Worlds apart

Against the backdrop of the vivid debate of the seventies, the sunny discourse which nowadays greets every sign of a long awaited recovery - for the time being a consumer-led upturn that may prove short-lived and inflation prone-seems naive, and certainly irrelevant to and oblivious of the sorry state of affairs which afflicted the North South relationship before the onset of the crisis.

The dangers inherent in the indebtedness of a dozen countries tend to obscure, if not obliterate, the more enduring features of the development and cooperation problematique, the search for poverty oriented strategies, for a reduction in inequalities, both within and among nations, in short for less unequal futures".

A return to the pre-crisis status quo is not what the book of Sam Cole and Ian Miles is about. Rather it has its roots in the long "winter of discontent that caused the better part of the academic and other research centres to reconsider - and amend or reject - a number of the premises around which a certain philosophy had taken shape in the postwar era. The book examines the flaws of our social organization, which today more frequently erupt in violent political upheavals. within an international context severely constraining national options, political as well as economic and social. As the diagnosis unfolds, it reveals a world of paradoxes, unintended effects of decisions made or advocated, unanticipated turning points in observable trends, disputes over interpretations once seen as incontrovertible, perceived dangers

in the attempt to generalize any findings. Intellectual perplexities are compounded by severe ethical challenges which are the result of ambivalences in large sectors of the economy. For instance, in a world where growth transmission from North to South continues to play a major role (though no longer recognized as the most effective engine of development) even undesirable behaviour on the part of the industrial North may have positive effects on the South, as long as a very broad transformation of their societies is not plausible. This is the case, for instance, with the extravagent consumption habits of Western countries, and even more distressingly with the frightening arms race. It is unfortunately true that, as the glaring budget deficit in the US emerges as the most dynamizing element of the world economic recovery, the role of the arms build-up cannot remain unnoticed.

In such a quandary it would be idle to pretend that methodological issues have been solved and do not, more than ever, require priority attention. Sophisticated anlysis is needed particularly by those whose research, as is the case in this book, is directed to more rapid social improvement, which postulates that the causes of poverty be under stood and exposed. The book is the product of a far-ranging investigation, undertaken under the auspices of UNITAR, an UN organization not subject to governmental or intergovernmental control, and therefore enabled to carry out independent research, including inquiries into the consistency of UN grand designs and other important legislative documents. These latter are usually negotiated comprises, sometimes (as with the New International Economic Order) embodying powerful institutions not analytically elucidated, at other times (as with the International Development Strategy) based on professional studies of high quality, but disinclined to depart from conventional analysis.

Most of the time, the setting of such research must be that of a mixed economy with an important market sector. This is the regime under which the vast majority of economies operate, and if any attempt to improvement is to succeed, in the direction of income redistribution, satisfaction of basic needs, general welfare of the masses, and the loosening of dependency from the North, the mechanisms associated with the markets must be closely identified. Otherwise, the nature and areas of corrective intervention will not be accurately defined. This is not proclaiming a belief in the 'magic of the market, but rather in the necessity to recognize the 'power of the market', lest it defeat the best intentions of the 'voluntarists'.