Abstract
Reviewed by: Paul Kingston (kingston@chass.utoronto.ca ), University of Toronto
Toward a Better World is the professional autobiography of Gerry Helleiner, a noted Canadian international development economist, a long-time professor of Economics at the University of Toronto, and a recipient of the Order of Canada in 2002. It is a gem of a book for those interested in the challenges facing those in the field of development economics committed to mitigating the inequities of the international economic system for countries of the Global South, especially with the onset of the neo-liberal era after the late 1970s.
Helleiner played a central role, if often behind the scenes, in efforts to improve the international economic context for countries in the developing world. These include his efforts to build the economic research and policymaking capacity of African countries, his commitment to formulating equity-oriented alternatives to the structural adjustment programs thrust upon developing world economies in the 1980s and 1990s, and his consistent appeal for giving a stronger voice to developing countries in the decision-making processes of international institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. Throughout his account of these efforts, Helleiner offers his readers an accessible, detailed, and refreshingly frank account of his experiences.
After a brief introductory description of his undergraduate days at the University of Toronto and his graduate work in Economics at Yale University, Helleiner organizes his memoirs around three distinct themes: his early professional life in Africa—principally in Nigeria and Tanzania in the 1960s, which was an era of great promise in the development field; his subsequent research and advocacy work for various international development institutions (UNCTAD, UNICEF, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and the G-24, among others) that were increasingly focused on providing alternatives to the neo-liberal structural adjustment policies of the IMF and the World Bank; and his advocacy work within Canada that revolved principally around his work with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), his seminal role in the North-South Institute, and his more general—and frustrating—advocacy efforts within the Canadian political system on behalf of the interests of developing, and especially African, countries.
It is clear from Helleiner’s account that his early professional experiences were among the most enjoyable of his long and distinguished career. It was during his first academic appointment at Yale, for example, that Helleiner entered the world of development economics and ended up working with some of the leading development economists of his day (among them Dudley Seers, Gustav Ranis, and Simon Kuznets), all channelling their considerable intellectual talents toward addressing global problems of poverty and growth. Helleiner described it as a time of “great excitement, unbridled enthusiasm, high ideas, and almost boundless optimism” (35). As part of this research, Helleiner embarked on his first developing area field research experience in Nigeria, where he not only “learned, and learned and learned” but also developed his enduring commitment to easing the challenges faced by Africa in the international global economy. Especially exciting and formative to Helleiner’s young career were his experiences as Director of Economic Research at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, a newly independent but extremely poor country led by the progressive and charismatic Julius Nyerere, who was determined to forge an equitable and homegrown development program with the help of the world’s “best and brightest.” Describing these years as “possibly being the best of his family’s lives” (53), Helleiner here began to acquire much of the practical wisdom that would guide the rest of his career—namely his “deep antipathy” to ideological approaches to economics and development planning, his commitment to “evidence-based analysis and pragmatism in search for effective paths to more equitable development” (57), and his acute understanding of the power asymmetries at work in global economic negotiation: “real-world realities,” noted Helleiner, that he had not learned in graduate school (61).
It was out of these experiences that Helleiner developed his lifelong research and policy advocacy commitments, ones made more acute by the discouraging neo-liberal turn after the late 1970s. These included: a commitment to increasing the capacity of African-based economic research and policymaking institutions—evidenced (among other things) by his foundational work with the IDRC-supported African Economic Research Consortium; his career-long and determined advocacy in support of developing country “ownership” of its development programming and aid flows (this author remembers to this day reading as an undergraduate student some of Helleiner’s defining scholarship on these issues); and his lifelong efforts to support and disseminate alternative “contrarian” research and policy perspectives to those being produced by the dominant international economic institutions and finance departments (including Canada’s) in the Global North (13). Here, Helleiner joined with many of the world’s most noted development economists to make their most pointed policy interventions. Examples include: his participation in Commonwealth Secretariat “expert groups” influencing and then supporting the Brandt Commission’s call for greater short- and long-term financial liquidity in support of development in the Global South; his contributions, along with an impressive network of development economists, to UNICEF’s policy advocacy work in favour of “adjustment with a human face”; and his eight-year stint as Director of Research for the G-24, where he took advantage of that institution’s access to the dominant international financial institutions to provide “timely and professional second opinions” on matters of critical importance to developing countries. In Canada, this work was further epitomized by his pioneering and longstanding support for the North-South Institute, whose fitting motto was “research for a fairer world” (243).
Helleiner’s views were not always received well within the forums in which he was trying to be heard—he describes his relations with the IMF as being “strained” (160), his relations with the World Bank as “ambivalent” (169), and his interactions with Canadian government finance officials as little better. In the conclusion, Helleiner takes stock of the impact of his lifelong work, and refers to his “early” development of alternative stabilization and adjustment programs, the “eventual” easing of external debt burdens on poor African countries, the “partially successful” efforts at establishing more balanced donor–recipient aid relationships, and the “reasonably successful” efforts to build African capacities in economic analysis and policymaking (288). Given the forces weighing in against these efforts, these accomplishments were certainly not insignificant. What really stands out after reading Helleiner’s memoir, however, is the way in which he lived his life in steadfast solidarity with those who are less fortunate, something which, as Helleiner concluded himself, “matters profoundly … when change is slow and successes are few” (298). As such, at its heart, this autobiography is about a challenging but ethically grounded professional life that has been extremely well and fully lived.