Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Sunanda Sen provides, in the present book, an analysis of subordination faced by the developing countries of the global South, with implications which include their retarded development. Imposed by the advanced industrial countries, subordination of these countries includes an implicit compulsion on their part to follow neoliberal economic policies having broad acceptance from corporate capital as well as the Bretton Woods institutions from the global North.
Compliance with policies as above on the part of the subordinated countries is ensured by the liberalized global market, operating as an agent of corporate capital and the state overseas. Deviations, if any, from the prescribed neoliberal policies in the developing countries often encounter reprisals by the market with reversals of capital flows, mediating signals for the subordinated countries to look for conformity with remedial measures. Subordination as spelt out above is distinct from ‘dependence’ which prevailed in the post-war years till the mid-1970s, when official aid was the major string for overseas governments to exercise direct control over aid-receiving countries.
Moving from dependence, subordination faced by the developing nations came up along with liberalization of capital flows during the 1990s. It achieved for the overseas partners a steady flow of surpluses, while ensuring continuity of the prescribed policies with harmful consequences in the subordinated nations. The book also dwells on the economic dynamics of the structural changes which let finance attain dominance for those economies with deleterious consequences for the real economy.
Analysis in the book includes the conceptual aspects of both mainstream neoliberal policies and their heterodox critiques. The observed links between economic policies and the enabling sociopolitical environment supplement the arguments in the book which hopefully will open up a new dimension for analysing subordination and the lack of development.
The global interdependence of economies through international markets is historically associated with the exploitation of differences and the generation of asymmetries. Sunanda Sen’s book highlights the role of expanding markets in triggering cumulative processes of subordination of certain economies (or groups of economies) relative to others. The book is an ambitious exploration of the multi-faceted character of subordination as it unfolds through the various layers of economic interdependence from international division of labour to global financial flows.
Sunanda Sen’s exploration proposes asymmetry as a fundamental benchmark for interpreting the long-run dynamics of market relationships in the world economy. Her book is an invaluable contribution to understanding the relationship between market globalization and structural dynamics, and to assessing the complex trajectories along which patterns of subordination are currently challenged and transformed.