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Abstract

Ian Bremmer's book Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism focuses on the discontents of globalization and draws a link between economic insecurity and tides of political polarization that have swept across states, splintering segments of the population and leaving deep social fractures in their wake. In this review essay, I expand on Bremmer’s argument by incorporating two other recent works of global political economy that shed light on the current state of globalization, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy by Dani Rodrik and Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity by William Robinson. Based on these three works, I examine divergent interpretations of the sources of the ongoing crisis, I address issues of ontological disharmony in the globalization literature, and I present three possible responses to the crisis of globalization. I conclude with a brief discussion of COVID-19, which serves as yet another watershed indication that the process of globalization is in peril. I then reaffirm the utility of considering all three books as a complementary anthology and urge a continued focus on the dialectical relationship between globalization and populism moving forward.

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