Financial Times Business Classics: The Boundaries of Wealth -- Who Will Shape the Future Market

Author: Jonathan Story
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-01-01
Features: This is a work of extraordinary wisdom, perfectly suited to our needs. There are many views on globalization, and it seems to be just an economic force. Story uniquely and wisely places economics within a cultural and political context. This book is both imaginative, radical, and practical, teaching us to understand the significant impact of politics on the economy. We must adjust our forward-looking clock—the Pacific Century is still 50 years away. —Sir Peter Parker, President of Mitsubishi Electric Europe.
This book is a wake-up call for all managers engaged in international business. To understand the real drivers of change, one must not only focus on products and markets but also consider politics and society. This book offers insightful ideas and ways of thinking that help us understand daily events and develop better risk management strategies. —John Stopford, Professor at the London Business School.
“How do we realistically view the world? This is a question often asked by business professionals. This book is my answer to this question. Politics drives the world economy because history is made by humans, and we humans can choose among various possible futures. As for what these possibilities are, they largely depend on the preferences of those who decide what is important and what is not. For individuals, the relative importance of a factor or idea is already difficult to determine, and it becomes even more so when two or more people try to cooperate toward a common goal.”
“Where there is cooperation, there is politics. This definition of politics allows us to place nations and companies at the center of the stage. We can thus assemble a cast that includes business professionals, career politicians, media heroes, scholars, financial tycoons, drug lords, or rare saints.”
These two paragraphs, which articulate a new perspective on international political economy, are excerpts from the preface of The Frontier of Fortune, a recent publication by Jilin People’s Publishing House. The Frontier of Fortune is an international political economy book jointly published by The Financial Times and Pearson Publishing. The author, Jonathan Story, is a professor of international political economy at INSEAD. He has served as a consultant on global political and market issues for governments, international companies, banks, and service firms. Before joining INSEAD, he worked in Brussels and Washington and earned a Ph.D. from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He has written numerous professional reviews and a series of country studies, which are regularly updated and applied to the design of corporate local strategies.
This book is grand in scope, profound in philosophy, yet accessible in its explanation—a rare and outstanding work. The translator has also put considerable effort into preserving the essence of the original. Until mid-1997, conventional wisdom held that the world was transitioning from an era dominated by the Atlantic to a new Pacific era. This view of the world began with Japan’s “economic miracle” in the 1960s and was reinforced by the remarkable growth of the emerging Asian tigers in the 1970s and 1980s. This perspective also suggested that as this trend continued, China’s reform efforts would—along with the rest of Asia—become unparalleled leaders in the 21st century. A vast body of literature emerged in the 1980s and 1990s to explain this extraordinary phenomenon. Even after Japan’s economic stagnation in the early 1990s, the global frenzy over Asia persisted. European bankers rushed to provide increasing loans to East Asian companies—a factor that played a significant role in the later crisis—and Western multinational corporations poured their efforts into establishing favorable long-term positions in Asian markets.
In this book, however, the author clearly tells us that by early 1999, it was still too early to talk about the “Pacific Century.” In his view, the Atlantic region, particularly its two major powers—North America and Western Europe—has never been stronger. The problem with the “Pacific Century” view is that it only considers business and economic factors, ignoring political ones. While the development of East Asia is undoubtedly remarkable, it is not the entirety of the drama that unfolded in the last 25 years of the 20th century. Too much attention has been paid to East Asia, while the political transformations in Southern Europe have been largely overlooked. In the mid-1970s, Greece, Portugal, and Spain broke free from decades of fascist authoritarian regimes and turned toward democracy. As the author Jonathan Story puts it, this was a pivotal turning point in the late 20th century. By the mid-1990s, this democratic wave had swept across Latin America, Southeast Europe, and even extended to East Asia, with South Korea and Thailand serving as models of Confucian democratization.
Throughout the book, Story’s work in international political economy offers many thought-provoking insights in its analysis of the global drama and its key players. The author is confident in himself and his work, emphasizing in the preface that “this book is a tribute to Galileo, who, in the face of the academic terror of his time, claimed that the Earth revolves around the Sun.”
The book has also received widespread praise from readers. Sir Peter Parker, President of Mitsubishi Electric Europe, commented: “This is a work of extraordinary wisdom, perfectly suited to our needs. There are many superficial views on globalization, and it seems to be just an economic force. Story uniquely and wisely places economics within a cultural and political context. This book is both imaginative, radical, and grounded, teaching us to understand the significant impact of politics on the economy. We must adjust our forward-looking clock. The Pacific Century is still 50 years away.”
John Stopford, Professor at the London Business School, also agreed: “This book is a wake-up call for all managers engaged in international business. To understand the real drivers of change, one must not only focus on products and markets but also consider politics and society. Jonathan Story provides insightful ideas and ways of thinking that help us understand daily events and develop better risk management strategies. This book is engaging.”