Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge

Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge PDF Author: ALEX HIMELFARB
Publisher: James Lorimer & Company
ISBN: 1459419472
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Neoliberalism – idealizing free-market capitalism – sets the boundaries for how we are governed in Canada, no matter who is in power. Author ALEX HIMELFARB explores why these ideas persist when the need for dramatic action on issues like inequality and global warming is obvious to all. Neoliberalism – free market capitalism and the view that “freedom” is society’s highest value – has become embedded in the fabric of Canadian government and society. Neoliberal theorists, marginalized for decades after the Second World War, saw their ideas embraced by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who implemented their policies in the 1980s and 90s. Neoliberalism arrived in Ottawa with the Mulroney government in 1984, and has continued as widely accepted common sense about government until today. Neoliberalism’s basic tenets – reduce public services in favour of privatization, cut taxes to benefit business, demonize government deficits, limit government regulation and enable corporations to self-regulate – continue to be promoted by its corporate champions and think tank advocates. Yet the experiences of the last decade in Canada and internationally have demonstrated the emptiness of neoliberalism and demonstrated the crucial role government plays in society. Challenges – from financial market crises to the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change – underscore how vital government action can be in our lives.

Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge

Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge PDF Author: ALEX HIMELFARB
Publisher: James Lorimer & Company
ISBN: 1459419472
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book Here

Book Description
Neoliberalism – idealizing free-market capitalism – sets the boundaries for how we are governed in Canada, no matter who is in power. Author ALEX HIMELFARB explores why these ideas persist when the need for dramatic action on issues like inequality and global warming is obvious to all. Neoliberalism – free market capitalism and the view that “freedom” is society’s highest value – has become embedded in the fabric of Canadian government and society. Neoliberal theorists, marginalized for decades after the Second World War, saw their ideas embraced by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who implemented their policies in the 1980s and 90s. Neoliberalism arrived in Ottawa with the Mulroney government in 1984, and has continued as widely accepted common sense about government until today. Neoliberalism’s basic tenets – reduce public services in favour of privatization, cut taxes to benefit business, demonize government deficits, limit government regulation and enable corporations to self-regulate – continue to be promoted by its corporate champions and think tank advocates. Yet the experiences of the last decade in Canada and internationally have demonstrated the emptiness of neoliberalism and demonstrated the crucial role government plays in society. Challenges – from financial market crises to the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change – underscore how vital government action can be in our lives.

Breaking the WTO

Breaking the WTO PDF Author: Kristen Hopewell
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503600025
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The world economic order has been upended by the rise of the BRIC nations and the attendant decline of the United States' international influence. In Breaking the WTO, Kristen Hopewell provides a groundbreaking analysis of how these power shifts have played out in one of the most important theaters of global governance: the World Trade Organization. Hopewell argues that the collapse of the Doha Round negotiations in 2008 signals a crisis in the American-led project of neoliberal globalization. Historically, the U.S. has pressured other countries to open their markets while maintaining its own protectionist policies. Over the course of the Doha negotiations, however, China, India, and Brazil challenged America's hypocrisy. They did so not because they rejected the multilateral trading system, but because they embraced neoliberal rhetoric and sought to lay claim to its benefits. By demanding that all members of the WTO live up to the principles of "free trade," these developing states caused the negotiations to collapse under their own contradictions. Breaking the WTO probes the tensions between the WTO's liberal principles and the underlying reality of power politics, exploring what the Doha conflict tells us about the current and coming balance of power in the global economy.

Canada after Harper

Canada after Harper PDF Author: Ed Finn
Publisher: James Lorimer & Company
ISBN: 1459409434
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Most Canadians know that Stephen Harper has had a tremendous impact on the country since becoming prime minister in 2006. But few have the in-depth knowledge of how far his transformation has gone -- what has already been done, and what the consequences will be in the future. This book brings together Canadian experts in a wide variety of areas. They document key changes put in place by the Harper government. There have been dramatic changes in education, health care, women's rights, science and research, guiding the economy, labour unions, water and natural resources, and aboriginal affairs. Most of these measures have been designed to be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. Readers will for the first time grasp the breadth and depth of the Harper attack on institutions, policies, and programs that embody values and principles shared by most Canadians. Each chapter documents the dangers of a government fixated on the needs of corporations and the one percent, blinded to our environmentally unsustainable lifestyle, and expanding surveillance and security measures to intimidate and threaten opponents. The contributors to this book believe that engagement in public affairs by the citizenry can trump the power of the elites and the giant corporations who are the winners of the Harper era. As activists in public life, they propose strategies and measures to create a Canada that champions fairness, social justice, real democracy in our government institutions, action to reverse global warming, and a constructive role in world affairs.

