TORONTO, August 13, 2001 -- As free trade advocates and opponents gear up for the next meeting of the World Trade Organization in Qatar, a new book on globalization calls for the primacy of the public domain over the marketplace, and international institutions of government that will safeguard it.

The Market or the Public Domain: Global Governance & the Asymmetry of Power, edited by York University political economist Daniel Drache (Routledge, 2001), proclaims the end of the so-called Washington consensus -- the neo-liberal philosophy that championed the supremacy of the market as the great equalizer. Taking its place is a new notion of the public domain as a sanctuary of shared public interest.

In a series of 15 essays, leading political and economic thinkers say the failures of the market and the repercussions for stability of excluding large segments of the population from its benefits, show it is high time to reconnect global economic management to the social values and practices of individual states.

"Intellectual thinking about the big picture has undergone a dramatic transformation after the Seattle, Washington, and Prague protests and many experts as well as NGOs are beginning to conceptualize the global reconnect," writes Drache in his introduction to the book He offers a new notion of the public sphere as a dynamic, shared domain where the activities of the market, the state, and civil society intersect. It is governed by institutions built by political means, not as by-products of economic necessity, and protected from market intrusions that annex the public interest for private gain. The contemporary public domain, not to be confused with the public sector, is an entanglement of public interest and private markets.

"The fact is, the nation-state has not crumbled as the seat of public authority, but governance requires much more effort, ingenuity, focus, leadership and co-ordination than ever," writes Drache.

While the contributors offer a variety of views of what constitutes the new, global public good, they all agree on the need to devise new institutions of global governance that reconnect the market to the public domain.

Among the contributors:

• Economist George Kell and international political theorist John Ruggie say it is time to correct the imbalance in global rule-making of the past decade that has favoured trade and finance, and make comparable efforts on other global concerns, like the environment, human rights, poverty, food safety and international cartels. Both expert advisors to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, they offer Annan’s Global Compact as a modest step toward correcting the imbalance -- a voluntary code of conduct that challenges corporations to help the UN implement universal values in the neglected areas. Kell and Ruggie say the initiative has been well received by corporations that increasingly find themselves the target of civil society protests, bolstering recognition that markets require shared values and institutionalized practices in order to survive.

• Geoffrey Underhill, Chair of International Governance at the University of Amsterdam and a specialist on global finance and banking practices argues that trade liberalization should be built on firm socio-political foundations. "And we should think carefully about what we seek to achieve, or it will collapse," he says, noting that governments have partially lost their way by failing to ask what exactly is the public good or public purpose in this era of global financial integration.

• David Marquand, Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford University, and a political theorist of contemporary liberalism argues that the marketization of society has eroded public confidence in the public domain, requiring a re-invention of the concept.

• Harry Arthurs is University Professor of Law and Political Science at York University and a specialist in global labour standards and the role of law in globalization. He offers a sceptical view of the use of law and legal constitutions to reshape the public domain, warning that it can only be reconstructed, if at all, from the ground up. "Constitutionalism, will, at best, legitimize and reinforce this grass roots effort, not substitute for it."

• Amitav Acharya, Professor of Political Science at York University is an expert in South Asian security issues. In his study of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and MERCOSUR in Latin America, he argues that too much attention has been focused on the role of civil society actors in challenging neo-liberalism and regionalism, and not enough on the ability of state-led regional institutions to adapt to new circumstances that call for a more democratic approach to managing the public good. He says the second generation reforms at these institutions have a clear social agenda, including improvements in education, health care, social security and the administration of justice.

• Marcia Rioux, an authority on human disability and former director of a leading Canadian research centre on disability – the Roeher Institute in Toronto – and Ezra Zubrow, Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, show us how society’s treatment of the disabled highlights key issues about constructing a new public domain, as the boundaries between public and private responsiblity constantly shift.

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For further information, please contact:

Daniel Drache
Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies
York University
416-450-0100 (cell)
drache@yorku.ca

Susan Bigelow
Media Relations
York University
416-736-2100, ext. 22091
sbigelow@yorku.ca
YU/087/01