This book analyses the political and socio-economic problems faced by Turkey in recent decades and the country's gradual integration into the global economy. Since the 1970s, Turkey has faced some of the most serious crises since the Republic was established in 1923. Social unrest, political and ethnic violence, paralysis of the state bureaucracy and other institutions, increasing foreign debt, decreasing economic growth, vast inflation and increasing unemployment have all been part of everyday life in Turkey's recent history. The author argues that this state of affairs is symptomatic of a...

Over the past fifteen years, ideas in the field of development studies have been highly contested. During this time, most countries from the South have come under the iron heel of the IMF and World Bank, who have imposed structural adjustment programmes wherever they have provided loan capital to governments. However, these programmes have had little success, and development studies has suffered accordingly. Many development theorists turned to postmodernist theory to try to move on from this impasse, which in the 1990s led to a new line of critical thought that heralded 'the end of...

Sarah Bracking explores the role of governments and development finance institutions in managing the markets in which the poorest countries operate. These institutions -- the 'Great Predators' -- are trapping the populations of the south in a permanent cycle of austerity.
Bracking examines the political economy relations between states. She shows how pseudo-public 'development' institutions retain complete economic control over Southern markets, yet the international system is itself unregulated. Operating in the interests of North America and the European Union, they have a political...