Civilizing Globalization: A Survival Guide

by Richard Sandbrook (Editor), Ali Burak Guven (Editor)

Discusses the many facets of globalization and its feasible reform in easy-to-understand language.

Is it possible to harness the benefits of economic globalization without sacrificing social equity, ecological sustainability, and democratic governance? The first edition of Civilizing Globalization (2003) explored this question at a time of widespread popular discontent. This fully revised and expanded edition comes at an equally crucial juncture. The period of relative stability and prosperity in the world economy that followed the release of the first edition ended abruptly in 2008 with a worldwide economic crisis that illustrated in dramatic fashion the enduring problems with our global order. Yet despite the gravity of the challenges, concrete initiatives for change remain insubstantial. Richard Sandbrook and Ali Burak Güven bring together international scholars and veteran activists to discuss in clear, nontechnical language the innovative political strategies, participatory institutional frameworks, and feasible regulatory designs capable of taming global markets so that they assume the role of useful servants rather than tyrannical masters.

“ Civilizing Globalization develops a social democratic vision of globalization and global governance for the twenty-first century. The book presents a powerful case for regulating global markets so that the economy serves society and the environment, not the reverse. It is a wonderful contribution by an eminent group of scholars.” — Ziya Öniş, Koç University

372 pages, Paperback

First published January 2, 2015

About the author

With both statist and market-based models of governance having failed at a time of enormous challenges, especially climate change, where do we turn? This is the central question that has animated my study and writing during the past 15 years. My focus has been the global south, though the old distinction between developed/less-developed, First World/Third World is increasingly irrelevant in this global age.

I am a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto who recently “retired” after 41 years of service. However, I remain active as a teacher and writer. I have focused my research since 2000 on three specific topics: the experience of the democratic left in the Global South, the relevance of social-democratic thinking to the reshaping of the neoliberal global order and the utility of a framework based on Karl Polanyi’s “double movement” for understanding counter-hegemonic struggles. I have conducted field work mainly in Africa, and have also travelled widely in Latin America and Asia. I have published about 60 scholarly articles and chapters and 12 books, most recently Reinventing the Left in the Global South: The Politics of the Possible (October 2014)and Civilizing Globalization: A Survival Guide: Revised and Expanded Edition (2014) with Ali Burak Guven.

Currently, I am returning to a topic that interested me in the 1980s: personal rule. I seek to understand the reciprocal relationship between neo-patrimonialism and mass poverty as part of a study group on the political economy of immiserizing growth.