Losing the Global Development War: A Contemporary Critique of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO

This book offers a new perspective in examining the key global economic organizations - the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank (and its regional counterparts), and the World Trade Organization. Aimed at ordinary informed readers, the text draws upon the author's many years of familiarity with these organizations to evaluate them from a legal and policy perspective, touching on issues of "mission creep," "democracy deficit," and more. The book depicts such issues as the central struggles in a "Global Development War" that is now being lost because of certain ideological and institutional failings that currently afflict the global institutions. That war can be won, the author asserts, only by adopting an ideology of liberal, intelligent, participatory, multilateral, and sustainable human development.

John W. Head, professor of international law at Kansas University, holds degrees from Oxford University and the University of Virginia. He has worked in several international financial institutions and has written widely on global business law, and international development law and institutions.