The Hijacking of the Development Debate: Why Jeffrey Sachs and Thomas Friedman are Wrong.

This paper argues that Thomas Friedman and Jeffrey Sachs have hijacked the development debate with their best-selling tomes The End of Poverty and The World is Flat. Their prominent exposure in the US media, and endorsements by superstars like Bono, has narrowed the debate into simplistic slogans of ?more aid? and ?more trade? that serve to maintain the neoliberal development paradigm. They have done so by peddling a series of myths about the poor, development, and the global economy that ignore critical insights about the central role of citizen groups, basic rights, the environment, and governments that took center stage in the late 1990s. In disentangling five key myths, this paper moves: from delineating what is wrong with the ?new? Sachs-Friedman development paradigm (and what is not-so-new about it); to assessing its impact on policy debates about poverty, trade and development; to analyzing challenges posed by the ?alter-globalization paradigm.? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]