President Kikwete calls for efficient growth in a new era of Social Justice

(Media-Newswire.com) - GENEVA ( ILO News ) – At the 100th Session of the International Labour Conference Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete called for new approaches to address globalization by promoting an efficient growth path for a new era of Social Justice.

“The recent world economic and financial crisis has posed new challenges in the realization of the decent work agenda and threatens to erode some of lofty gains that the world has made in the past decades. These new challenges demand new approaches”, President Kikwete said in an address to the 100th International Labour Conference.

“Globalization, therefore, demands an objective and transformative leadership that can respond to these challenges by designing and promoting policies that can steer the world economy to a more just, equitable and sustainable development”, President Kikwete told more than 3,000 governments, worker and employer delegates from the ILO’s 183 Member States.

“We highly appreciate ILO’s leadership role in this important matter”, emphasized President Kikwete by recalling that “the ILO was among the first international organizations, if not the first, to raise the alarm on the negative trends of globalization”.

In introductory remarks, ILO Director-General Juan Somavia recalled that in 2007 President Kikwete spoke of “the necessity for a fairer globalization in the attainment of our development goals. In a way your words then augured many of the problems we are facing today”.

Mr. Somavia stressed: “You are a key actor – in Africa and the international stage – in this new era of social justice, that must emerge if we want peaceful world.”

“By focusing on “New Era of Social Justice”, the 100th Session of ILC ( ... ) put the emphasis on the importance of creating opportunities for decent work ( ... )”, acknowledged President Kikwete who urged “developing countries to design policies that promote efficient growth patterns that are inclusive, environmentally friendly and sustainable”.

“Achieving social justice and decent work in a globalized era has proven to be a daunting task for many developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa”, highlighted Mr. Kikwete.

“We also need to address the problem of unemployment which is ever increasing, particularly among the youths in developing countries.

From Poverty to Power by Duncan Green » Blog Archive » The ...

The Globalization Paradox, a great new book from Dani Rodrik

Dani Rodrik is one of the handful of heterodox heroes, prominent economists who took on the lazy thinking of the Washington Consensus in its prime, and continue to dance productively on its grave. His latest book, The Globalization Paradox: Why Global Markets, States and Democracy Can’t Coexist , feels like a Big Book, one that may shape a new way of thinking about the global economy.

It draws together several strands of Rodrik’s previous work on the WTO, growth take-offs, and the origins of the Global Financial Crisis into a single coherent whole. The result is one of the best critiques I’ve seen of the Washington Consensus. As he points out, with a paralysed global trade round, the collapse in financial globalization, and the rise of un-liberal China, the ‘stabilize, liberalize, privatize’ mantra of the early 1990s is wracked by self-doubt and well past its sell by date. A paradigm shift would seem imminent, but the old ways linger on partly for lack of a clear alternative. In The Globalization Paradox, Rodrik tries to address that gap.

The central argument is that the global economy faces a ‘trilemma’. We cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination and what he terms the ‘hyperglobalization’ of the last 30 years. You can have any two of three: nation states can hyperglobalize, opening up fully to global flows of capital and goods, but the result will include periodic crises and popular unrest that will have to be crushed if openness is to be preserved – democracy is inevitably the loser.

For Rodrik, the preferred combination is a no-brainer: ‘democracy and national self-determination should trump hyperglobalization’, which should be put back in its box. Instead we should return to a new version of the ‘shallow multilateralism’ of the Bretton Woods system that held sway from 1950-80 and delivered unprecedented growth and social progress, with its pluralistic acceptance of capital controls, national opt-outs and industrial policy – what is now called ‘policy space’. That room for manoeuvre, and acceptance of diversity, is essential to restore stability to the global economy, disrupted by the monoculture of liberalization and one-size-fits all thinking. Rodrik likens this ‘thin version of globalization’ to keeping the windows open, but with a mosquito screen. You get the fresh air, but keep out the bugs.

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