Might, right, prosperity and consent: Representative democracy and the international economy 1919–2001

by Helen Thompson

This book offers an original analysis of the problem of the authority of the state in democracies. Unlike many discussions of democracy that treat authority as a problem primarily of domestic politics or normative values, this book puts the international economy at the center of the analysis.
The book shows how changes in the international economy from the inter-war years to the end of the twentieth century impacted upon the success and failures of democracy. It makes the argument by considering a range of different cases, and it traces the success and failure of democracies over the past century. It includes detailed studies of democracies in both developed and developing countries, and offers a comparative analysis of their fate. It will appeal to all those interested in democracy, the future of the state and the impact of the international economy on domestic politics.

Genres: Economics, Politics, History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is currently principal investigator on a research project on austerity and its consequences within the EU, which is financed by the Philomathia Foundation.

Reviews

[David Sogge · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the emergence of many new or remodelled nation states in the middle of the 20th century, democracy and national autonomy have gotten lots of applause and plenty of hopeful commentary. But for the past fifty years, robust respect for those things has failed to materialize. On the contrary, gaps between what's promised and what’s delivered seem to grow only wider – triggering domestic and international schisms and violence as a result.
This book departs from conventional approaches that confine themselves to domestic levels; instead it focuses on external forces that often set serious limits to the exercise of external sovereignty and internal authority. In case after case, outside economic, diplomatic and military pressures help to curtail, even destroy, representative democracy. Bogus consent and politics edge out the real things. As a result, states fail to respond to citizens, and talk about ‘the nation' becomes cheap and hollow.
A commanding factor here is the United States, along with the institutional apparatuses, from NATO to the IMF to the WTO and others that do its bidding. About those facts, public polemics and academic disputes have gone on loudly for a century or more. But in her chronicles and analyses the author never seems to raise her voice; she lets facts speak for themselves. Her counterfactuals -- things that could have happened, but didn't -- are especially illuminating as they put assembled facts further into relief.
Among the book’s many merits is its routine removal of the emperor’s multilateral clothes, such as invocations of ‘the international community’ under which US power often masquerades. It also reveals many turning-points I hadn’t been aware of, such as the secret agreement to recycle Saudi petrodollars to the US Federal Reserve and Wall Street in the wake of the 1973 OPEC oil price hike that the US had loudly condemned. As petrodollars, Eurodollars and de-regulation of capital flows feature prominently, I was surprised to find no mention of secrecy jurisdictions or offshore financial centres; those are, after all, major mechanisms, set in motion under Western law, that impoverish states and cripple democracies. Blowback (military, political, criminal, etc) from the consequences of incoherent politics also go unmentioned. But given that the need to take into account complexities and contingencies – unforeseen events and unpredictable driving forces – is a key message (and methodological starting-point) of this well-focused book, those omissions are understandable.
Now I’m curious to see if and how Thompson carries forward findings from this book (published 2008) in her new (2022) Disorder. Hard Times in the 21st Century.

[unperspicacious · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a keeper - glad I decided to read it.