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On Planning for Development:   The neo-liberal state
The Developmental State The state, civil society and development The neo-liberal state
RP2006/29 Deepak Nayyar:
Development through Globalization?
(PDF 127KB)
This paper seeks to analyze the prospects for development in a changed international context, where globalization has diminished the policy space so essential for countries that are latecomers to development. The main theme is that, to use the available policy space for development, it is necessary to redesign strategies by introducing correctives and to rethink development by incorporating different perspectives, if development is to bring about an improvement in the well-being of people. In redesigning strategies, some obvious correctives emerge from an understanding of theory and a study of experience that recognizes not only the diversity but also the complexity of development. In rethinking development, it is imperative to recognize the importance of initial conditions, the significance of institutions, the relevance of politics in economics and the critical role of good governance. Even if difficult, there is also a clear need to create more policy space for national development, by reshaping the rules of the game in the world economy and contemplating some governance of globalization.
Markets, politics and globalization: can the global economy be civilized?
(10h Prebisch Lecture, December 2000),
by Gerald Karl Helleiner,
Centre for International Studies University of Toronto, Canada.
The rights of the rich versus the rights of the poor
By J. Gledhill - 2005
The problem with neo-liberal notions of “participation” and “empowerment” is that they empower unequal actors equally, leaving the basic structures of social power beyond question since no one remains excluded (even if those “included” as interlocutors of government sometimes represent little more than themselves where they have become disarticulated from their bases or possess bases that are more virtual than real). Tinkering with the rules governing property development may produce some beneficial social consequences, but these will remain limited while there is no space from which to challenge the rights of the better off to shop in boutiques and segregate themselves spatially from working people whose main prospects for livelihood will be geared to the continuing growth of an economy built around the present distribution of income and assets. A state oil company turned into a public interest corporation with shareholders like Brazil’s Petrobras may conceivably generate more resources for social programs as a player in the global energy services market than it would do as a traditional state monopoly, but “the people” now have...
Latin American Politics and Society  -  Summer 2001
State developmentalism without a developmental state: The public foundations of the "free market miracle" in Chile
By Kurtz, Marcus
If export orientation is a goal in a sustainable development strategy, this study argues that public interventions at the sectoral level in a variety of markets can produce economic reorientation that pursues international comparative advantage faster and at lower cost than free market forces can. Pervasive failures in information, credit, input, distribution, and insurance markets can render strictly market-based adjustment both slow and costly. Although Chile's export boom and high growth rates have been associated with its free market economic policies, this article, based on a comparison of the fruit, fish, and forestry sectors, contends that new forms of public intervention were crucial catalysts in shaping a sustained export response.
The essence of neoliberalism
By P. Bourdieu - 1998
As the dominant discourse would have it, the economic world is a pure and perfect order, implacably unrolling the logic of its predictable consequences, and prompt to repress all violations by the sanctions that it inflicts, either automatically or —more unusually — through the intermediary of its armed extensions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the policies they impose: reducing labour costs, reducing public expenditures and making work more flexible. Is the dominant discourse right? What if, in reality, this economic order were no more than the implementation of a utopia - the utopia of neoliberalism - thus converted into a political problem? One that, with the aid of the economic theory that it proclaims, succeeds in conceiving of itself as the scientific description of reality?
Economy and the re-invention of the Mexican state
By J. G. Vargas-Hernández - 1999
In recent years, the important role of the State in formulating and implementing economic policies towards achieving societal growth and development has, broadly speaking, undergone many changes and transformations. In Mexico, the protectionist, statist and populist regime has been replaced by the so-called neoliberal state model which can be said to have achieved some impressive results in terms of economic growth and development. Unfortunately, increasing poverty is one of the most distressing results of neoliberal policies. Further disappointing results include rising unemployment, slumping incomes, and a widening gap between rich and poor, leading to fissures in society and a fueling of guerrilla warfare and crime waves. This article focuses on the fundamental concepts of representation, economic functions and the organization of state models in Mexico.
The state, privatization and educational policy: a critique of neoliberalism in Latin America and some ethical and political implications
By C. A. Torres - 2000
Nota Bene: This paper focuses on the notion of external assistance in neoliberal times. A central component of external assistance in educational policy is to propose an ethos of privatization in the context of the neoliberal state with a prominent role played by neoliberal international organizations. To illustrate the theoretical distinctions resulting from drastic changes from a liberal state to a neoliberal state, and the key dilemmas and tensions of external aid in this process, this paper discusses the role of the World Bank as an important neoliberal institution in the globalization of capitalism. While an in-depth discussion of the World Bank’s policies and practices, or its political economy, are beyond the intend of this paper, by focusing on key elements of the World Bank’s lending process but particularly research policies, this paper addresses key ethical (and political) dilemmas of educational research and planning. Not to be cited, quoted or references
Globalization or Empire: new tendencies in contemporary capitalism?
