Public Finance - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... Theoretically politics and economics are two separate work spheres; however, in practice, the high end policy making and implementing the same on critical issues, in the realm of the economy, ends up closely entwined with politics of the day. While the politics primarily does the policy making job-both in terms of actual policy making and by giving directional impetus to policy making by other specialized agents of the State e.g. the Central Bank; it is the support bureaucracy of this polity which does the policy implementation job through its internecine presence in the concerned state. Often the arguments are heatedly thrown, on either side of the issue, on the degrees to which the Central Bank of any particular State is found independence. The independence of the Central Bank essentially defines the extent to which the monetary and credit policy of a country would be free of political preferences and take technical economic realities and issues into account.The closest and most natural interaction of economics and politics comes in the budgeting exercise in any State. Here the fiscal policy is involved and fiscal policy essentially sets direction to the way a State intends to manage its revenues on capital and current accounts. Another important ,in the hand of the State, particularly those had socialist leanings, was a fixed time planning tool -in which major investment decisions were considered by the State in the interest of the economic development and growth the country. . This latter tool of economic planning, in fact divided the entire world in two major politico-economic groups of capitalist and communist countries-wherein communist countries were state planned to the well defined micro layers and capitalist economies were operating on free market principles till well defined macro layers and the state role being only minimal. Two major events have changed the circumstances for most States of the world and brought these states on common platform as far as controllable circumstances are concerned. These two events were break down of the communist system of detailed economic planning and state control and spread of globalization. In a different context Devetak and Higgott explain how globalization has brought about a weakening of an intra national social bond. They further posit that ongoing process of globalization causes constant disruption in existing social bond. It is their view that "under conditions of globalization, assumptions made about the social bond are changing; .... it demonstrates how strains on the social bond within states give rise to a search for newer forms of global political theory and organization, and the emergence of new global (non-state actors) which contest with states over the policy agendas emanating from globalization; ........despite the new forms of activity identified in the second stage, the article concludes that the prospects for a satisfactory synthesis of a liberal economic theory of globalization, a normative political theory of the global public domain, and a new social bond are remote"( Devetak & Higgott 1999). Largely looking in terms of distribution of economic benefits of globalization it can be surmised that entrenched vested interests and inequalities have remained more or less as they were or even worsened. These inequalities, by themselves, would make any concept of global polity, economy or social bond from arriving in synthesis for maintenance of global social order. We examine the extent of inequalities and the possible reasons thereof below.


Again in a slightly different context Phillip W.Jones makes a statement which is extremely relevant to the definition of globalization as pertinent to present context. Jones states that," The logic of globalization contrasts markedly with that of internationalism. The latter, with its intrinsically ...Download file to see next pagesRead More