Globalization and Poverty, and the Poverty of Globalization Theory

Abstract

This article intervenes in the ongoing ‘globalization debate’ by focusing on two apparently separate debates: on the links between trade liberalization, growth and poverty reduction; and on theories that give too much explanatory weight to the concept of globalization. These two separate debates have close parallels, and in both cases causality and outcome are conflated, with the result that globalization is given far too much causal significance. The article critically reviews the evidence for and against recent claims that global poverty has declined over the last 20 years. This is related to earlier debates in development studies between modernization and under-development theory. Although the article does not accept the earlier claims of the latter theory, it rejects modernization theory and suggests that much of the claims made for poverty reduction repeat the assumptions of this theory, albeit in a neoliberal form. This argument is used to consider the claims of ‘globalization theory’, which is contrasted with more critical theories of globalization. The author suggests that, like the claims made for poverty reduction and its causes, this theory conflates outcomes and causes and is essentially a new form of (neoliberal) modernization theory.