BOOK REVIEW: Democracy, Redistribution and the WTO: A Comment on Quinn Slobodian's book Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism Harvard University Press, 2018

A Comment on Quinn Slobodian's book Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism Harvard University Press, 2018 Quinn Slobodian's book is an intellectual history of neoliberal thinking on the world economic order, starting with the demise of the Habsburg Empire and climaxin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:World Trade Review 2019, Vol.18 (2), p.353-359
Main Author: Roessler, Frieder
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Democracy
Exports
Neoliberalism
Social justice
Tariffs
Trade agreements
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:A Comment on Quinn Slobodian's book Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism Harvard University Press, 2018 Quinn Slobodian's book is an intellectual history of neoliberal thinking on the world economic order, starting with the demise of the Habsburg Empire and climaxing in the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The function of the WTO, so Slobodian concludes, is to provide the required legal and institutional framework on the global scale and to protect the world market against disruptive demands for social justice and redistribution. Against this background, it seems strange to me to imagine that the governments negotiating the WTO Agreement, influenced by neoliberal thinking, sat down to protect the world market against the threat of democracy and redistributive policies, as Slobodan claims. [...]their primary objective was to devise a code of conduct and an institutional framework that would help them to protect themselves against domestic pressure groups seeking privileges at the expense of the nation as a whole, a framework that they could invoke to rationalize
ISSN:1474-7456
1475-3138
DOI:10.1017/S1474745619000156