Do Global Trade Institutions Marginalize the Poor?

Abstract

Backwaters of Global Prosperity: How Forces of Globalization and GATT/WTO Trade Regimes Contribute to the Marginalization of the World's Poorest Nations. Edited by Caf Dowlah. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. 220 pp., $84.95 (ISBN: 0-275-98043-X). Backwaters of Global Prosperity by Caf Dowlah, focuses on the expanding group of least developed countries (LDCs) that have been largely excluded from the benefits of economic globalization. Situated within the literatures on both globalization and development, the book's core concern is real and of great consequence. Indicators show a pronounced gap between developed and developing countries. Even as advanced industrial economies grow stronger, more nations suffer extreme poverty, poor heath, substandard education, and substantial economic vulnerability. The crisis is global and severe. Dowlah's primary objective is to convince readers that globalization broadly and the institutions that support the multilateral trade regime specifically—that is, the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO)—have played a significant, causal role in marginalizing the world's poorest economies while allowing developed countries to reap the benefits. In Dowlah's words (p. 12): There are literally mountains of evidence that suggest that the LDCs have increasingly been marginalized in the rapidly globalizing world economy, and much of this debacle can be attributed to economic globalization, to the processes of economic integration of trade, migration, technology, and financial flows around the world, that took place during the second wave of globalization (1945–1980). Backwaters of Global Prosperity presents an array of summary statistics to illustrate the marginalization of the LDCs, which have grown in number from 24 in 1971 to 50 by 2003. By definition, the LDCs are marginalized states with substandard per capita income, weak nutrition, poor health, limited education, low literacy, and substantial economic vulnerability. To explain this trend, Dowlah turns to the multilateral trade regime and asks how the GATT and WTO have contributed to the marginalization of the LDCs in the contemporary world economy. He argues that successive trade rounds have had adverse and discriminatory effects on developing countries, …