Globalization, market and economic policies : editorial

Social groups and individuals, states, institutions and international relationships are some of the main players of the history of globalization and its current transformations. If society is evolving in increasingly complex forms, the economy is involved in growing global deals and challenging new difficult tasks and paths of development. This collection of articles tries to cover just part of wide-open issues. For instance, how much is globalization the result of the free and independent forces of the market? And how much is it still influenced by States’ policies, some of which have pursued ambitions of economic and political hegemony? What about the role of international political ties? The general purpose is to offer some reflections and inspire new research and debate on the history of globalization. The issue opens with the Editorial by Silvia A. Conca Messina and includes several articles: among them the ones authored by Alain Touraine, Hans Köchler, Giovanni Barbieri, Julio Lucchesi Moraes and Carlos Freire, Josukutty C. Abraham, Debasish Das, Irene Lodigiani.