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 LSEIn 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 speakerManfred 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 discussantRadhika 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 ChairRobert 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.
