The looming global financial crisis: time to re-think development and democracy 2.0
This event took place on Tuesday 01 April 2025, 7.00pm to 8.30pm at LSE
In 2006 Professor Bienefeld gave a public lecture at LSE by the very same title, anticipating the global financial crisis of 2007. In that lecture he argued that this crisis would (should?) finally persuade people and policy makers that the neoliberal mantras of "free trade" and of the single-minded empowerment of global market actors, was not a recipe for "development," if only because it eroded the capacity of governments to manage their economies in accordance with the values and priorities of their citizens.
Unfortunately, although there was some talk of a renewed focus on national sovereignty shortly after that crisis, this was soon forgotten as the main focus shifted to the urgent need to manage the debt mountains accumulated in the course of bailing out the financial institutions that had caused the crisis - and then again, in the course of forestalling the economic collapse threatened by the Covid disruptions. And so now, as a new global financial crisis threatens, the same contradictions cry out for resolution, only this time more urgently and more critically.
Indeed, globally the emergence of the BRICS signals a recognition of the need for a new international order with renewed respect for national sovereignties, while in almost all of the developed world political balances are being disrupted by nationalist sentiments that are increasingly difficult to manage, or even to understand. Unless one understands that democracy is not even conceivable unless it pertains to "a society" whose members identify as such, and believe that they share sufficient common interests to allow them to negotiate their remaining differences peacefully through the ballot box.
About the speaker
Manfred Bienefeld is Professor Emeritus, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, Ottawa. Early critic of IMF/World Bank structural adjustment and exponent of dependency theory and the developmental state. Author of 1994 TWQ paper warning that the end of the Cold War would not lead to a peace dividend in a multipolar world, but to a unipolar world, hell bent on globalizing a neoliberal economic model that was so divisive and unsustainable that its imposition would require increasingly militaristic methods - by an increasingly "imperialistic" power.
About the discussant
Radhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, Visiting Professor, Department of International Development, LSE. Her work ranges over international political economy, comparative politics and political theory. Her most recent book is Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy (2023, Open Access, Knowledge Unlatched)
About the Chair
Robert Wade is Professor of Political Economy and Development in Department of International Development at LSE. Professor Wade worked at Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, 1972-95, World Bank, 1984-88, Princeton Woodrow Wilson School 1989/90, MIT Sloan School 1992, Brown University 1996-2000. Fieldwork in Pitcairn Is, Italy, India, Korea, Taiwan.
Growth, innovation and singularities: are we sustainable?
Tuesday 18 March 2025 7pm to 8.30pm, Hong Kong Theatre.
Speaker: Professor Geoffrey West, Distinguished Professor and former President of the Santa Fe Institute
Chair: Professor Jean-Paul Faguet, Professor Political Economy of Development, LSE
Why do people and companies stop growing, age and then die, whereas cities keep growing with the pace of life continuing to accelerate? And how about the planet? Can the super-exponential growth of the anthroposphere be sustained or are we on the edge of some major transition? Is "the end of the world nigh”? And how is all of this related to the dynamics of innovation, wealth creation, social networks and urbanisation?
These are among the questions that will be explored in this lecture. Although life is the most complex and diverse phenomenon in the Universe, almost all its characteristics from cells to cities obey surprisingly simple, “universal” scaling laws which constrain much of the organisation and dynamics of biological, ecological and socio-economic life. These include metabolism, growth, development, lifespans, energy, patents, pollution, roads, crime and disease. These coarse-grained laws originate in the generic underlying mathematical properties of social, infrastructural, resource and information networks that sustain life across all scales. They lead to dramatic consequences for long-term growth, development and sustainability, including the emergence of impending singularities and tipping points.
Can the resulting open-ended super-exponential growth, fueled by innovation and wealth creation, be sustained or does it sow the seeds for eventual collapse?
Hosted by the Department of International Development and the Global School of Sustainability