Fragmentation and polycrisis are two of the new buzzwords of global economics. Polycrisis is just another way of saying that we have a lot of problems hitting at the same time. Namely the climate crisis, the global financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent weak growth from which the UK and Western Europe have found it hard to escape; the 2020 pandemic and its ensuing recession; last year’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent global energy and inflation crisis.
To exacerbate these developments, the room for policy manoeuvre is limited, since we are seeing the end of cheap money in the West after a period of excessively low interest rates. On top of this, global public debt levels are at all-time highs.
Importantly, the consequences of all this make it even more important to understand that other buzzword – fragmentation – and its consequences.
Fragmentation reflects a shift from recent decades when globalisation…
