Turbulence and New Directions in Global Political Economy

Turbulence and New Directions in Global Political Economy, James Busumtwi-Sam and Laurent Dobuzinskis, eds., Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2003, pp. xiv, 234. Few would argue with the observation that the world economy today presents a more changeable, unpredictable and unrecognizable environment than a mere decade ago. In the mid-1990s, at the heyday of the so-called “Washington Consensus,” neoliberal market orthodoxy appeared both predictably and triumphantly at global, regional and national levels: the World Trade Organization had emerged with great fanfare to ostensibly establish a new rules-based system for international trade; the North American Free Trade Agreement had been enacted to liberalize trade and investment across the continent; while the Maastricht Treaty had begun to exert fiscal constraint on the national policy priorities of European Union member states. Today's global political-economic setting is by contrast ideologically unsettled, destabilized by a post-Cold War, post-Seattle, and post-September 11 agitation, and beset by a host of new actors, emerging new power alignments and new capabilities. It is this state of turbulence and flux that is captured in this book, the varied contributions of which intelligently grapple with the challenges such unrest poses for practitioners and academic observers alike

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