economic system).The institutions that were put in place and
which serve to a large extent as the pillars of global (capitalist)
governance, include the Gatt (now WTO), the IMF, the World Bank and the
United Nations.

These I want to argue, provide the institutional and to an extent
(especially the WTO) the regulatory framework for global capitalism. In
other words these four organisations make up the institutions of global
capitalist governance. Enter the United States. We know, for instance, that
the United States controls key appointments in the World Bank (President
and by extension Chief Economist, who is appointed by the former and
policed by the US Treasury Secretary) and United Nations (Secretary
General)... The Europeans fill the important offices at the WTO and IMF,
but these were established by the US and function on organisational and
policy principles determined and monitored by the US - in spite of
Europeans running these organisations neither are even Social Democatic,
and we know that Social Democracy does not feature at any high level in the
US polity.

In short, the global ideological and cultural hegemony that the United
States established after the Second World War and which we have been told
triumphed after the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, represents
sufficient evidence that ONE COUNTRY may well, "control" the global economy
- purely by dint of the global economic order it has established.


Ismail


Ismail Lagardien
Office of the Chief Economist and
Senior Vice President of
Development Economics
The World Bank
Washington DC
USA

202 473 9603

Visit the World Bank Chief Economist page at:
http://www.worldbank.org/knowledge/chiefecon/index.htm