The international economist D. Rodrik has argued that globalization increases the demands on the state to provide social insurance while reducing its ability to do so. With the influence of the state declining there is a greater need for international cooperation. Another role the state has played in countries deficient in local capital, is allying itself with local business interests and helping them to accumulate capital. An autocratic regime is more favourable to the rapid accumulation of capital than a democratic one, and a prosperous country is more favourable to the development of democratic institutions than a destitute one, but a transition from autocracy and capital accumulation to prosperity and democracy is far from assured. The question of values and social cohesion.
Society needs institutions to serve such social goals as political freedom and social justice.
There are such institutions in individual countries, but not in the global society. For the current global capitalist system to survive, the writer of this article puts forward the idea of the open society as a universal principle that recognizes the diversity inherent in our global society, yet provides a conceptual basis for establishing the needed institutions. The open society should take a variety of forms, which follows from the epistemological argument. The writer's own views on the specific requirements of our global open society is that there is no international regulatory authority for financial markets, there is not enough international cooperation for the taxation of capital, and we do not have adequate international institutions for the protection of individual freedoms, human rights, and the environment, or for the promotion of social justice. What is to be done is to establish certain standards of behaviour to contain corruption, enforce fair labour practices, and protect human rights.