By B. Ramirez - 2003
Despite the fact that contemporary social paradigms emphasize the importance of particularity and specific topics in order to describe reality, it is remarkable how two knowledgeable researchers have joined their experiences and studies in the effort to develop new directions for understanding the global order. In times when the moment and the here and the now are important, they use an historical perspective that seeks to understand the evolution of the world, in an attempt to analyse in detail the passage from the modern to the post-modern period, from Imperialism to Empire, as a strong effort to understand movements in society and changes in space. Under this context, Hardt and Negri intend to develop new trends for understanding contemporary capitalism in what is considered an unbounded and open space.
The neoliberal state (from "The World Bank and the State")
Bretton Woods Project - 1999
Neo-liberalism and the Women's Movement in Canada
By L. Trimble - 2005
Invited and invented spaces of participation: neoliberal citizenship and Feminists' expanded notion of politics
By F. Miraftab - 2004
The relationship between neoliberalism and authoritarian states: the case of Turkey
By M. Yilmaz Sener - 2004
Neoliberal globalism and the local state: a regulation approach
By R. Broomhill - 2002
The old empire coming back: revisiting another experience of liberation under occupation
By H. Motoyama - 2004
Celebrating this year's International Women's Day, US President Bush proudly stated that the attacks against Afghanistan and Iraq brought liberation to more than 25 millions of women and girls, suggesting that military force is an effective tool for women's liberation. While this "new empire" which claims to be the champion of women's liberation is certainly serious concern for us, feminists in Asia, in this presentation I should like to focus on the old empire that still dominates our life.
The “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was reportedly based on the Japanese model, the successful “regime change” of 60 years ago from aggressive authoritarian military regime to liberal democracy. Surely it was proved to be a success for the United States, as the Japanese government remains firm as most royal ally in supporting the "war for freedom," even violating its Constitution that prohibits the government from sending troops overseas.
One should wonder, however, whether democratization had ever taken place after that disastrous Pacific War, as a number of politicians justify the past aggressions against Asian peoples, openly attack sex education or gender-free education, and make misogynist statements like “women who don’t bear children got no right to receive pensions”. In short, we are seeing the old authoritarian anti-democracy anti-women empire coming back, hand in hand with the new empire that calls for "just war" to free repressed women. How should we understand this peculiar "alliance of the will"?
The process that has come to be known as globalization -i.e., the progressively greater influence being exerted by worldwide economic, social and cultural processes over national or regional ones-  is clearly leaving its mark on the world of today. This is not a new process. Its historical roots run deep. Yet the dramatic changes in terms of space and time being brought about by the communications and information revolution represent a qualitative break with the past. In the light of these changes, the countries of the region have requested the secretariat to focus the deliberations of the twenty-ninth session of ECLAC on the issue of globalization and development.
ECLAC: Twenty-ninth Session - Brasilia, Brazil
6-10 MAY 2002
Globalization and development
In the past decade the concept of globalization has been employed widely in academic and political debate, but the meanings attributed to the term are far from consistent. In this document it is used to refer to the growing influence exerted at the local, national and regional levels by financial, economic, environmental, political, social and cultural processes that are global in scope. This definition of the term highlights the multidimensional nature of globalization. Indeed, although the economic facet of globalization is the most commonly referred to, it acts concomitantly with non-economic processes, which have their own momentum and therefore are not determined by economic factors. In addition, the tension that is generated between the different dimensions is a pivotal element of the process. In the economic sphere but also —and especially— in the broadest sense of the term, the current process of globalization is incomplete and asymmetric, and is marked by major shortcomings in the area of governance.
The dynamics of the globalization process are shaped, to a large extent, by the fact that the actors involved are on an unequal footing. Developed-country governments, together with transnational corporations, exert the strongest influence, while developing-country governments and civil society organizations hold much less sway. Moreover, these actors, particularly developed-country governments, reserve and exercise the right to take unilateral and bilateral action and to participate in regional processes, concurrently with their participation in debates and negotiations of global scope.
The neoliberal   point of view
Freer Trade?
Special Edition, December 2005 Web Exclusive
Sixty years of multilateral trade negotiations have resulted in ever-lower barriers and ever-higher economic growth worldwide. There is still a chance that the Doha Round — the current series of trade talks — could continue this pattern, but on the verge of the WTO's Hong Kong ministerial meeting, the prospects do not look good. In this special edition of Foreign Affairs, some of the world's top experts on international trade consider what will be necessary for the Doha Round to succeed — and what might happen if it does not.
