Below Rick Rowden introduces his new book.  In the following months Rick will respond to any comments or posts and discuss the reaction to the book and the outlook for activism.

“The Deadly Ideas of Neoliberalism” explores the history of and current collision between two of the major global phenomena that have characterized the last 30 years: the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases of poverty and the ascendancy of neoliberal economic ideas. The book explains not only how IMF policies of restrictive spending have exacerbated public health problems in developing countries, in particular the HIV/AIDS crisis, but also how such issues cannot be resolved under these economic policies. It also suggests how mounting global frustration about this inability to adequately address HIV/AIDS will ultimately lead to challenges to the dominant neoliberal ideas, as other more effective economic ideas for increasing public spending are sought.

In stark, powerful terms, this book offers a unique and in-depth critique of development economics, the political economy dynamics of global foreign aid and health institutions, and how these seemingly abstract factors play out in the real world – from the highest levels of global institutions to African finance and health ministries to rural health outposts in the countryside of developing nations, and back again.

It argues that HIV/AIDS activists and global public health advocates should see health financing within the broader view of development economics, and should examine the efficacy of the current “development model” supported and reinforced by bilateral and multilateral aid donors. Aid advocates have placed an overemphasis on external factors (more ODA, more debt cancellation, more trade access into Northern markets, more FDI, etc) to the neglect of issues related to domestic resources mobilization and development economics.

The book calls on health advocates to work more with economists and others to reconsider the underlying precepts and micro-foundations of neoclassical economic theory, particularly monetarism, and examine their efficacy in light of the documented development outcomes and indicators of recent decades. The book argues the dominant strain of neoliberal policies, which provide the basis for the current development model, constantly prioritizes short-term stability of financial variables (inflation, deficit levels, foreign exchange reserves, etc) to the subordination and neglect of real sector variables such as economic growth rates, employment levels or levels of public spending and investment. While this emphasis has succeeded in achieving “macroeconomic stability” in countries, it has also come at the price of insufficient growth, high unemployment and underemployment, chronically insufficient health spending and public investment in the underlying health system infrastructure, and has not resulted in successful economic development.

The current development model has led to unnecessarily worse health outcomes than otherwise could be the case under alternative macroeconomic policy approaches that could enable higher levels of public spending and investment. The book calls on HIV/AIDS activists and global public health advocates to work with economists and others to re-open the debate amongst the broader development community to reconsider more broadly the failures of the current development model and to re-establish what ought to be the benchmarks for successful economic development and development models for donor aid.

For more information on the book see:

http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/book.asp?bookdetail=4333