Dani Rodrik
The rules governing global trade and investment were built for a world that no longer exists. Companies that structured supply chains, workforce strategies, and growth plans around open borders now face governments actively rewiring those rules. The tension is not between globalisation and its critics – it is between the legitimate demands of domestic politics and the logic of integrated markets, and most organisations are caught in the middle with no framework for navigating it.
Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, helps governments and organisations understand why open markets and democratic governance are structurally in tension – and what a sustainable global economy actually requires.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Dani Rodrik
- His “political trilemma of the world economy” – the argument that deep globalisation, national sovereignty, and democracy cannot all coexist simultaneously – gives leaders a precise framework for understanding trade conflict, populist backlash, and the limits of multilateral governance. No other speaker in this space originated a framework with comparable analytical reach.
- He was an early and rigorous critic of hyperglobalisation decades before it became a mainstream concern – his 1997 book Has Globalization Gone Too Far? challenged the economic consensus at a time when that consensus was near-universal. That track record gives his current views on de-globalisation a weight that commentary-based speakers cannot match.
- His most recent research on industrial policy – including the 2024 Annual Review of Economics paper “The New Economics of Industrial Policy” – provides organisations with an evidence-based lens on why governments are intervening in markets again, and what conditions make those interventions work or fail.
- His co-directorship of the Reimagining the Economy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, combined with long-standing engagement with the World Bank, IMF, and national governments, grounds his arguments in institutional and policy realities rather than theoretical abstractions.
- He addresses the specific commercial tension that most economists avoid: that markets require states, but too much globalisation undermines the states that markets depend on – a paradox directly relevant to any organisation managing regulatory risk, supply chain exposure, or international strategy.
Biography highlights
- Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School; formerly Albert O. Hirschman Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
- Originator of the “political trilemma of the world economy” – one of the most cited frameworks in international economic theory
- Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, 2020; Albert O. Hirschman Prize (inaugural), Social Science Research Council, 2007; Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought, Tufts University, 2002
- President of the International Economic Association, 2021-23
- Author of more than twenty books including The Globalization Paradox (2011), Straight Talk on Trade (2017), and Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World (Princeton University Press, 2025)
- Regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 1998; affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London
- Member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; co-director, Reimagining the Economy Program, Harvard Kennedy School
Biography
Dani Rodrik has spent three decades making a single, uncomfortable argument: that the version of globalisation advanced since the 1990s contained the seeds of its own political destruction. His 2000 paper coining the “political trilemma of the world economy” – the claim that deep globalisation, national sovereignty, and democracy cannot coexist simultaneously – now reads less like a provocation than a forecast. Brexit, the rise of economic nationalism, and the collapse of the trade consensus have all traced the fault lines he identified.
His 2011 book The Globalization Paradox gave the trilemma its fullest treatment: markets require functioning states, but aggressive global integration progressively undermines the democratic legitimacy that states need to operate. The book has become a reference point for policymakers and strategists trying to understand why the rules-based international order is under pressure from within its own societies, not only from geopolitical rivals.
More recently, Rodrik has turned the argument forward. His work at Harvard’s Reimagining the Economy Program, his 2024 Annual Review of Economics paper on the new economics of industrial policy, and his 2025 book Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World set out the conditions under which governments can use selective intervention to create good jobs, reduce inequality, and manage the green transition without sacrificing the open economy entirely. The argument is neither protectionist nor conventionally liberal – it is a structured case for how managed markets can deliver outcomes that free markets, left alone, will not.
At Harvard Kennedy School, where he has held the Ford Foundation Chair in International Political Economy since 1996, Rodrik has advised the World Bank, contributed monthly analysis to Project Syndicate since 1998, and served as President of the International Economic Association. His awards – including the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences and the inaugural Albert O. Hirschman Prize of the Social Science Research Council – recognise a body of work that has demonstrably reshaped how economists and policymakers talk about trade, development, and the relationship between markets and democracy.
Key speaking topics
- The political trilemma of globalisation
- Trade policy and economic nationalism
- Industrial policy and the future of manufacturing
- Economic development and growth strategy
- Inclusive prosperity and the labour market
- Geopolitics and the international economic order
- Post-neoliberal economic policy
- The relationship between democracy and market integration
Ideal for
- Government ministers, central bank officials, and senior civil servants navigating trade and industrial policy decisions
- Board-level strategy and risk committees assessing geopolitical and regulatory exposure
- International economic forums, sovereign wealth funds, and multilateral institutions
- Chief economists and global research heads at financial institutions
Audience outcomes
- A precise analytical framework – the political trilemma – for diagnosing why trade and globalisation conflicts are structural rather than episodic
- Clearer understanding of the conditions under which industrial policy and managed trade create value, and when they do not
- Insight into the relationship between economic inequality, democratic instability, and the pressures on international institutions
- A sharper vocabulary for board and government conversations about de-globalisation, reshoring, and the limits of multilateral governance
- Historical and comparative perspective on which economic policy models have produced broad-based growth in developing and advanced economies