The Contemporary Pacific

Stewart Firth
The Pacific Islands and the Globalization Agenda
The Contemporary Pacific - Volume 12, Number 1, Spring 2000, pp. 177-192

University of Hawai'i Press

Stewart Firth - The Pacific Islands and the Globalization Agenda - The Contemporary Pacific 12:1 The Contemporary Pacific 12.1 (2000) 178-192 Dialogue The Pacific Islands and the Globalization Agenda Stewart Firth Globalization is now a central theme in the affairs of the Pacific Islands, and Pacific Islands governments are caught up in the rhetoric, the ideology, and the economic policies of globalization. Policymakers in governments and regional organizations pepper their conversations with phrases drawn from that branch of politics called economics. These include "achieving effective private-public sector partnerships," "improving the attractiveness of the foreign investment regime," "facilitating investment transparency," "adopting free and open trade amongst our Island countries," "reducing public sector subsidies," "promoting integration into the world economy," "enabling public enterprises to operate on commercial principles," "providing a policy environment to encourage commercial activity," and "encouraging the development of the private sector so that it assumes a leading role as the primary engine of growth." Where did this language and these ideas come from? To answer these questions, it is first necessary to define globalization, a term with many meanings in the fin-de-siècle conversation about the state of the world, signifying everything from the expansion of Europe since Columbus to the emergence of a global, Americanized consumer...