May 15

The third proposition of Susan Strange describes something that is not as new as we think. In the past examples such as the British East India Company owned most of what is India, Pakistan and Bangladesh today, with its whole population, larger than most states in the world at that point. The company came from the first world, and played a key role in colonization. Today many MNCs seem to be acting as imperial forces, using finances as tools of influence . Strange is very right about the dependency of developing countries to the investments. As MNCs have a lot of potential to help developing countries. Their investments create economic growth and dependence at the same time. In such cases countries with weak economies accepting indirect foreign investment can suffer severely as the investment can be pulled out before they can react.
This imperial system is very different than state imperialism. It's wrong to say that MNCs are agents of the First World and are benefiting states. In fact, states are losing power rapidly against corporations as Economic well being becomes more and more important to the world than concepts of sovereignty and nationalism. It is capital that benefits. After all the economic growth ends up creating buying power and new markets.
The main difference in what Stiglitz and Wolf say seems to be their views on sovereignty. Stiglitz believes that the economic dependency created by foreign investment can cause states to lose sovereignty over issues such as labor laws or environmental issues etc. but as Wolf explains interdependency is requisite for free trade. Sovereignty does not seem to have a place in globalism.