Ethics & International Affairs Volume 20.2 (Summer 2006): Review Essay: Is Globalization Working? [Full Text]

The economic globalization of the 1990s did not go uncontested, either politically or intellectually. Public protests against the WTO at the Seattle Ministerial Conference in 1999, and later in Genoa, Cancun, and elsewhere, were accompanied by critical examinations of globalization by academics and activists alike. Joseph Stiglitz’s Globalization and Its Discontents and Dani Rodrik’s Has Globalization Gone Too Far? joined protest tracts like Naomi Klein’s No Logo to highlight the problems and shortcomings of neoliberal globalization. It was inevitable that these criticisms would attract counterfire from its defenders and boosters. Two of the most creditable responses in the spate of pro-globalization literature that followed are Why Globalization Works, by the financial journalist Martin Wolf, and In Defense of Globalization, by the economist Jagdish Bhagwati. This article is a review of these two books.