What are the goals of “your” actors when exerting power?

(Think that
these goals may be varied and even coexist: political power,
economic growth or profit, social/environmental goals, etc.) What are
the forces shaping those goals? (Think in particular how the different
crises – financial, health, energy/climate, inflation crises – might
influence the setting of goals.)

¿Cuáles son los objetivos de las empresas transnacionales a la hora

de ejercer el poder? (Piense que estos objetivos pueden ser variados
e incluso coexistir: poder político, crecimiento económico o beneficio,
objetivos sociales/ambientales, etc.) ¿Cuáles son las fuerzas que dan
forma a esos objetivos? (Pensemos, en particular, en cómo las
diferentes crisis (financiera, sanitaria, energética/climática,
inflacionaria) podrían influir en el establecimiento de objetivos).

CAMBRIDGE – I wrote a speculative article in 2000 on what I called

“the political trilemma of the world economy.” My claim was that
advanced forms of globalization, the nation-state, and mass politics
could not coexist. Societies would eventually settle on (at most) two
out of three.

I suggested that it would be the nation-state that would give way in

the long run. But not without a struggle. In the short term, the more
likely consequence was that governments would seek to reassert
national sovereignty, to address the distributive and governance
challenges posed by globalization.

To my surprise, the trilemma proved to have long legs. My book The

Globalization Paradox, published a decade later, developed the idea
further. The concept of the trilemma has become a handy way to
understand the backlash against hyper-globalization,
Britain’s exit from the European Union, the rise of the far right,
and the future of democracy in the EU, among other issues.

Lately, another trilemma has preoccupied me. This one is the

disturbing possibility that it may be impossible simultaneously to
combat climate change, boost the middle class in advanced
economies, and reduce global poverty. Under current policy
trajectories, any combination of two goals appears to come at the
expense of the third.

During the early postwar decades, policies in the developed and

developing world alike emphasized economic growth and domestic
social stability. The advanced economies built extensive welfare
states but also progressively opened their markets to poorer
countries’ exports, so long as the distributional and social
consequences were manageable. The result was inclusive growth in
the rich countries, as well as significant poverty reduction in those
developing countries that were pursuing the right policies.

Successful as this strategy was, it sidestepped the risks of climate

change. Over time, the consequences of economic growth powered
by fossil fuels have become increasingly difficult to ignore.

The postwar Keynesian-social democratic bargain in the advanced

economies was further undone by the internal contradictions
generated by my original trilemma. As hyper-globalization replaced
the earlier Bretton Woods model, labor markets in the advanced
economies experienced greater disruption, undermining the middle
class and democracy itself. Both of these developments required new
strategies.

In the United States, President Joe Biden’s administration has tackled

these new realities head-on. It has broken new ground by promoting
substantial investment in renewables and green industries to combat
climate change. And it deliberately aims to restore the middle class
by promoting labor’s bargaining power, reshoring manufacturing, and
creating jobs in regions that were badly hit by imports from China.

This new focus on climate and the middle class is long overdue. But
what US and European policymakers see as a necessary response to
neoliberalism’s failures looks, to poor countries, like an assault on
their development prospects. The recent crop of industrial policies
and other regulations are often discriminatory and threaten to keep
out manufactured goods from developing countries.

Green subsidies in the US incentivize the use of domestic over

imported inputs. The EU’s carbon-pricing mechanism will soon require
“dirty” exporters from developing countries to pay additional tariffs.
Governments in poor countries believe that such measures will
sabotage their efforts to replicate East Asian nations’ export-oriented
industrialization.

We can imagine an alternative combination of policies that focus on

poor countries and the climate. This would entail a large transfer of
resources – financial and technological – from the North to the South,
to ensure the requisite investments in climate adaptation and
mitigation in the latter.
It would also require significantly greater access in the North’s
markets to goods, services, and workers from the poor countries of
the South, to enhance these workers’ economic opportunities. This
policy configuration is morally appealing; it would effectively apply
the philosopher John Rawls’ principles of justice on a global scale.

But here, too, the trilemma rears its ugly head. Such an approach
would work at cross purposes with the imperative of rebuilding the
middle class in advanced economies. It would create much greater
competition for workers without college or professional degrees,
driving down their wages. It would also reduce the fiscal resources
available for investment in their human capital and physical
infrastructure.

