Summary
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought the nagging issue of the Global South's debt back into the spotlight. With declining export earnings and tax revenues, many countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia have found themselves objectively unable to service their foreign currency debt. This situation, reminiscent of the international debt crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, is the backdrop of the 38th volume of the Research in Political Economy series edited by Ndongo Samba Sylla.
In Imperialism and the Political Economy of Global South’s Debt, expert contributions connect the history of this issue with a range of factors including class dynamics, the changing landscape of sovereign debt markets, the global liquidity cycle, the enduring constraints of commodity dependence, ecological sustainability and the limitations of the current ad hoc sovereign debt restructuring procedures. In contrast to orthodox accounts that view debt crises in the Global South as a cyclical problem or as consequences of 'mismanagement' or 'fiscal irresponsibility'. Imperialism and the Political Economy of Global South’s Debt recognises the systemic nature of the Global South’s external debt, revealed only further by the economic uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the need to analyse it in relation to existing imperialist structures.
Table of contents
Part 1: Case Studies
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Chapter 1. The Political Economy of Debt in the Global South: The Case of Argentina (2001–2022); Juan E. Santarcángelo and Juan Manuel Padín
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Chapter 2. Can debt be sustainable, if life isn’t? Argentina’s debt crisis and social reproduction; Mariano Féliz
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Chapter 3. Colonial Hangover in Global Financial Markets: Eurobonds, China, and African Debt; Olufunmilayo Arewa
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Chapter 4. Tightening the Grip: Foreign Creditors and Sudan’s Political Transition (2019-2022); Harry Cross
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Part 2: The Elusive Quest for a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism
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Chapter 5. Refusing to improve: sovereign debt, economic knowledge and the political economy of inertia in UNCTAD 1964 – 1979; Christina Laskaridis
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Chapter 6. Limits of sovereign debt restructuring mechanisms and possible alternatives; Milan Rivie
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Part 3: Foreign Debt, Development and Imperialism
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Chapter 7. Managing the balance-of-payments constraint: dilemmas and perspectives; Basil Oberholzer
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Chapter 8. Imperialism and Global South’s Debt: Some insights from MMT, Ecological Economics and Dependency Theory; Ndongo Samba Sylla
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Chapter 9. China and Debt-Trap Diplomacy: A Brief Assessment; Sharma Shalendra
About the authors
Ndongo Samba Sylla is a Senegalese development economist and a Senior Research and Programme manager at the West Africa office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Dakar.