1 The Great Convergence and the New Globalization By Michael Motala Abstract In the decade since the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, our global economic order has undergone a profound transformation. The locus of international economic power has rapidly shifted from the core economies in the north-west to the periphery in the south- east. We are in the midst of a ‘Great Convergence’ fueled by a ‘New Globalization’, in which the per-capita income gap between the developed and developing world is shrinking for the first time since the 19th Century. Although inequality between nations is diminishing, paradoxically, there is an ever-widening gap in national income between the very rich and poor. What accounts for these trends? The 2008 financial crisis that catalyzed this abrupt reversal of macro-economic fortunes has its roots in the information and communications technology (ICT) revolution beginning in the early 1980s. The ICT revolution and international capital mobility are primarily responsible for offshoring in the global value chain, the rise of a new global plutocratic class, and the hollowing out of the lower-middle class. To address these developments, global policymakers need a new perspective on economic globalization. This review essay critically assesses two significant contributions to this scholarly debate, analyzes their empirical and theoretical weight, and proposes a Micro-Municipal-Macro-Transnational theory of Globalization (MMMTG) to address the deficiencies occasioned by their implicitly statist orientations and the under-theorization of the new global politics (NGP). Baldwin, Richard. The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2016). Milanovic, Branko. Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2016). “Out of the creative anarchy emerges a new synthesis.” 1 —Arthur Koestler In the decade since the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, our global economic order has undergone a profound transformation. While central bank interventions in the Atlantic economies stimulated disappointing levels of gross domestic product (GDP) growth up until late 2016, the rapid rise of Asian economies like China, India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia has continued unabated, reversing over 1 Koestler, 1964, 236.