Sometimes it appears that the democratic left is engaged in the labour of Sisyphus. Sisyphus, according to the Greek myth, was condemned by the gods to spend eternity in an utterly futile task: to push a boulder to the top of a hill, only to see it roll down to the bottom each time. Leaders of the left have their own peculiar burden to shoulder. When progressive parties pursue a moderate strategy of accommodation with capitalism, they may achieve egalitarian gains but rarely enough to satisfy their militant followers. But if they pursue a more confrontational stance vis-à-vis inherited structures of privilege and power, they risk instigating an economic crisis that may usher in a crushing political crisis as well. This pattern is evident in the Global South, the focus of this post, but it probably applies also to the Global North. Continue reading
Tag Archives: China
Neoliberal Globalization: Are the Times a-Changin’?
Neoliberalglobalization since the late 1970s has restricted the policy autonomy of national states through a variety of pressures that “discipline” governments implementing measures deemed hostile to free markets. Yet the world is changing fast and the rise of China in particular is shifting the global power balance. Strangely, however, remarkably little has changed in the global order beyond some reshuffling of the dominant players and somewhat greater national independence in decision making. This argument is made at length in Civilizing Globalization, which I recently co-edited with Ali Burak Guven. Continue reading
Catastrophic Climate Change: How Should We Respond?
How many years do we have to prevent catastrophic climate change? Much of the debate, especially that involving governments, is conducted on the premise that we have ample time to make the necessary changes. For instance, the Chinese government’s recent commitment that China’s emissions of GHGs will peak in 2030 was met with broad approval. But the scientific research suggests that we actually have much less time to drastically reduce our GHS emissions than is generally thought. Continue reading
Climate Change and the Left in the Global South
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Can the #Left in the Global South mitigate climate change any better than the neoliberals? A lot rides on the answer because the trends in this neoliberal era are particularly dire in the tropics. In many countries, populations have doubled in less than 30 years. Meanwhile, rising incomes have vastly expanded the level of consumption of national populations. When global warming is added to this equation, various unfortunate consequences follow. Continue reading
The Politics of Taking Sustainability Seriously
NOTES FOR A LECTURE
I. INTRODUCTION
(a) The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as developed by the UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development in 2014, represent nothing less than a depiction of the Good Society. Continue reading