Globalization and Well-Being

Jeffrey J. Cormier is an assistant professor of sociology at the
University of Western Ontario in London.

With this short, succinct book, Canadian economist John Helliwell has
waded into the globalization debate. Unlike some participants, however,
he has done so in a well-balanced and entirely sensible manner. The book
is based on three lectures he gave while holding the Brenda and David
McLean Chair of Canadian Studies at the University of British Columbia
in 2000, and combines his most recent research into the issues of
globalization, national sovereignty, and international relations.
Helliwell’s overarching goal is to cut through the many misperceptions
surrounding globalization to get at the real effects it has on Canadian
economic, social, and political life.

Lectures one and three (Chapters 1 and 3, respectively) provide the
most convincing evidence for Helliwell’s larger case. He attacks the
common perception that transnational—or global—trade links have
begun to undermine the importance and usefulness of the nation-state.
Using John McCallum’s work comparing interprovincial with
provincial–state trade, Helliwell demonstrates that markets are
surprisingly more national and local than global. Shared norms and trust
networks are stronger between, say, Ontario and Alberta than between
Ontario and New York State. As a result, the quantity of trade that
flows between the former tends to be larger than the latter, despite
greater distances. This fact allows Helliwell to point to the continuing
need for the Canadian state to develop and implement national economic
policies that can increase Canadians’ well-being. A second argument is
that the model of a common currency now in place in the European Union
could be easily tailored to the North American context. Helliwell
provides a balanced discussion of the pros and cons of such a proposal,
in the end maintaining that it would be detrimental to Canadian
political, social, and economic sovereignty if the U.S. dollar became a
common currency.

The strength of this book is that it provides a much-needed corrective
to both extremes of the globalization debate. Helliwell gives a
nontechnical discussion that charts an even course between what he calls
the “globaphiles” and the “globaphobes.”