Fighting the Wrong Enemy : Antiglobal Activists and Multinational Enterprises. This item is unavailable.Fighting the Wrong Enemy : Antiglobal Activists and Multinational Enterprises

Antiglobalist forces have been gaining ever greater momentum in recent years in their efforts to reverse what they view as the negative effects of an integrating global economy, with the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle serving as an example. Their influence was felt earlier when efforts to create a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) ended in failure in 1998 after France left the bargaining table at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, effectively killing the initiative. In this study, through an evaluation of the MAI itself and the issues raised by its opponents, Edward M. Graham takes a fresh look at the growing backlash against globalization. He first explores whether the MAI negotiations failed due to political maneuvering by antiglobalist nongovernmental organizations (supported by US organized labor) or because of irreconcilable differences among the negotiating parties over the substance of the issue of foreign direct investment. He then objectively and thoroughly assesses antiglobalist assertions that the activities of multinational firms have had negative effects on workers both in the home (investor) and host (recipient) nations, with a special focus on developing nations.

Edward M. Graham (1944-2007) was a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute from 1990 to 2007. He also taught concurrently as adjunct professor at Columbia University in New York. Previously he was an economist at the US Treasury and taught full-time in the business schools of several US universities (MIT, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Duke University, among others). While serving at the Treasury, he was seconded for two years to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. He also served as visiting or adjunct faculty at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville; Stanford University (Washington Program); The Johns Hopkins University; Seoul National University; Harvard University (John F. Kennedy School of Government); INSEAD (European Institute of Administration, Fontainebleau, France); and the University of Paris I (Pantheon/La Sorbonne). His research interests have included foreign direct investment, international competition policy, and the industrial organization of major Asian economies.