For thirty years, the World Bank has proposed policies that have produced few economic benefits but have eroded the traditional strengths of African society?even the Bank itself now admits this. But while African leaders, many propped up by the West, are often corrupt or incompetent, an impressive range of regional initiatives and small-scale coope

From the British Empire to the WTO, imperialism and its political economy have turned the world upside down. This volume of original essays by internationally noted scholars traces the spread of imperialism and capitalism and demonstrates that globalization is not a New Millennium phenomenon, but rather one with classic roots as well as contemporary reverberations.

For 30 years, the World Bank has proposed policies that have produced few economic benefits but have eroded the traditional strengths of African society. Examined here is that what Africans themselves are saying and doing indicates the basis for a continent's self-transformation and an agenda for the kind of support it desires.

The landscape of the world economy is changing rapidly, including new and much more powerful roles for the IMF and World Bank, as well as the rapid growth of wider free trade areas in North America and Europe. Current global trading arrangements, however, involve serious obstacles for exporters from the South as well as rivalries between the major economies. This book explores how the international trading system came into existence, the ways in which commodity markers work today, and why the poor countries of the South are facing not free trade, but unfair trade. It traces the stages of the world's economic development which has resulted in a this stark imbalance between North and South, following the chain of trade from crop to shop. The book's lessons are relevant to students, policy makers, and all those interested in a world trading system built on more than market muscle and the profit motive - a system that serves the interests of ordinary people everywhere.

Abel Aganbegyan, once Gorbachev's closest economic advisor, looks at the far-reaching effects of reconstruction on the Soviet economy.