Perils of Elite Pacting

Abstract

"We are critics of the G8 and all that it represents. But are we also sometimes at risk of losing our footing, tumbling down what Munck (2006) calls ‘a slippery path for social movements that are being bamboozled by neoliberal globalisation into a controlled environment where even critical voices serve the overall purpose of stabilising the existing order’? That path leads to the G8 mainly via the Bretton Woods Institutions, World Trade Organization and United Nations agencies. These institutions are the core of ‘global governance’ in most conceptions of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’. It is here that the role of civil society lies ‘in the service of imperialism’ (Petras and Veltmeyer 2002). [...]", p. 43