This growing economic, social, political and cultural integration is to a large extent the result of endogenous changes in transportation, information and telecommunication technologies, and in demographic trends. Yet, policies (referred to in this paper, for convenience, as “neo-liberal policies”) that dominated the scene until the onset of the recent financial crisis did contribute to accelerating economic integration, except in the case of labour mobility. During these same three decades (1980-2010), there has also been a gradual spread of liberal democracy, particularly in the former socialist countries of Europe and in Latin America. In a marked departure from the trends of the 1980s and 1990s, the current decade (that is to say, since 2000) has witnessed a recovery in practically all developing and transitional regions.