Poverty North-South: and Polarization
- South and the state of the South:
* 1 billion live in abject poverty
* $1-$2 a day income
* Lack basic nutrition/health care
* Mostly in Africa
* Every 6 seconds a child dies of malnutrition (5 million/ year)
- Poverty (nicknames of poor countries):
* Third world countries
* Less Developed countries
* Underdeveloped countries
* Developing countries
* Poverty is too stubborn in South
* Millennium Development Goals (2000)
- Cut in proportion of population living in extreme poverty
- Why Poor? Causes of Poverty
* Colonialism
- Foreigners overrun territory with force
- Install own governments
- Force natives to speak language of colonizers, adopt cultural practices, educated at their
schools
- Extracted minerals, eroded farmland, education directed towards whites
* Geography
* Culture
* Dependency Development
- Situation where capital accumulation cannot sustain itself internally -> must borrow
capital to produce goods -> debt payments reduce accumulation of surplus
- Why do we care?
* Human compassion
- We watch the news and television to see the negative impacts of poverty
* Economic potential
* Political and Security Concerns
- Hopelessness leads to terrorism
- War and violence
- Refugees
* Environmental concerns
- Epidemics
- How to get rich??
* Capitalism: natural accumulation of wealth
- Industrialization, investment, trade
* Socialism: redistribution of wealth
- Neo-international economic order
* No pure Capitalist/Socialist state
- All states have some form of redistribution
- Foreign Aid
- Revolution as radical way out?
* Political revolutions seek to change government
* Social revolutions seek to change class relations
* Communist Revolutions**
- North vs. South
* Political economy as well as international security
* Marxist strategies not working in South
- Development and Modernization
* Combination of:
- Capital accumulation
- Rising per capita incomes
- Increasing skills in population
- Adoption of new technologies
- Social and Economic change
* South faster growing pace than North
- BUT uneven throughout countries and even though faster pace still have long way to go
- Experiences of the NICs
* Newly Industrializing Countries to achieve self-sustaining capital accumulation and impressive
economic growth
* Semi-periphery states (light exported goods)
* Four Tigers or Four Dragons: Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore = most successful
- Experiences of China
* Largest growing population
* Fastest growing economy
* Mao Zedong (1949-1976) and Deng Xiaoping (1978-1997)
- Revolutionary to Developmental State
- Capitalism with one-party authoritarian regime
- Join the WTO
* Could overtake the US as largest economy
* Compatibility and Sustainability
- Experiences of India
* 2nd largest nation
* Worlds largest democracy
* Growth rate of 7%
- Experiences of others
* Best results come from Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan
* Latin America: Brazil and Mexico
* Africa: Nigeria, Ethiopia, And Democratic Congo
* Middle East
- Lessons
* Common Themes:
- Trade is KEY
- Concentration of capital and guided investment
- Authoritarianism
- Corruption
- Competing Strategies
* Import Substitution Industrialization vs. Export Led Growth
* ISI: against principle of comparative advantage, not effective
* ELG: developing industries compete in specific niches
- Receive subsidies and protected access to local markets
- Exports generate hard currency -> favorable trade balance
- Hard to sustain, highly successful in growth, technological upgrade
- How to help?
* Improve North-South capital flows: foreign Investment, debt, foreign aid
* Change rules: preferential trade
- New International Economic Order (NIEO)
* Simply rallying cry from South, extremely ineffective and unorganized
- IR System:
* Nature of international system
* Technological development
- Trends:
* Nonmilitary forms of leverage
* IPE: toward integration and disintegration among states
* Environmental damage
* North-South Relations
* The Future
- Questions about the future