Anthea Roberts and Nicholas Lamp in Aeon:
Isaiah Berlin understood the parable of the fox and the hedgehog – ‘the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing’ – to illustrate two styles of thinking. Hedgehogs relate everything to a single vision, a universally applicable organising principle for understanding the world. Foxes, on the other hand, embrace many values and approaches rather than trying to fit everything into an all-encompassing singular vision.
Debates about economic globalisation are often dominated by hedgehogs – actors who interpret and evaluate the dynamics and consequences of globalisation through a single lens. Take the narrative that dominated the debate about globalisation in the West from the collapse of the Soviet Union until the global financial crisis in 2008. On this view, economic liberalisation promised to grow the pie so that everyone – developed and developing countries, rich and poor – would be better off. This confident perspective touted free trade as a win-win outcome that would create peace and prosperity for all.
In recent years, this view has been challenged by a variety of narratives that stress that economic globalisation produces many losers.
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