About the Book
In Making Globalization Happen: The Untold Story of Power, Profits, Privilege, Sripati explains how, when, through which entities, and for what purposes economic globalization was catalyzed and its effects on the Global South in general and South Asia in particular. Based on an innovative international constitutional political economy framework, Sripati examines how the Western classical liberal constitution has shaped international law developments in this
post-colonial era given its salience and comprehensive scope. Presenting a comprehensive narrative of economic globalization, Making Globalization Happen accurately and comprehensively links constitutional
globalization to the following UN family-created agendas: peacebuilding, conflict prevention, human security, protection of civilians, sustainable development, global war on terrorism, women, peace, and security, poverty reduction or market-oriented development, ending conflict-related sexual violence, and justice (climate, criminal, and transitional). Sripati simultaneously provides the missing constitutional foundation for globalization and the fields that it has spawned: global studies and
law and political economy. With these ground-breaking insights, Making Globalization Happen: The Untold Story of Power, Profits, Privilege clearly illustrates who drove constitutional globalization and
for whose benefit: the UN family and transnational capitalists. Thus, it rips away the facade of UN family-driven peace, justice, human rights, democracy, and development to expose it as a narrative of power, profit, and privilege for transnational capitalists and debt, death, and despair for the Global South.
Table of Contents:
List of Tables and Figures Preface List of Abbreviations Part I 1: The Constitution's Globalisation: An Uncharted but Significant Topic 2: The Silent Takeover 3: The Business of Peacebuilding/Reducing Poverty to Maximise Profits 4: Violence Against Women: A Constitutional Political Economy/Global Studies Perspective Part II 5: Manufacturing Women's Consent for Policies That Harm Them 6: Venture Capital Meets Violence Against Women 7: Untold: The UN Protection of Civilian (POC) Measures Harm Civilians 8: The Constitutional Wire Connects Economic Globalisation, Counter-terrorism, Militarism, and Dependency 9: Why Does UN Transitional Justice Ignore Economic Violence? Look to Its Parent 10: Constitutionally Silencing Human Rights Index
About the Author :
Vijayashri Sripati has served as a visiting scholar at the Trafficking and Social Justice Institute in the College of Health and Human Services at the University of Toledo, Ohio (2019-2023). Her work intersects three disciplines that developed in parallel during the 1990s: Western constitutional law, public international law, and international political economy. Sripati's Constitution-Making Under UN Auspices: Fostering Dependency in Sovereign Lands (OUP,
2020) and Making Globalization Happen: An Untold Story of Power, Profits, Privilege (OUP, 2024) have shown that, since the mid-1980s, the UN family has co-promoted the classical liberal constitution,
engendering two concurrent but new disciplines: global studies and international constitutional law/constitutional political economy. By providing the parental or constitutional foundation for these disciplines, Sripati's work elaborates upon what drives global politico-economic governance: the international constitutional order.
Review :
Vijayashri Sripati offers an original and important analysis of the UN and international institutions' role in Making Globalization Happen, placing constitution-making and reform at the centre of the analysis. This work makes an important contribution to our understanding and, most importantly, takes a non-Western perspective. It provides a detailed view of the hidden history and practices of globalization as a social, economic, and political process that was consciously enabled via the practices of international constitutionalization.
This is the first volume to knit the concepts of globalization and constitutionalism and to suggest a deep affinity between global economic constitutionalism and Third World constitutionalism. It is a richly provocative work. The criticism about TWAIL is justified; the proposed change into TWAIL-CL (TWAIL and international constitutional law) is highly original and thought-provoking. This is an inaugural work in this area.
Combining the terms rule of law and global capitalism seems sensible, even constructive, in parts of the world. In others, especially in former colonies, the combination can suggest continuing oppression and deepening dependency. Critical legal scholar Vijayashri Sripati explains why the latter response persists. She explores the constitutive global forces that animate law and politics in countries where most of the world's population resides. Her approach is analytical as well as polemical and intends to spark important debates.
Explores the origins and consequences of globalization, promoting the argument that the United Nations (UN) and Bretton Woods Institutions politically and economically reorganized sovereign third world states into a global network in order to benefit transnational capitalists. Analyzes the reasons economic globalization was implemented, describing how policies that created conflict in the 1980s were recycled to prevent conflict in 1999. Highlights the role played by the exportation of liberal constitutionalism in the development of globalization.
Vijayashri Sripati's Making Globalization Happen: The Untold Story of Power, Profits, Privilege is a landmark study that reinterprets globalization as consciously orchestrated... Making Globalization Happen marks a turning point in critical global-governance scholarship. Sripati bridges TWAIL's critique of imperial legality and LPE's critique of market ideology by positioning constitutionalism at the heart of globalization... Above all, Sripati's work invites interdisciplinary dialogue among economists, lawyers, and political scientists, who must confront how the global Constitution has quietly become the medium of domination. Whether one accepts her sweeping thesis or not, it is impossible to read this book without rethinking the legal foundations of global capitalism.
