Introduction: Understanding Business Power and Public Policy in a Development Context

Abstract

Global trends and events in recent years — growing inequality, persistent poverty, climate change, food insecurity and the financial and economic crisis of 2008–9 — have called into question the development credentials and viability of a model of liberal capitalism that has been promoted by Northern governments and international financial institutions (IFIs), as well as business elites and technocrats from both the North and South. Core features of this model generated perverse distributional and social effects, particularly for developing countries. These included a low propensity for employment generation and decent work, the casualization of labour, the privatization of basic public services, financialization and a focus on short-term profitability and shareholder returns, economic concentration and the crowding out of smaller producers and enterprises, and the unlevel playing field for trade and investment that favoured some countries and business interests, and constrained others. Most problematic from the perspective adopted in this volume, however, are the rolling back of certain state functions and capacities, the residual status accorded to social policy and the disregard for power imbalances.