FLIGHTS from across Asia Pacific take less than ten hours, and much less if you are hurtling down the information highway and the various channels of communication. We can get things going much faster. But it is easy to forget that this is only happening in some parts of the world. Globalisation as such, can be described as asymmetrical. The world has shrunk in some parts, but not others.

Figures by the World Bank show that in 2006, people in high-income economies held an average income of $36,608 while those in developing economies earned an average of $1,997, with some earning as little as $649 a person per year.

Enormous inequalities of power exists between states, global governance tends to privilege the interests and agenda of global capitalism, and the technocratic nature of much global decision-making, from health to security, can exclude many with a legitimate stake in the outcomes. 

Inevitably, we end up with distorted global politics – i.e. those states and groups with greater power resources and access to key sites of global decision-making will most likely have the greatest control or influence over the agenda and outcomes of global politics.