Robert O'Brien

The WTO and Civil Society

In line with a general trend in contemporary global governance, the World Trade Organization has been developing increased links with civil society groups. If conducted well, these contacts can make important contributions towards greater effectiveness and democracy in the global trade regime. If handled poorly, however, the relations can undermine policy and undercut democracy. Already the WTO and civic associations have taken notable steps to increase the quantity and quality of their mutual exchanges. Yet major resource constraints and deeper structural impediments have to date prevented a fuller development of this dialogue.

Global Social Policy Forum

This issue’s Forum is dedicated to the memory of Professor Peter Townsend, who sadly died in June 2009. Peter was a pioneer of Global Social Policy as a field of study and research and a champion of human rights from the outset. In the 1960s, he was developing a global analysis of world poverty combining the insights of global sociology with those of development studies with those of social policy. This work was published in The Concept of Poverty in 1970 where he set out an ‘approach to development and stratification [to explain] how poverty arises, and is perpetuated, in low income and high income countries’. It was this work that formed the basis for his theory of poverty, including the seminal Poverty in the UK (1979). The ‘domestic’ and ‘the international’ were, for Peter, inseparable realms of analysis and action. When it comes to explaining the production – and reproduction – of poverty and the systematic abuse of human rights, he maintained that a globalist analysis is an essential part of any coherent programme of research and action. Well known is his argument that poverty and wealth are directly related to one another. But less recognized is that this was articulated in global terms from the outset. The riches of (those living in) high income countries are, he argued, inextricably linked to poverty (of those living) in low income countries. This idea that poverty at home and abroad are directly connected is best articulated in the following quote: ‘A wealthy society which deprives a poor country of resources may simultaneously deprive its own poor classes through maldistribution of those additional resources’ (The Concept of Poverty, 1970: 42). G S P F O R U M 151

North American Regional Report Neoliberalism Wounded

With national elections in Canada and the USA, the autumn of 2008 was an extremely busy time for political economy and social policy in North America. However, of more pressing and perhaps longer lasting significance was the intensification of a financial crisis in the USA, which then spread to several other countries. That crisis is still evolving, but this report offers some initial views about the implications of the developments in US and global financial markets for the practice of global social policy. I begin by considering what happened and then move on to the possible implications for global social policy.