Comparative work ‘post’-globalization?

In more recent years, several commentators have spoken of the ‘end of globalization’ and/or the end of ‘internalization’ (see Rugman, 2012). The detailed debates behind these statements are beyond the scope of the present chapter, but, in essence, such contentions are usually based on the perceived economic failure of global market- based capitalism in the context of the 2008 global financial crisis and the notion that so-called global markets have in fact resulted in a high degree of regionalization and the transfer of wealth from the global south to the global north. Politically, an appar- ent shift in support towards more nationalistic political ideals, evidenced by developments such as the population of the UK voting to leave the European Union in the referendum of June 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as president of the USA later that year on the back of considerable anti-international rhetoric, has recently cemented this impression of a slowdown in the degree to which the world is becoming integrated. Further, commentators such as Hirst and Thompson (2002) argue that there may be inherent limits to some of the fundamental processes that create the level of ‘interconnectedness’ on which the concept of globalization rests. In particular, they speak about the limits of international trade and argue that the degree of economic activity required to sustain it may be waning in a recurring cycle of boom and bust:

Thus the world may be experiencing the final years of one of those periodic explosions in internationalization that throw so much into confusion and seem to herald the com- plete transformation in the way societies are organized. A serious questioning of the ability of the global economic system to sustain its seemingly rapid integrationist trajec- tory is beginning to emerge. (2002: 255)

This cycle has been exaggerated both by the extremes of what many have called ‘hyperglobalization’ since the 1990s (see Ravenhill, 2017) and, they argue, by the growth of more protectionist policies by a number of jurisdictions. One key example

is the USA pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (the largest inter- national trade agreement in history, between 11 jurisdictions) in 2016.

For the purposes of this chapter, it is relevant to briefly reflect on what impact this alleged anti-globalization trend process of decline might have on comparative work in the criminological field.

In some respects, it might be argued that comparative work takes on added dimen- sions in a world where the sharing of standardized ‘blueprint models’ of criminal justice reform, discussed by Nelken (1997) above, is less forthcoming. Indeed, one might argue that the wholesale, ill-considered export of such models is partly to blame for the anti-international feeling taking hold in many jurisdictions. Take, for example, the development of private finance initiative (PFI) contract models to build prisons in the UK, and the subsequent ‘export’ of that model around the world (see Grout, 1997). Developed by the Australian and UK governments in the 1990s, PFI is an economic model whereby the private sector is approached to fund public infra- structure projects with private capital, thus creating so-called public–private partnerships (PPPs).

Whilst such contracts have arguably brought savings (as well as many disad- vantages) in developed countries including the UK itself and the USA, Goyer (2001) argues that this model of the penal state was close to bankrupting the South African prison estate. A reduction in globalization certainly implies still less ability (or perhaps appetite) to transpose ‘ready-made’ models of criminal justice into different jurisdictional, political, legal and social contexts. Therein, however, may lie an argument for a more considered form of comparative study, one concentrated on establishing how different solutions to given crimi- nal justice issues work in these increasingly pluralized contexts around the world. In other words, a slowdown in globalization might switch the emphasis currently discernible in a lot of comparative work from a search for ready-made solutions to criminal justice problems to an understanding of what particular issues are at play in influencing these different criminal justice contexts. Key examples for further study in this regard might include the different contexts in which so-called ‘terrorist attacks’ occur in different countries. Recent years have seen what is described as a wave of ‘new terrorism’ (Tsui, 2016) atrocities committed in urban areas across Europe. Examples include the Brussels bomb- ing of March 2016, the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017 and the Barcelona attack of August 2017. What appear to be highly similar models of crime, however, each take place in the specific cultural and political context of each state and, thus, in line with the above discussion, require very different means of addressing and preventing these kinds of activities. The danger, of course, is that another impact of reduced global interaction will be that, practi- cally, such work becomes more difficult to arrange – in terms of establishing contacts as well as the academic and financial arrangements required – precisely at a time when such comparisons may take on increased significance to the work of criminologists.