What is very interesting in this paper is that Walden Bello classifies and characterises very clearly the different approaches towards globalisation. However, I do not understand his criticism of what he calls the "Global Social-Democracy".

When he claims:

it is questionable that the rapid integration of markets and production that is the essence of the globalization can really take place outside a neoliberal framework whose central prescription is the tearing down of tariffs walls and the elimination of investment restrictions.

he doesn't explain why. This criticism is not consistent with the fact that he quotes Stiglitz, saying that

"rich countries should simply open up their markets to poorer ones, without reciprocity and without economic or political conditionality [and] middle-income countries should open up their markets to the least developed countries, and should be allowed to extend preferences to one another without extending them to the rich countries, so that they need not fear that imports might kill their nascent industries."

When he says:

it is likewise questionable that, even if one could conceive of a globalization that takes place in a socially-equitable framework, this would, in fact, be desirable. Do people really want to be part of a functionally integrated global economy where the barriers between the national and the international have disappeared? Would they not in fact prefer to be part of economies that are susceptible to local control and are buffered from the vagaries of the international economy?

he brings up the concept of economic subsidiarity. Whereas we can say that the global social democratic approach doesn't put enough emphasis on economic subsidiarity, it is not contradictory with the global social-democracy

Subsidiarity is a key word in the European Union (EUROPA - Glossary - Subsidiarity) but it applies mainly to political decision-making and very seldom to the economy.

The concept of economic subsidiarity is a very interesting one. Economic subsidiarity in a broader sense implies that the production of goods and services should take place at the nearest possible level and should be susceptible to democratic regulation.

There is little literature about economic subsidiarity. All I have found, so far, is on the site of the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation for Human Progress, which I know quite well.

I think the concept of economic subsidiarity should be a key concept of a new narrative. But to be able to promote it, we have to develop it. The principle is quite simple, but what requires reflection, particularly about the different level (local, national, regional and global) articulate with one another as well as the methods and tools to implement it. Even if, as Stiglitz proposes, selective protectionism should be used in developing countries, economic subsidiarity cannot be reduced to simple protectionism, mainly because protectionism cannot easily be applied at sub-national level, which would be necessary within big countries.

"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet