Abstract

This paper critically analyses the recent book Il grande scollamento: timori e speranze dopo gli eccessi della globalizzazione (The great disconnect: Fears and expectations after the excesses of globalisation) by Marco Magnani. A positive aspect of the book is its effort to update developments related to contemporary globalisation and to imagine possible future scenarios (de-globalisation?, re-globalisation?). However, overall, the author does not offer a convincing interpretative key to the evolution of globalisation in recent decades (from its expansion to its recent retreat). This critical note offers a different view, highlighting the weaknesses of Magnani’s reconstruction: overlooking the importance of the caesura between the Keynesian era and that of neo-liberal globalisation (later to become hyperglobalisation), underestimating the employment and distributional effects of globalisation, and misrepresenting the relationship between economics and politics