Exam 7: Globalization and Development

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In the early 1990s, when the concept of globalization became widely used, many scholars and policy-makers working on development were taken aback. One of those was Fernando Henrique Cardoso, one of the founders of the famous dependency school that had such great influence on thinking in development stud?ies in the 1970s. He changed his ear?lier interpretation of the causes of underdevelopment, giving this globalization-and-development debate a rather provocative spin. After becoming the president of Brazil in 1994, Cardoso argued that past development theories were dead and buried and that everything he had said about development was wrong! Instead, he proposed that development required full integration into the world system, which implied, in turn, accepting the terms of current macroeconomic policies as they were defined a decade before in the Washington Consensus. Under Cardoso's presidency, the social and economic priorities of Brazil were refocused to adjust to the needs and requirements of international markets. Yet a few decades previously, Cardoso and many of his colleagues in development studies had been arguing that the only path to devel?opment was to "delink" from international capitalism. Globalization meant that Brazil and other devel?oping countries that had challenged a world economic system that had seemed to benefit the rich countries were changing paths, and as a result, most of the nations of the world sought to further integrate into the capital?ist system under the rubric of Washington Consensus-style policies. These broad policies were promoted by the G7, an informal association of the richest countries in the world (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States). For former President Cardoso and other heads of state of the developing world, there was simply no alternative in the early stage of globalization. In the 1990s, this "mode of development" had appeared to be successful in the form of the "East Asian miracle." Developing countries in that part of the world had found competitive niches and succeeded in attracting foreign capital, thereby triggering economic growth and development.

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The "Arab Spring" in 2011 pushed out long-established dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt. It was triggered by the self-immolation in December 2010 of a young unemployed street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, pro?testing his condition. Thousands of Tunisians took to the streets and, unarmed, confronted security forces- leading ultimately to the collapse of the regime. The Arab Spring was followed by protests against economic austerity in southern Europe, notably in Spain and Greece. The occupation of public places, the takeover of closed-down factories, and the massive use of social media to spread the word and to systematically expose the negative impacts of neoliberal policies, massive corruption, and elite complicity across state bounda?ries have continued for several years.