Reinventing the Left in the Global South

Richard Sandbrook is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Since 1968 he has focused his research on the Left's experience in the Global South, the relevance of social-democratic thinking to the reshaping of neoliberal globalization, the political economy of the basic-needs and market-oriented development strategies, the relationship of democratization to development, and the political role of workers and the urban poor in Africa. He has published over 50 articles and ten books, including Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects (with Marc Edelman, Patrick Heller and Judith Teichman, Cambridge University Press, 2007).

'Richard Sandbrook's Reinventing the Left in the Global South is an excellent antidote to the pessimism that so often infects progressives in the US and Europe. Acutely aware of the pitfalls and dilemmas of trying to construct new left alternatives, Sandbrook is no Pollyanna, but his chronicling of contemporary national experiments in the Global South re-opens classic debates on how to move from theory to socialist and social democratic practice in refreshing and productive ways.' Peter Evans, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

• 1. Reinventing the Left; 2. Alternative visions: leftist versus neoliberal paradigms; 3. How neoliberalism fails; 4. Making history: agency, constraints and realities; 5. Pitfalls and promise of the moderate Left; 6. The radical Left: moving beyond the socialist impasse; 7. Politics of the possible.