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From UNRISD - October 2005
Methodological and Data Challenges to Identifying the Impacts of Globalization and Liberalization on Inequality

By Albert Berry
Globalization (the increasing degree of economic interaction among countries) and liberalization (reductions in government intervention in markets, partly with respect to international interaction but also more generally) are two of the defining features of the last couple of decades. Both have given rise to contentious debate, with views ranging from the very optimistic to the very sceptical. In this paper, Albert Berry reviews the evidence on how the two trends have affected inequality (and hence poverty) at the world level and within countries.
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The sources of neoliberal globalization
By Jan Aart Scholte
In reflecting on the future fate of neoliberalism, it is important to understand where the doctrine has come from and what sustains it: know the past and present in order to shape the future. On this inspiration, this paper offers an account of the institutional and deeper structural forces that have given neoliberalism its primacy in shaping globalization over the past quarter-century...What, more precisely, does globality entail? It is argued that globalization involves the growth of transplanetary—and in particular supraterritorial—connections between people. Hence, globality is in the first place a feature of social geography. A distinction therefore needs to be rigorously maintained between globalization as a reconfiguration of social space and neoliberalism as a particular—and contestable—policy approach to this trend.
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The Search for Policy Autonomy in the South: Universalism, Social Learning and the Role of Regionalism
By Norman Girvan
This paper argues the need for the South to secure greater autonomy in development policy... It utilizes a political economy analysis in the historical context of decolonization and contemporary globalization... in the 1950s, the new subdiscipline of development economics made a significant contribution to policy autonomy in the global South by legitimizing the principle that their economies should be understood within their own terms and by providing justification for policies that built up its industrial capabilities...However, the marginalization of development economics and its policies in the 1980s resulted in a marked discontinuity in the accumulation of policy experience in much of the South and the squandering of much of intellectual capital developed in the earlier period. Neoclassical economics and neoliberal policies ruled out the notion of an economics sui generis for the developing countries. Nonetheless, developments since the late 1990s have shown that the triumphalism was premature, as global social movements, financial crises, contradictions in the World Trade Organization (WTO) process and the shifting political climate in the South have served to undermine the Washington consensus and have re-opened space for academic enquiry and policy experimentation in the South and North.
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Globalization: Themes in Theories of Colonialism and Postcolonialism
-- The Concept of Globalization
Globalisation refers to the process of the intensification of economic, political, social and cultural relations across international boundaries. It is principally aimed at the transcendental homogenization of political and socio-economic theory across the globe. It is equally aimed at “making global being present worldwide at the world stage or global arena”. It deals with the “increasing breakdown of trade barriers and the increasing integration of World market (Fafowora, 1998:5). In other words, as Ohuabunwa, (1999: 20) once opined: "Globalisation can be seen as an evolution which is systematically restructuring interactive phases among nations by breaking down barriers in the areas of culture, commerce, communication and several other fields of endeavour."
This is evident from its push of free-market economics, liberal democracy, good governance, gender equality and environmental sustainability among other holistic values for the people of the member states.
The process of globalisation is impelled by the series of cumulative and conjunctural crises in the international division of labour and the global distribution of economic and political power; in global finance, in the functioning of national states and in the decline of the Keynesian welfare state and the established social contact between labour and government. In fact, its hallmark of free-market capitalism has been aided among other factors by the sudden though expected changes within the physiology of global political community in recent times.
Within the parameters of the foregoing, globalisation could be correctly defined from the institutional perspective as the spread of capitalism (MacEwan, 1990). However, it is germane to adumbrate that the collapse of the Eastern block in the late 80s and early 90s led to the emergence and ascendancy of a global economy that is primarily structured and governed by the interests of Western behemoth countries, thus, facilitating the integration of most economies into the global capitalist economy. With the demise of the Eastern Europe in the early 90s, capitalism as an economic system now dominates the globe more than it had been at any time in its history. Even, China, by far the largest non-capitalist economy, has undergone dramatic changes in its international economic policy orientation, and, is today the recipient of almost one-half of all foreign direct investments that go into developing nations - this is a country that essentially blocked all foreign investments until the 1980s (United Nations, 1995b). Beyond this simplistic analysis of globalisation in terms of capital inflows and trade investment, it is important to state that it has been of disastrous consequences to the governments and people of the African continent.
-- Postcoloniality and the Postcolony: Theories of the Global and the Local
-- English in Carthage; or, the "Tenth Crusade"
-- Globalization, Its Implications and Consequences for Africa
-- Imagining a Global Democratic Public Sphere: Reclaiming Feminism, Schooling and Economic Justice
--A review of Robin Goodman's World, Class, Women

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