"How to manage the world economy - and, more fundamentally, whether humanity wishes it to go in an ever more market-oriented, transnational corporation-dominated and capital-footloose direction - is the most important international question of our time. In this short and trenchant history of those bodies - the World Bank, IMF, WTO and Group of Seven - which have promoted this economic globalization, Walden Bello points to their manifest failings; examines the major new ideas put forward for reforming the management of the world economy; and argues for a much more fundamental shift towards a decentralized, pluralistic system of global economic governance allowing countries to follow development strategies sensitive to their own values and particular mix of constraints and opportunities."--Jacket.