De-globalization

TNI

Jun 22 2005

De-globalization
Ideas for a New World Economy
Walden Bello
Zed Books, 2002
HbISBN 1 84277 304 6
PbISBN 1 84277 305 4

Will the world economy be forever more market-oriented and dominated by transnational corporations? This short and trenchant history of the organizations promoting economic globalization - the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and Group of Seven - points to their manifest failings. Recurrent financial crises, a yawning gulf between developing and industrialized countries, gross inequalities within all countries and mass poverty. Bello reviews these institutions' crisis of legitimacy and examines the major new ideas for reform - the Commission on Global Governance's suggestion of an Economic Security Council; the US Congress's Meltzer Commission proposals; and the ideas of financier, George Soros.

Walden Bello sees these ideas as mere tinkering with marginal policy changes; the world requires a radical shift towards a decentralised, pluralistic system of economic governance allowing countries to follow development strategies appropriate to their needs and circumstances. This 'deglobalization' means radically reducing the powers and roles of the existing TNC-driven WTO and Bretton Woods institutions. And requires the formation of new institutions helping to devolve the greater part of production, trade and economic decisionmaking to national and local level.

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