3 out of 4 stars
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Globalization takes a front seat in this erudite book, Decentralized Globalization: U.S. Foundations, Civic and Civil Society and the Rise of NPPOS by Dr. Olga Magdalena Lazin. The verbose book title underscores the gravity of the issues and themes discussed as they largely relate to Mexico. As illustrated by the author, there are good reasons from a developmental perspective to understanding the different aspects of this overarching theme of Globalization. Globalization is defined in the book in terms of the drive to standardize international laws and regulations to facilitate the worldwide and long-run development of free markets - intellectual as well as economic. Free markets denoting international trade communications (such as phones, free press, radio, TV, news, fax, email, and the web) and jet travel. It's a process that is led by the United States and requires that countries everywhere understand how the U.S.A. operates.
The Analysis of Mexican History since 1910 has involved assessing the meaning of Mexico's "Revolution." Looking at the bigger picture, Mexico has had 13 major cycles of Revolution ranging from Statism (State Capitalism and Central Planning) to Anti-Statism (Private Capitalism and Provincial rights), each one causing major upheaval in the economic conditions of all the social classes and their political status. The Official Party of the Revolution (1929 - 2000) claims that it institutionalized the Movement of 1910 to rule Mexico for more than seven decades as the "Permanent Revolution under One-Party Democracy," which since 1946 carries the name PRI - "Partido Revolucionario Institucional." In 2000, the PRI was voted out of the Presidency and replaced with PAN - "Partido Accion Nacional." The PRD - "Partido de la Revolucion Democratica", in 2006 it missed winning Mexico's Presidency by 0.6% of the vote, claims that both the PRI and PAN stood for Private Monopoly Capitalism in favour of the elites and that only by making a Revolution to empower State Capitalism can Mexico's people gain their fair share of the national income.
Employing a formal writing style and diplomatic tone, Olga presents the case for globalization. Its negative and positive aspects on the free markets, cyclical revolutions, philanthropy, statism, civic and civil attitudes in the world. Apart from the political aspect of revolution described above, she further notes that Revolution and Evolution are two sides of the same coin. Evolution is caused by a spontaneous mutation (the biological term for Revolution). This has been applied in the development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by the likes of Norman Borlaug, the 1970 American Nobel Prize winner, who spend over fifty years cross-breeding plants in Mexico to create the First and Second "Green Revolutions" for the world. Borlaug's new wheat seeds and grain came to fruition in time to enable him to organize Mexican exports to save India and Pakistan from famine in 1967. That same year, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imported 18,000 tons of hybrid wheat seeds from Mexico. The wheat harvest that year was so bountiful that "grain overflowed storage facilities."
As this was new ground for me in terms of academic content, I found the pace of the narrative slow as the author took ample time to describe the nitty-gritty of her subject matter. An example is her going beyond the "existing conceptualizations" about how to define Civic Society, Civil Society and the role of U.S. philanthropy. She notes that the three concepts have not been clearly analyzed in relation to each other, especially confusing civic society with civil society, thus misleading countries that would seek to emulate the U.S. system of decentralized government.
A further consideration contributing to the slow pace is how the book is structured. It is devoid of chapters, instead, it is composed of many successive paragraphs with occasional headings breaking the monotony. Her choice of words doesn't make the situation any easier, either. There are a lot of Spanish acronyms and abbreviations representing political parties, especially. I found myself having to track these composite of Spanish words as I read along the narrative, and which was not easy.
The author, Dr. Olga Magdalena Lazin, is knowledgeable and an expert in her subject of thought, and the contents seem historically accurate based on the few items sampled. She is a graduate in History, and with a teaching experience of over 26 years. I found the book insightful, for example, when it came to articulate the rise and role of the Not-For-Private Profit Organization (NPPO) in the society. Also known as Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), it is a term that covers grant-making foundations (such as Rockefeller and Soros), operating foundations (such as universities and hospitals), and innumerable types of decentralized organizations "authorized in a pro forma manner by the U.S. government to encourage the myriad of activities old and new which are beyond the government to imagine, let alone administer."
The downside with the book is the high number of errors that make it seem not to have been professionally edited. In some places, there were incomplete sentences that made me second-guess the author's intended meaning. Nonetheless, it's an informative book that I would recommend to economic policy advisors and technocrats. It will also appeal to macroeconomics intellectuals and students. Lastly, because of the poor editing, I rate the book 3 out of 4 stars.
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Decentralized Globalization: U.S. Foundations, Civic and Civil Society and the Rise Of NPPOS . My Book Is Out On PROFMEX -
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