Why Are Globalizers So Provincial?

A quick review of the national origins of leaders at the upcoming 2002 World Economic Forum reveals the provincial nature of purportedly global economic organizations. In order for institutions like the World Trade Organization to live up to their name, says MIT scholar Alice H. Amsden, leaders from semi-industrialized countries like Brazil, Mexico and China must be allowed among international business leadership. Their participation will be increasingly crucial as barriers between countries are eradicated, because developing countries and their emerging markets will be more easily accessible and unprotected. Although trade liberalization will also mean better access for developing countries to world markets, Amsden argues, a "level playing field" could ruin an emerging economy's infant industries. It is also unfair, she suggests, because many more-advanced countries did not have to abide by such rules in the early stages of their economic development and industrialization. – YaleGlobal