خوانش انتقادی از کتاب «تحول بزرگ جهانی: لیبرالیسم بازار ملی در جهان چندقطبی»

Branko Milanović’s The Great Global Transformation: National Market Liberalism in a Multipolar World is one of the most recent and influential attempts to conceptualize contemporary transformations in global political economy. Focusing on the rise of Asia, the reallocation of global income distribution, the emergence of new elites, and the decline of neoliberal globalization, the book offers a comprehensive narrative of the transition toward a multipolar world order. Its significance lies in shifting the analytical focus from nation-states to individuals and social classes within the global income distribution, thereby linking economic transformations to contemporary political reactions. This article aims to provide a critical analytical assessment of Milanović’s framework.

The study employs a close textual reading and a systematic reconstruction of the book’s core arguments. In doing so, it examines the concept of “national market liberalism” as the central theoretical lens proposed to characterize the post-neoliberal global order, and critically evaluates its conceptual coherence and policy implications. The findings suggest that national market liberalism functions less as a coherent normative theory and more as a descriptive framework capturing a set of largely defensive national responses to the pressures of globalization, inequality, and geopolitical competition. While analytically powerful, the framework exhibits ambiguities regarding policy prescriptions, particularly in relation to inequality and rent reproduction.

The article’s main contribution lies in reinterpreting Milanović’s framework in the context of economies under structural constraints, with particular attention to Iran under conditions of economic sanctions. It argues that policies aligned with national market liberalism may carry significant risks of deepening inequality, reinforcing rent-seeking behavior, and undermining long-term competitiveness. From this perspective, the article clarifies both the analytical value and the limitations of Milanović’s approach for understanding economic policymaking under conditions of sustained external pressure.