However, if one were to look back at the enthusiasm which prevailed in both the economics and international relations fields during the early 1990s, this appeared as an inescapable conclusion. The growth of world merchandise export volumes had already consistently outpaced that of real GDP for decades1, while the world stock of outward FDI had dramatically increased in the period from 1980-19902.
These favourable trends looked set to receive a further boost on account of the expected integration of central and eastern European economies as well as the states of the former Soviet Union and China into the mainstream of the world economy. Many observers therefore agreed with Francis Fukuyama that this marked “the end of history”3.