Globalization and Redistribution: Feasible Egalitarianism in a Competitive World

A reduction of impediments to international flows of goods, capital and professional labor is thought to raise the economic costs of programs by the nation state (and labor unions) to redistribute income to the poor and to provide economic security. But some of the more politically and economically successful examples of such policies--for example Nordic social democracy and East Asian land reform--have occurred in small open economies which would, on the above account, provide a prohibitive environment for egalitarian interventions. I present a model of globalization and redistribution to answer the following question: in a liberalized world economy, what programs of egalitarian redistribution and social insurance are implementable by democratic nation states acting independently?