Finbarr Livesey argues that  he interpretation of the global economy has been framed as an inevitable journey towards ever greater integration—a story of hyper-globalisation. This article discusses the nature of manufacturing to understand whether this interpretation holds and to investigate the possibility of deglobalisation at the level of physical goods trade in the coming decades, and what that may imply for other non-physical elements of globalisation.

This article provides an empirical analysis of the disruption of (neo)classical/liberal globalisation during the Great Depression and the Great Recession, identifying challenges to existing knowledges and approaches, in particular the mainstream analysis that studied the Great Recession in isolation, treating it as a special case and ignoring political covariates of deglobalisation processes. The econometric analysis (an unbalanced panel of 31 countries in the 1928–1932 and 128 countries in 2008–2012) does not find an impact from the level of development on deglobalisation. The manufacturing import share is significantly associated with stronger deglobalisation (this effect is stronger in the 1930s than in the 2000s). The political system is highly significant in both 1930s and 2000s, but the sign of its impact is opposite. In the 1930s, autocratic rule and dictatorship are associated with stronger deglobalisation; in the 2000s, democracy is associated with stronger deglobali...