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In Defense of Globalization. By Jagdish Bhagwati. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 308 pp. $28.00. ISBN 0-19-517025-3.
Jagdish Bhagwati is a distinguished economist whose major contribution must be the delineation, with Anne Krueger, of the outward-oriented strategy for economic development. Successful adoption of this strategy by the little tigers of East Asia required that the markets of industrialized nations be open to East Asian exports. Bhagwati can now be legitimately seen as the pre-eminent spokesperson for open markets between industrialized and developing countries, and he must be considered the reigning authority on the benefits to developing countries from interaction with OECD members. Since open markets for goods and services are an important component of economic globalization, Bhagwati's interest in, and support for, globalization follow naturally. The question of the benefits of closer integration among the industrialized countries is not addressed in this book.
In Defense of Globalization provides a wide-ranging review of economic globalization, and assesses its benefits and its costs. It finds wanting the reasons for opposing globalization. It also shows an understanding of the socioeconomic problems that globalization can aggravate or create, and urges creation of an institutional framework to ensure that globalization be beneficial [32].
Opposition to globalization comes in three forms [13-24]: anti-capitalist, anti-globalist and anti-corporation. Also, a strand of opposition derives from the dominant global economic role of the United States over the last fifty years. For those who think of non-government organizations (NGOs) as benign, altruistic forces, Chapter Four provides a startling analysis that anti-globalization forces can work effectively in the guise of NGOs.
Part II assesses the effects of economic globalization on poverty, child labor, the treatment of women, democracy, national culture, wages and labor standards, ecological concerns, and the role of foreign corporations in the host country.
Part III deals with free financial capital movements (portfolio investments) and migration. Treatment of these issues is brief, and the reader is promised in-depth treatment of these topics in the future. Because the 1997 Thai baht crisis is often seen as a consequence of globalization, this reviewer would like to support Bhagwati's...