Much has been written about the many economic benefits of globalization and the triumph and spread of democratic liberalism with the end of the Cold War, following the demise of the Soviet Union.

This work takes issue with such "wine and roses" perspectives about the future of the Western democracies and their faith-based views on the moral purity of a globalized marketplace. It also questions many of the assumptions found in the status quo reinforcing discipline of international political economy (IPE) a discipline that focuses on the formal and legitimate economies and the...