Of course Marcus' points are true but politics is a necessarily
compromising beast.
The dominant global ideology is, of course, liberal and its incipient
political logic means that it is currently capable of sustaining itself
through supranational institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO, IOSCO, FSS
etc), private sector think tanks, as well as the more naked actions of
key governmental agencies (witness the NY Times report of 18 months ago
or so which demonstrated the ways in which the US State Department
(ab)uses its power to force deregulation.
Parochially, the British government is headed up by a strong
free-marketeer, albeit one with (something of) a social conscience.
Clearly, in this context DfID would be on a hiding to nothing if it
tried to argue for global Keynesianism.
However, it is also too easy for the left to blame globalisation as the
unceasing cause of underdevelopment. It is at least arguable
that liberal market rules for everyone are more transparent and
potentially fairer than bilateral 'agreements' either brokered between
the most powerful trading blocs which leave the poorer parts fo the
world out or where the powerful trading blocs dictate the terms of
trade according to the power of the negotiating partner. It is also
arguable (though unpalatable) that certain forms of corruption ARE
higher outside the 'developed' capitalist world (partly because
different forms of corruption become institutionalised in rich
countries and so become part of the accepted, partly because TNCs are
prepared to behave in corrupt ways, partly because polities and civil
society developed in different ways, and so on).
So, given this, why don't we celebrate Gordon Brown's interventions on
debt (after all, a Portillo chancellorship would hardly deliver this)
or the increased proportion of British GDP being spent on development
aid, or the decoupling of development assistance and trade, or the
(admittedly hesitant and slight) reduction of the arms industry? As
we're all sitting in one of the richest, most powerful, and most
polluting countries in the world, it seems just a little easy to decry
development and insist on intellectual purity. The same logic prevents
us from giving money to non-governmental development agencies on the
grounds that they make no difference.
As a post script, I don't want to lionise Clare Short, who really seems
to have bought into liberal rhetorical logics.
Adam Tickell
On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 11:10:25 -0000 Marcus Power
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Adam Tickell wrote:
> >
> > The point being that the UK government is committed to development
> > rather than easy and empty rhetorical gestures?
>
> To what extent does DFID represent the United Kingdom anyway?
> A commitment to 'development' is not incompatible with empty and
> rhetorical gestures as Alan Patterson points out in his message to
> the forum. A major problem with this white paper and its
> predecessor, 'Eliminating World Poverty', is that they both
> universalise 'abject poverty', reducing the complex struggles of poor
> people to a series of 'targets' to be met by the world's
> conscientious and enlightened donor community. To be critical of
> these targets is not to be a 'cynical and disillusioned academic' as
> Richard Johnson points out but to begin to interrogate the complex
> affiliations that New Labour has made with neoliberal orthodoxies
> and to tease out some of the contradications that result.
> Globalisation needs to be managed and 'harnessed' according to
> the white paper while at the same time promising an acceleration
> of trade liberalisation and a rolling back of the the frontiers of the
> state. The implication of the proposed 'Africa trade programme' is
> that Africa needs to learn how to trade 'properly' and according to
> rules prescribed by people like Tony Blair and Claire Short. 'Tough
> action on corruption' is also sought, but this is constructed as
> something that uniquely afflicts the 'world's poorest countries'.
>
> A commitment to 'development' is welcome but not if it is
> underwritten by a series of unproblematised assumptions about
> globalisation and trade.
>
> Marcus
----------------------
Adam Tickell
School of Geographical Sciences
University of Bristol
Bristol
BS8 1SS
0117 928 9038
http://www.ggy.bris.ac.uk/staff/ggatt/index.htm
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