Fortunately, some of these conflicts are more apparent than real. In

particular, policymakers in advanced economies and poor countries
alike need to understand that the vast majority of the good, middle-
class jobs of the future will have to come from services, not
manufacturing. And economic growth and poverty reduction in
developing economies will be fueled mainly by the creation of
more productive jobs in their service sectors.

Labor-absorbing sectors such as care, retail, education, and other

personal services are non-traded for the most part. Promoting
them does not create trade tensions in the same way as in
manufacturing industries. This means that the conflict between the
middle-class imperative in rich economies and poor countries’ growth
imperative is less severe than meets the eye.

Similarly, it will be virtually impossible to address climate change

without significant cooperation from developing countries. While
emissions from the US and Europe have been declining, developing-
country emissions are still rising, in some cases rapidly, and their
contribution to global emissions (excluding China) will soon
exceed 50%. Hence it is in rich countries’ self-interest to promote
green-transition policies that poor countries regard as part of their
own growth strategies, not just as pure cost.

Climate change is an existential threat. A large and stable middle

class is the foundation of liberal democracies. And reducing global
poverty is a moral imperative. It would be alarming if we had to
abandon any of these three goals. Yet our current policy framework
imposes, implicitly but forcefully, a trilemma that appears difficult to
overcome. A successful post-neoliberal transition requires us to
formulate new policies that put these trade-offs behind us.
What are the goals of “your” actors when exerting power? (Think that
these goals may be varied and even coexist: political power,
economic growth or profit, social/environmental goals, etc.)

Dani Rodrik, en su artículo, plantea diversos dilemas sobre la

globalización, el cambio climático y la estabilidad económica.
Aplicando este enfoque al poder de las corporaciones
transnacionales, sus objetivos podrían entenderse dentro de un marco
trilema similar.

Primero, **el crecimiento económico y el beneficio** son objetivos

primordiales para las corporaciones transnacionales, que buscan
maximizar sus ganancias. Rodrik señala cómo el auge de la
globalización ha permitido la expansión del comercio y la inversión
internacional, generando grandes beneficios para estas empresas. Sin
embargo, esta búsqueda de crecimiento económico a menudo entra
en conflicto con otros objetivos sociales y ambientales, como la
protección del medio ambiente o la estabilidad laboral en las
economías avanzadas.

Segundo, muchas corporaciones buscan ejercer **poder político**

para moldear políticas que favorezcan sus intereses. Según Rodrik, las
tensiones entre la soberanía nacional y la globalización crean un
contexto en el que las corporaciones pueden influir en los gobiernos
para mantener un marco legal que favorezca la hiper-globalización y
minimice las restricciones que afectan sus operaciones.

Finalmente, aunque algunos actores corporativos han comenzado a

adoptar **objetivos sociales y ambientales**, como las políticas de
responsabilidad social corporativa (CSR) y la inversión en tecnologías
verdes, Rodrik sugiere que estos objetivos suelen verse limitados por
los compromisos hacia el crecimiento económico. Las políticas
ambientales, como la transición verde en EE. UU. y Europa, a menudo
excluyen a los países en desarrollo, lo que genera conflictos sobre
cómo balancear la mitigación del cambio climático con las
oportunidades de desarrollo.

En resumen, los objetivos de las corporaciones transnacionales se

pueden alinear con el trilema de Rodrik: intentan equilibrar su poder
económico y político con las demandas sociales y ambientales. Sin
embargo, al igual que en el trilema de Rodrik, a menudo se priorizan
dos objetivos a expensas del tercero, lo que crea tensiones entre las
necesidades de crecimiento, el poder político y los desafíos
sociales/ambientales.

It is little wonder given that World Bank shareholders have not raised
capital, substantially changed financing practices, or taken other bold
steps. The International Monetary Fund is on net withdrawing funds
from the developing world; the idea of comprehensive debt relief has
gone nowhere; and financial defaults have been avoided only by the
moral default of slashing health and education spending.

