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Dr Dan Steinbock is an recognized expert of the multipolar world. He focuses on international business, international relations, investment and risk among the leading advanced and large emerging economies.
He is a Senior ASLA-Fulbright Scholar (New York University and Columbia Business School).
THE ECLIPSE OF MODERN ECONOMIC GROWTH
Global Disparities, Colonial Legacies, External Interventions and Extreme Climate
Clarity Press
What’s the common denominator underpinning ongoing global turmoil: affordability crises, youth protests, proxy conflicts, trade protectionism, populism, migration crises, and extreme weather? Simply put: The end of modern economic growth.
In the 15th century, colonization opened the world markets for the nascent West's plunder. But without systematic technological innovation, per capita income remained low. With the rise of capitalism, the constraints on growth were dismantled. But this familiar story of modernization has a darker side.
With the rise of Western modernity, inequality soared within and between economies. The first countries to colonize were the first to industrialize, and the early industrializers were the first to globalize. Conversely, those areas that were colonized in the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and Africa have been late to industrialize and only a few have begun to globalize.
The net effect has been an immense net transfer of wealth from the Global South to the West and huge disparities between these regions. To sustain this supremacy, the West has consistently used external interventions to undermine sovereign states and extract their resources, in both processes unleashing extreme climate change.
This book connects the unacknowledged dots behind the standard narratives.
Part I outlines the growth dialectic from colonization to industrialization and globalization. These include the West's external interventions, from coups and regime changes to full demodernization. It highlights the colossal economic, human and climate costs of this trajectory.
Part II identifies the true stages of economic growth from Malthusian stagnation to industrialization, to the market economy and the slow transition to sustainability. It demystifies the classic modernization narrative in empirical detail, subverting the standard narrative.
The Epilogue explains how the era of “economic miracles” is not just stagnating but coming to an end.
Challenging conventional wisdom, the book covers all major economies and its time span ranges from 1500 to projections up to 2100. It is about missed opportunities and the attendant colossal economic and human costs.
It also addresses viable alternative futures that could be more inclusive and sustainable.
SHORT CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LIST OF FIGURES & TABLES
INTRODUCTION
PROLOGUE: REASSESSING THE STAGES OF GROWTH
Modernization and Cold Wars
Modernization and the Stages of Economic Growth
The Rise and Fall of Modern Economic Growth
Two Kinds of Growth, Two Kinds of Industrializers
PART I | CHALLENGING THE STAGES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH
CHAPTER 1 | THE QUEST FOR INDUSTRIALIZATION
Traditional Growth
Industrial Takeoffs
Market Growth
CHAPTER 2 | POST-GROWTH: THE CHALLENGES OF SUSTAINABILITY
Fictitious Capital, and Extreme Climate
Stages of Inequality
The Great Caveat: AI Futures
Frustrated Growth Dreams
CHAPTER 3 | EXTREME CLIMATE
Climate Change Denial
Energy Regimes
The Two Faces of Industrialization
Two Kinds of Growth, Two Kinds of Emissions
Generations of Industrializers and Extreme Climate
CHAPTER 4 | THE IMPACT OF EXTERNAL INTERVENTIONS
How Interventions Foster and Penalize Growth
The Rise of Coercive Unilateralism
Structural Adjustment and External Interventions
The Color Revolutions
PART II | UNDERMINING GLOBAL INTEGRATION
CHAPTER 5 | ASSASSINATIONS, REGIME CHANGE AND THE
STAGES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH
Targeting the Non-Aligned
The Process of Falling Behind
CHAPTER 6 | LEGACIES OF COLONIAL CONQUEST
The Waves of Globalization
Colonial Globalization
The Centuries of Colonization
The Eclipse of Empires
Colonial Divergence
The Great Wealth Transfer
CHAPTER 7 | THE FUTURES OF GLOBALIZATION
The Preconditions of Pax Americana
The Rise of the Emerging Markets
Demise of Western Globalization
From Global Integration to Fragmentation
The Proliferation of Frail Economies
CHAPTER 8 | THE ECLIPSE OF ECONOMIC MIRACLES
The Logic of Waning Prospects
A Century of Extremes
ENDNOTES
INDEX
