Synopses & Reviews
This is a short and trenchant history of the organizations--the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and Group of Seven--that have promoted economic globalization and which are now trying to manage the unmanageable. Walden Bello points to their manifest failings, seen in recurrent financial crises, the ever widening gulf between developing and industrialized countries, the persistence of gross inequalities, and mass poverty. He examines new ideas for reforming world economic management, and argues that a much more fundamental and radical shift of direction is required.
Review
Praise for the first edition:
"Walden Bello is the worlds leading no-nonsense revolutionary. With plainspoken history and compelling evidence, he ruthlessly exposes the opportunism, plunder, and backroom bullying that passes for global capitalism. But this is more than a critique: Bello's expert diagnosis is that the patient is sicker than we think, and the time to act is now."--Naomi Klein, author, No Logo
"Bello's analyses and suggestions for action are refreshingly clear and direct, and he gives a valuable account of the re-subordination of the South over the last quarter-century. Deglobalization is to be recommended above all for the invigorating energy with which it sets out an oppositional agenda."--New Left Review
"Whatever subject he tackles, Walden Bello is always thoughtful, trenchant and constructive. He's also an authentic hero of the global justice movement."--Susan George
"Deglobalization is a superb dissection of contemporary capitalism's multiple crises, a powerful indictment of the US's brutal re-subordination of the global South in the interest of its MNCs and banks, an unanswerable demonstration of the unreformability of the IMF and its sister institutions, and a stirring call to arms for the movement for economic justice by one of its major theorists and organizers."--Robert Brenner
Synopsis
How to manage the global economy - and, more fundamentally, whether humanity wishes it to go in an ever more market-oriented, transnational corporation-dominated, and capital-footloose direction - is the most important international question of our time. In this short and trenchant history of those bodies -- the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and Group of Seven -- which have promoted this economic globalization, Walden Bello:
- Points to their manifest failings;
- Examines the major new ideas put forward for reforming the management of the world economy;
- Argues for a much more fundamental shift towards a decentralized, pluralistic system of global economic governance allowing countries to follow development strategies sensitive to their own values and particular mix of constraints and opportunities.
About the Author
Walden Bello is the founding Director of Focus on the Global South, a policy research institute based in Bangkok, Thailand. His many books include
A Siamese Tragedy (with Cunningham & Li Kheng Poh, Zed Books, 1999) and
Global Finance (with Bullard & Malhotra, Zed Books 2000).
Table of Contents
Foreword to the New Edition: The Crisis of the Globalist Project and the New Economics of George W. Bush
The crisis of the globalist project
Three moments of the crisis of globalization
The New Economics of George W. Bush
The economics and politics of over-extension
1. Introduction: The Multiple Crises of Global Capitalism
From triumph to crisis
Multilateralism in disarray
The crisis of the neoliberal order
The corporation under question
Cracks in military hegemony
Degeneration of liberal democracy
The spectre of global deflation
Rise of the movement
Contradictory trends after September 11
'Imperial Overstretch'
Liberal democracy loses
Porto Alegre and the future
2. Marginalizing the South in the International System
The rise of UNCTAD
The Bretton Woods twins versus the UN Development system
The southern challenge in the 1970s
Rightwing reaction and the demonization of the south
Resubordinating the south
The World Trade Organization: third pillar of the system
The Group of Seven: an international directorate?
3. Sidestepping Democracy at the Multilateral Agencies
The World Bank
The International Monetary Fund
The World Trade Organization
4. The Crisis of Legitimacy
The IMF's Stalingrad
The past catches up
Meltzer and the World Bank
The WTO on the road to Seattle
5. The Vicissitudes of Reform, 1998-2002
Reforming the global financial architecture
From structural adjustment to poverty reduction?
Non-democratic decision-making affirmed
Decision-making at the WTO: From Seattle to Doha
6. Proposals for Reform of Global Governance: A Critical Analysis
An economic security council?
The Meltzer Commission proposal
The 'back-to-the Bretton-Woods-system' school
George Soros's alternative system
7. The Alternative: Deglobalization
Deconstruction
Deglobalizing in a pluralist world
Selected Readings
Selected Organizations Monitoring Multilateral Organizations and Global Governance Issues
Index