Inequality and Globalisation

["Michael Keaney" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Jim Devine, Pauly Shore Fellow in Media Studies, asks:

doesn't "globalization" (as currently practiced) thrive on poor
government
and non-democracy (i.e., rule by capital)?

=====

MK: According to Ankie Hoogvelt, in the 2nd ed. of her "Globalization
and the Postcolonial World" (Palgrave, 2001) the "democracy" is really
about the legitimation of the crippling debt repayments imposed on
"emerging markets" by capital. Without a multi (more often dual) party
system where all the main players accept the basic premises of the game,
there is insufficient stability for debt repayments to proceed (i.e. the
opposition, not only uppity, would be more effective in stopping them).

She also explains how much of the "corruption" derided by the born-again
"democrats" of the developed world was in fact necessary to the
functioning of the artificially and arbitrarily created state forms
bequeathed to the former colonials by their departing masters. The logic
of the Cold War made the patrimonial state especially obvious as a means
of ensuring control of the masses below and compliance with the
neocolonial masters above. With the end of the Cold War, the ideology of
the Washington consensus, buttressed by Stepford economists' wilful and
utter ignorance of things like politics, culture, society and history,
led to the simplistic imposition of "one capitalism fits all" models
upon reluctant victims (another reason to laugh at Lindert and
Williamson's depiction of "those poor countries that changed their
policies to exploit" globalization -- whatever that is -- as if those
were presented with a choice).

This is at the centre of the so-called crisis afflicting the World Bank,
supposedly caused by the ineffectual "personalised" leadership of James
Wolfensohn, when in fact this is merely the misrepresentation of an
epiphenomenon deriving from a deeper crisis concerning a development
model so utterly entrenched despite its manifest failures. More on this
to follow.

Michael K.