state, its citizens' sense of collective identity, its general caging of social life." Or, as Goldblatt et al. put it (1997:61), "[h]yper-globalisers argue that we now live in a world in which social processes operate predominantly at a global scale. National economies, polities and cultures are immersed in a sea of global flows [...] the sovereignty and autonomy of nation-states have been radically reduced." As Hague and Harrop note (2004:30), "[p]articularly in the second half of the twentieth century, international trade grew apace while production and especially finance broke free of national restraints." Specifically, two channels of economic globalisation are generally cited as particularly influential on the state. The first is Multinational Corporations (MNCs), "possess[ing] assets and deploy[ing] annual budgets which dwarf those of the many poor states where their operations may be located" (Wilkinson 2007:68). States tend to be eager to attract MNCs in order to gain from high tax revenues and other 'soft' benefits. Economic globalisation has provoked "the historic expansion of exit options for capital in financial markets" (Goldblatt et al. 1997:74) and since "firms can more readily move out of countries [...] Indeed, they [may] have an obligation to their shareholders to do so" (Mny & Knapp 1998:465), the presence of these MNCs can seriously impact a state's policy agenda, as detailed extensively by Barnet and Mller (1974). The second channel is global financial flows. "Finance is far more transnational, as evidenced by the growing complexity of financial markets" (Mann 1997: 479). As Hague and Harrop