Limits to Competition

How can Europe, the United States, and Japan stop the technological, trade, and financial war on which they have increasingly and wastefully embarked? How can they direct the development and uses of science and technology and the economy in the interests of the well-being of the eight billion people who will inhabit the planet in 2010-2020? This text frames international political economy and globalization debates within the new overarching ideology of competition and offers a balancing voice. The word compete originally meant "to seek together", but in our time it has taken on more adversarial connotations and has become a rallying cry of both firms and governments, often with devastating consequences. "Limits to Competition" explores the question of whether free-market competition can indeed deliver the full range of needs for sustainable development. Is competition the best instrument for coping with increasingly severe environmental, demographic, economic, and social problems at a global level? The Group of Lisbon - 19 distinguished scholars from North America, Europe and Japan - analyzes changes affecting national economies, the growth of multinational firms, the role of the state and the global environment. It calls for a new type of economic governance and identifies new forms of social contracts that are in the general interest of the largest number of people and nations.

Table of Contents:
Introduction - a purposeful planet: a new era of competition; problems of contemporary globalization. The making of a global world: images of the global world; the finite nature of the world; the emergence of a global civil society; the reorganization of the world economy and society; from national to global capitalism; capital flows - the primary enzymes of global capitalism; made in the world; implications and consequences; the crisis of unemployment - the major social issue of the next twenty years. The new competitive global world: problems of transition; features of the new competitive global world. Can competition govern the Planet? the critical choice; Pax Triadica - toward global governance; the predominant answer - competitiveness. Toward effective global governance: cooperative governance; the contract - more than a necessity - a choice; words are not enough - global cooperative governance implies clear operational targets; growth of noncompetitive regimes; the next step - four global social contracts. Conclusion - hegemony will not work: open questions; the cooperative pact.