In the reform movements of the early twentieth century, on the other hand, with its trust-busting and regulatory regimes, the elite found themselves on the defensive. In today's world of neoliberal globalization, the economic elite are again clearly in the ascendency. This transfer of economic sovereignty is most advanced in the Third World, where the IMF increasingly dictates economic, fiscal, and social policies at a micro level. In India, for example, public officials often turn directly to IMF staff for policy guidance, leaving the Indian government out of the loop entirely. These examples are only the tip of the formidable globalist iceberg lying in the path of the once-sovereign Ship of State.
Globalization amounts to a coup d'etat by the global economic elite.
The see-saw game has been abandoned by the elite, and the citizenry find themselves down on their backs. The democratic process may continue to govern the affairs of the nation state, but the power and resources of the nation state are being radically constrained, democracy is being rendered thereby irrelevant, and global power is thus being shifted from democratic institutions to elite institutions. Democracy is less and less society's sovereign, even though public rhetoric continues as usual. The deliberations of the commissions go largely unreported - the globalist revolution, profound as it is, is mostly a stealth affair. According to this analysis, democracy is in considerable trouble indeed, and by comparison the future of cyberspace would seem to be a secondary concern.