National Accounting Review (Apr 2021)
One world, no longer: the past, the present, and the future of global value chains
Abstract
Global value chains (GVCs) are both a product and a facilitator of the model of globalization that dominated for almost two decades following Soviet collapse in 1991. The North Atlantic Financial Crisis of 2007 onwards undermined that dominance, as did the subsequent economic stagnation and associated rising political and social discord. The reversion to more nationalist modes of discourse and policy marks the return of a more visibly geopolitical dimension to the global political economy. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated and accentuated these trends. This paper charts the emergence and consolidation of the era of "one world, ready or not", and employs the work of various critical authors, most prominently William Greider. Greider's extensive critique of US-led globalization, offshoring, and what has since become known as "supply chain capitalism" not only appears prescient by comparison with the work of contemporaneous, high profile representatives of the economics discipline who were its champions, but helps us to locate the sources of its unravelling. The implications of this for GVCs are outlined in the final section, which foresees a fragmentation of the world into spheres of influence dominated by regional powers, each of varying strength and cohesion. This will most likely result in the reconfiguration of many GVCs along more regional lines, as the dictates of efficiency clash with the requirements of supply chain resilience and the associated prerogatives of national security, as defined by those states at the centre of the new regional power blocs. Common to all phases of development discussed in this paper is the subordination of the peoples of the Global South, as the mechanisms of imperialism are adjusted and adapted to the changing conditions arising from the irreconcilable contradictions of global capitalism.
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