Are multinational companies really taking power away from nation states in some sweeping processes of 'globalisation'?
             "The implications for the ability of nation states to exercise political and economic control over this trans-national economy are clear, they would be at the mercy of automated and uncontrollable, because global, market forces." www.workerspower.com
             It is a widespread belief, illustrated by the above quotation, that the process of globalisation is eroding the power and autonomy of nation states. According to this viewpoint multi-national companies, as trans-national organisations, are becoming more powerful than nation states, and as such are able, not only to defy them, but actually take at least some of their power away from them.
             Any investigation of this area must first start with a proper definition of globalisation, and ask the question whether globalisation is, as is often claimed, a new phenomenon. It must be born in mind that, in the words of Bradley, "the significance of economic, social and cultural intercourse across and beyond the boundaries of individual states has long been recognised." (Bradley, 2000, p13). Economic activity has been conducted on an international basis for centuries. Profits from the Atlantic slave trade were crucial to the way in which capitalism developed in Western Europe. The American tobacco growing industry was crucial to Britain's economy in the eighteenth century. Many of the old sandstone buildings in the West End of Glasgow were built with money made by capitalists operating in the American tobacco trade. Many commercial enterprises in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries operated out-with national boundaries. In fact the notion of a 'modern world system' of economic activity on an international basis is as old as the fifteenth century. (Bradley, 2000, p14).
             So what is new or special about globalisati...