Setting aside the complex problem of climate change for a moment,

world leaders haven’t even been able to tackle the simplest, most
straightforward challenges. War, inflation, and poor governance have
brought some of the poorest people – including in Chad, Haiti, Sudan,
and Gaza – to the brink of famine, yet the international response has
been slow and muted. This is both a humanitarian disaster in its own
right and a symbol of our broader inability to act in the face of a crisis.

If the world can’t even get food to starving children, how can it come
together to defeat climate change and reorient the global economy?
And how can the poorest countries trust the international system not
to leave them behind if that system can’t address the most basic
challenges?

This week, finance ministers, central bankers, and economic leaders

are gathering for the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF
in Washington, DC, where they will discuss the global economy and
lay out plans to strengthen it. But these efforts will fail if rhetoric falls
as flat as it did during 2023 in terms of concrete action. Here are four
big ideas as to what is necessary:

First, reverse the capital flows, so that the lowest-income countries

are receiving more support than they are paying out to private
creditors. In the short term, that means expanding the multilateral
development banks’ use of innovative financial tools such as
guarantees, risk-mitigation instruments, and hybrid capital. In the
slightly longer term, it means stepping up with new money from
shareholders – a capital increase for the World Bank and regional
development banks, which will require legislative approval in
shareholding countries.

Second, transform MDBs into big, risk-taking, climate-focused

institutions. Development banks have tinkered around the edges with
bolder approaches to lending, but it is time for them to scale up those
efforts. The wealthy countries that are the biggest shareholders in the
multilateral system need to provide the political support for that risk-
taking.

Third, fully fund the International Development Association, a highly

effective institution that provides much-needed resources to the
lowest-income countries. The World Bank’s president has called for
the largest-ever IDA replenishment from donors; given the challenges
ahead, the world cannot afford to deliver anything less.

Fourth, tackle food security. Last year, the United Nations was able to
raise from international donors only about one-third of what it
sought for humanitarian relief, and it had to slash its goals for 2024.
Stepping up with funding for the several hundred million people
without enough food to eat would alleviate a humanitarian disaster
and provide evidence to skeptical countries that the international
system still can work.

Half the world goes to the polls this year, from the United States and
the United Kingdom to India and Mexico. Pervasive distrust of
governments and their promises is a ubiquitous issue, and we see
every day that the idea of an international community is becoming an
oxymoron. The conventional wisdom is that foreign policy falls by the
wayside as politicians turn their focus to campaigning and to
domestic issues that will win them votes.

We dare to hope that historians will look back at this week’s meetings
as a moment when global leaders seriously addressed global
challenges. The problem is not primarily intellectual. Blueprints like
that of the G20 expert group we chaired on strengthening the MDB
system abound. It is a problem of finding the political will to take on
the most fundamental issues facing humanity.
What are the forces shaping those goals? (Think in particular how the
different crises – financial, health, energy/climate, inflation crises –
might influence the setting of goals.)

Las fuerzas que moldean los objetivos de las corporaciones

internacionales están profundamente influenciadas por las crisis
actuales, como se destaca en el artículo de Summers y Singh:

1. **Crisis Financiera**: La falta de capital y apoyo financiero del

Banco Mundial y el FMI limita la capacidad de inversión en los países
en desarrollo. Esto obliga a las corporaciones a priorizar inversiones
más seguras y estables, buscando alternativas de financiamiento.

2. **Crisis de Salud**: La reducción del gasto en salud y educación en

países pobres representa un desafío ético. Las corporaciones podrían
ver la necesidad de incluir la salud pública en sus estrategias,
desarrollando iniciativas que aborden estas deficiencias.

3. **Crisis Climática**: La necesidad de que los bancos de desarrollo

sean más proactivos en cuestiones climáticas sugiere que las
empresas deben establecer objetivos de sostenibilidad más
ambiciosos, invirtiendo en tecnologías limpias y prácticas
responsables.

4. **Crisis de Desconfianza**: La creciente desconfianza en los

gobiernos impulsa a las corporaciones a enfocarse en la transparencia
y la responsabilidad social, construyendo confianza con sus partes
interesadas a través de prácticas éticas y de compromiso
comunitario.

En resumen, las corporaciones deben adaptar sus objetivos para

enfrentar estos desafíos globales, priorizando la sostenibilidad, la
salud pública y la responsabilidad social en un entorno incierto.