Customer Reviews

Human Rights: Beyond the Liberal Vision

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Let me first begin by saying I was a little peeved to see the review below and I have to address it first. Since our critical law student is so concerned with scholarship I should probably point out that their first quote, that begins with an ellipsis, left out "In general" which means it probably does not need a citation. Regardless, given the IMFs record, and the work that's been done on globalization in a number of disciplines the quote should not be hard to see. With the second quote, they are right, it is not cited, although they never presented evidence to the contrary.

This said, do not be turned off by the other review, the scholarship is quite good. What's more important though is that the book as a whole is quite good. In fact I've noticed that students are very responsive to it and I find that it a a great book to really challenge students' (or non students!) conceptions of economic liberalism and the overall role America plays in the world (especially its dismal record regarding human rights). Unfortunately this perspective is not seen enough in American universities. Highly recommended.

I have the misfortune of reading this book for a class at UCLA School of Law. The authors do a great disservice in trying to represent a counterargument for neoliberal economic policies. There are numerous missing or incorrect citations. This leads the reader to conclude that the authors are just giving their personal opinion, for which they do not have a basis. They rant, rather than give analysis. I'll give a brief example.
"...IMF policies that aim to reduce the trade deficit of poor countries have led to slower growth, and IMF policies designed to streamline governments have increased unemployment and reduced government services" (page 102). There is no citation, no discussion of HOW IMF policies have done this, in which countries, when, which government services are affected, and so on.
I'll give another more disturbing example: "When the Brazilian economy was restructured to meet IMF payment schedules, millions of small farmers were displaced, reducing the production of rice, a dietary staple by 18%; increasing Brazilian farmers' poverty; and producing food shortages around the country (p.95)
This statistic is distrubing, if true. Since there is no cite, I guess we have to take Blau and Moncada's word for it. And that is not scholarship, but anecdotal evidence. It would have been interesting to see HOW IMF policies were to blame, for what [alledgedly, since there is no cite] happened in Brazil. Correlation doesn't equal causation, perhaps there was bad weather, or other circumstances. This is NOT properly argued, and it is disturbing to see that one can be a professor at a distinguished university such as UNC Chapel Hill and University of Madrid and yet publish work of such low quality. I am a law student, but I would never presume to turn in something like this as a rough draft.
Where was the editor on this?