Breaking Free: A facilitator's guide to participatory action research practice

Breaking Free: A facilitator's guide to participatory action research practice PDF Author: Timothy Pyrch
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1105551946
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Breaking Free is a practical guide to facilitating self-directing educational processes into participatory action research (PAR) enabling average people to contribute what they can as active participants in research projects. As such, it is designed primarily for these participants rather than the academic researcher in order to introduce participants to authentic contributions they can make as activists in knowledge-making processes. At the same time, Breaking Free guides academic researchers towards helpful practices enriching their often times lonely and isolated existence created by a false sense of "objectivity." A hands-on practical yet disciplined approach to facilitating PAR prepares readers to craft their own individual Guide as they prepare for the PAR life. This opens up the world of knowledge-making to people long silenced by forces intent on controlling knowledge for the educated elite. Breaking Free invites people to contribute as they can and be recognized for this contribution.

Public Banks

Public Banks PDF Author: Thomas Marois
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108984515
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Public banks are banks located within the public sphere of a state. They are pervasive, with more than 900 institutions worldwide, and powerful, with tens of trillions in assets. Public banks are neither essentially good nor bad. Rather, they are dynamic institutions, made and remade by contentious social forces. As the first single-authored book on public banks, this timely intervention examines how these institutions can confront the crisis of climate finance and catalyse a green and just transition. The author explores six case studies across the globe, demonstrating that public banks have acquired the representative structures, financial capacity, institutional knowledge, collaborative networks, and geographical reach to tackle decarbonisation, definancialisation, and democratisation. These institutions are not without contradictions, torn as they are between contending public and private interests in class-divided society. Ultimately, social forces and struggles shape how and if public banks serve the public good.

Challenging the Market

Challenging the Market PDF Author: Jim Stanford
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773572023
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
A History for the Future will be of interest to all those who reflect on the relationship between memory, giving meaning to the past, writing history, and a society's common aspirations. The original French edition, Passer à l'avenir, won Quebec's Prix Spirale for the best non-fiction book of 2000.

The Shock Doctrine

The Shock Doctrine PDF Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1429919485
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 721

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Book Description
The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global "free market" has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment," losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.

Never Ending Nightmare

Never Ending Nightmare PDF Author: Pierre Dardot
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786634767
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Neoliberalism's war against democracy and how to resist it How do we explain the strange survival of the forces responsible for the 2008 economic crisis, one of the worst since 1929? How do we explain the fact that neoliberalism has emerged from the crisis strengthened? When it broke, a number of the most prominent economists hastened to announce the 'death' of neoliberalism. They regarded the pursuit of neoliberal policy as the fruit of dogmatism. For Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, neoliberalism is no mere dogma. Supported by powerful oligarchies, it is a veritable politico-institutional system that obeys a logic of self-reinforcement. Far from representing a break, crisis has become a formidably effective mode of government. In showing how this system crystallized and solidified, the book explains that the neoliberal straitjacket has succeeded in preventing any course correction by progressively deactivating democracy. Increasing the disarray and demobilization, the so-called 'governmental' Left has actively helped strengthen this oligarchical logic. The latter could lead to a definitive exit from democracy in favour of expertocratic governance, free of any control. However, nothing has been decided yet. The revival of democratic activity, which we see emerging in the political movements and experiments of recent years, is a sign that the political confrontation with the neoliberal system and the oligarchical bloc has already begun.

Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction

Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Manfred B. Steger
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191609765
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Anchored in the principles of the free-market economics, 'neoliberalism' has been associated with such different political leaders as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Augusto Pinochet, and Junichiro Koizumi. In its heyday during the late 1990s, neoliberalism emerged as the world's dominant economic paradigm stretching from the Anglo-American heartlands of capitalism to the former communist bloc all the way to the developing regions of the global South. At the dawn of the new century, however, neoliberalism has been discredited as the global economy, built on its principles, has been shaken to its core by a financial calamity not seen since the dark years of the 1930s. So is neoliberalism doomed or will it regain its former glory? Will reform-minded G-20 leaders embark on a genuine new course or try to claw their way back to the neoliberal glory days of the Roaring Nineties? Is there a viable alternative to neoliberalism? Exploring the origins, core claims, and considerable variations of neoliberalism, this Very Short Introduction offers a concise and accessible introduction to one of the most debated 'isms' of our time. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Canadian Political Economy

Canadian Political Economy PDF Author: Heather Whiteside
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487530919
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
In Canadian Political Economy, experts from a number of disciplinary backgrounds come together to explore Canada’s empirical political economy and the field's contributions to theory and debate. Considering both historical and contemporary approaches to CPE, the contributors pay particular attention to key actors and institutions, as well as developments in Canadian political-economic policies and practices, explored through themes of changes, crises, and conflicts in CPE. Offering up-to-date interpretations, analyses, and descriptions, Canadian Political Economy is accessibly written and suitable for students and scholars. In 17 chapters, the book’s topics include theory, history, inequality, work, free trade and fair trade, co-operatives, banking and finance, the environment, indigeneity, and the gendered politics of political economy. Linking longstanding debates with current developments, this volume represents both a state-of-the-discipline and a state-of-the-art contribution to scholarship.