Book of the Month

The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. Dani Rodrick (Prof of International Political Economy, Harvard U). NY: W.W. Norton, Feb 2011, 346p, $26.95.

The Globalization Paradox

The basic narrative on globalization has lost its credibility and appeal, and a new narrative is needed, based on two simple ideas: strong markets and governments are complementary, and prosperity and stability can and should be attained in many ways. These ideas have "enormous implications" for globalization and democracy, because we can't pursue both at the same time. The ultimate paradox is that reempowering national democracies with a thin layer of international rules will put the world economy on a healthier footing. Seven principles for "Capitalism 3.0" and a new globalization are offered, and then applied to four key challenges: reforming the international trade regime (the current Doha Round strategy isn't working), regulating global finance (responsibility should be at the national level), liberalizing global labor flows (doing so would produce far more benefit than any trade agreement), and accommodating China (before a major backlash develops). This new paradigm for "smart and sane globalization" surely deserves consideration.

Dani Rodrick offers a fresh and thoughtful new way to think about the global economy. Can other new paradigms also provide help, and perhaps strengthen Rodrick's argument for "sane globalization"?

GFB provides a special listing of some 60 Paradigm-Breaking Books in many areas. Among these books are ten that may be especially relevant:

• Free Trade Doesn't Work by Ian Fletcher (US Business and Industrial Council, Jan 2010) argues that absolutely free trade is an extremist position, which complements Rodrick's revisionist view that all-out trade policy is faulty.
• Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom by David Harvey (Columbia Univ Press, July 2009) calls for an emancipatory form of global governance.
• Commonwealth by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (Harvard/Belknap, Oct 2009) outlines an ethics of freedom for living in our common world, and governance adequate for a global commonwealth.
• Darwin's Second Revolution by David Loye (Benjamin Franklin Press, 2010) offers a new view of Darwin's writings that emphasizes moral qualities driving evolution, not survival of the fittest, and calls for a new Global Ethic.
• Factor Five: Transforming the Global Economy through 80% Improvement In Resource Productivity by Ernst von Weizsacker et al. (Report to the Club of Rome, Earthscan, Dec 2009) describes our unique historic opportunity to scale up resource efficiency.
• Fast Forward: Ethics and Politics in the Age of Global Warming by William Antholis and Strobe Talbott (Brookings Institution Press, June 2010) argues for a new mindset: rather than a global treaty on climate change, a less formal process is needed.
• Global Development Outlook 2010 (OECD, Aug 2010) considers the view of the world as divided by developed and developing countries to be outdated, and calls for rethinking on how to promote progress.
• To Change the World by James Davison Hunter (Oxford U Press, April 2010) sees Christian action as ineffectual, and argues for a different paradigm of Christian engagement.
• Megaregions edited by Catherine L. Ross (Island Press, June 2009) views concepts of the city and state as obsolete, and megaregions as the new scale for economic growth.
• Crafting State-Nations by Alfred Stephan et al. (Johns Hopkins Univ Press, Dec 2010) explains how to accommodate distinct ethnic and cultural groups.

What are the similarities and differences of these new paradigms? Do they complement and reinforce each other to a great degree, a minor degree, or not at all? Or do they compete with each other?

Such an ongoing integrative assessment is well beyond the scope of GFB, but it is needed far more than another new idea thrown on the growing pile of undigested but necessary revisionist thinking. A relatively small effort in seeing if and how the pieces fit together horizontally could have a large payoff in improved understanding.

Special Alert: Internet Downsides

We can't live without the Internet, which has enabled many wondrous things, but perhaps we can't live with it either.

Under Search by Subject, there are currently 19 items under "Internet," and a dozen or so additional items under "Communication." About a half-dozen books are concerned with Internet governance issues. A couple books show the promising upside of the net, e.g. Digital Medicine (Brookings, March 2010) and Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology is Reshaping the Economy (MIT Press, Sept 2009). 

However, there are a number of notable recent books on the downside of the Internet. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (W.W. Norton, June 2010; GFB Book of the Month) argues convincingly that the net is re-routing our neural pathways, and promoting cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. A similar warning is made in Virtually You: The Internet and the Fracturing of the Self by Stanford psychiatrist Elias Aboujaoude (W.W. Norton, Feb 2011), who says we spend too much time online, making us impatient and unfocused. In Alone Together (Basic Books, Jan 2011), MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle worries that much of our modern life online leaves us less connected and more isolated. Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson (Prometheus Books, Sept 2009) says we are damaging our capacity for deep attention in a culture of diffusion and fragmentation.

Texture: Human Expression in the Age of Information Overload by Richard H. R. Harper (MIT Press, Nov 2010) argues that too many technologies assume that more is better. What Is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis of Journalism by Jack Fuller of the Chicago Tribune (U of Chicago Press, May 2010) views infoglut as making us more receptive to sensational news. Similarly, Losing the News by Alex S. Jones of Harvard (Oxford U Press, Aug 2009) mourns the loss of fact-based reporting that serves as public watchdog and warns that declining commitment to serious news will weaken democracy.

The supposed freedom of the Internet may also be limited, perhaps increasingly so. Access Controlled edited by Ronald Deibert et al. (MIT Press, April 2010) presents findings of the Open Net Initiative at U of Toronto and Harvard, on increased filtering, surveillance, and censorship worldwide. Similarly, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of the Internet by Evgeny Morozov (Public Affairs, Jan 2011) describes how authoritarian regimes are effectively using the Internet to suppress free speech, noting that greater access to information can pacify a population as well as incite it. The Future of the Internet-and How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain (Yale U Press, Feb 2009) warns that the net is on a path to a lockdown and new kinds of control.

The Offensive Internet edited by two U of Chicago law profs, Saul Levmore and Martha Nussbaum (Harvard U Press, Jan 2011) critiques the lack of regulation and the frontier mindset leading to abuses. Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords by Joseph Menn (Public Affairs, Feb 2010) describes the evolution of cybercrime and shows it is much worse than thought. Finally, there is the growing threat of cyberwar, e.g.: Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security by Richard A. Clarke and Robert Knake (HarperCollins, April 2010) and Surviving Cyber War by Richard Stiennon (Rowman & Littlefield, April 2010).

Further information on these 14 "downside" books can be accessed at GFB by subject, author, or publisher. They should be seriously considered--especially all together.

Search Specific Issues 

GFB's Browse by Subject feature offers perhaps a thousand A-Z descriptors of both general and specific topics. The January GFB Update briefly described what can be found under the headings of Children, China, and Climate. To provide further examples, consider what can be found under "D".

The generic listing for Democracy has 35 items, including books on measurement, threats, grass-roots democracy, Islam and democracy, and the US agenda to promote democracy.

The generic listing for Development offers some 100 items, with specific listings for questioning development, a 50-year outlook for development (by Barry Hughes), and the relationship of development to land tenure, water, sanitation, security, NGOs, foreign direct investment, artisan work as an important income source, etc.

The generic listing for Disaster has 7 items, with specific topics focusing on prediction, prevention, reduction of damage, response, and reconstruction. With many more disasters in the offing, in part due to global warming, these books will assist preparedness.

The generic listing for Drugs also has 7 items, including books on addiction, drug education, treatment, and the ruinous drug wars.

Easy Link to Amazon.com 

Note the Amazon.com widget at the bottom of GFB search results, which will greatly facilitate ordering of new (and sometimes used) current affairs books, often at a substantial price discount. We encourage you to order books via this Amazon link because GFB gets a small commission on each sale, which, accumulated over time, might help in sustaining this website.