Abstract

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.
Walden Bello is the founding Director of Focus on the Global South, a policy research institute based in Bangkok, Thailand. Prior to that, he was Executive Director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First) in Oakland, California. Educated at Princeton University where he did his doctorate in Sociology in 1975, he subsequently taught at the University of California, Berkeley where he was a research associate with the Center for South East Asian Studies. A renowned campaigner for international justice and development and one of the leading independent critics in the South of current global economic arrangements, he is the author of numerous books, including: A Siamese Tragedy: Development and Disintegration in Modern Thailand (with Shea Cunningham and Li Kheng Poh) (1999) Dark Victory: The United States, Structural Adjustment and Global Poverty (with Shea Cunningham) (1994) People and Power in the Pacific: The Struggle for the Post-Cold War Order (1992) Dragons in Distress: Asia's Miracle Economies in Crisis (with Stephanie Rosenfeld) (1991) Brave New Third World? Strategies for Survival in the Global Economy (1990) Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines (1982).
'Walden Bello's work has been consistently outstanding, highly informative and full of insight.' Noam Chomsky 'Walden Bello is the world's 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: Bellos 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 'This short concise volume is a guidebook no activist should travel without.' Briarpatch Magazine, May 2003 'Clear analysis and impressive scholarship have made Bello one of Asia's key progressive thinkers. Insistence on people-centered development grounded in ecological sustainability sets him apart from the elite consensus on Asia' New Internationalist 'The most respected anti-globalization thinker in Asia' Le Soir (Belgium) 'Among the expanding constellation of activists, academicians, and thinkers who believe that mainstream economics... does not have an answer to people's needs, Walden Bello is a prominent star' Bangkok Post '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