The state in retreat? Transnational actors in the Asia-Pacific

In 1986, the political economist Susan Strange warned presciently in Casino Capitalism that international financial markets now resembled a giant casino, replete with ‘mad money’ that required regulation in order to avert collapse. A decade later, in The Retreat of the State (1996), Strange argued that transnational actors, from international crime syndicates to global financial institutions, had effectively taken over the economic and financial space previously occupied by states, compelling governments to beat a ‘strategic retreat’ as they competed for shares of capital and technology in a world of investment scarcity.