Author: Damien Cahill

Across the globe, markets were deregulated, entailing removal of restrictions governing how capital could operate and move across borders. Perhaps most significant in this regard was the deregulation of finance and the floating of exchange rates, making states much more vulnerable to movements in bond and currency markets and therefore subject to their discipline. Key supranational institutions became repurposed to oversee the new neoliberal rules governing cross-border trade, in which sovereign decision making was assumed to be the exception rather than the norm and corporate rights were elevated.