Book reviews

narrative could be seen as another way of portraying what, elsewhere, is presented

as developing countries’ fight to safeguard ‘development’ or ‘policy space’.
Still, her overarching argument remains valid: there is little doubt that the
poverty narrative, and others associated with it, acquired greater purchasing power
in international negotiations over the years. And, to a certain extent, this trend
is due to the fact that many of the grievances traditionally associated with ‘poor’

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article-abstract/96/4/1102/5866432 by Karolinska Institutet Library user on 10 July 2020

countries are now also a reality in developed countries, which increasingly face the
challenges of tackling inequality and safeguarding their ‘policy spaces’—an aspect
also addressed by the book.
Ultimately, this is a book that uses the prism of the ‘poverty/powerlessness’
narratives to capture the many power shifts and struggles defining this moment in
history, from the redistribution of power across states all the way to the gender,
race and intergenerational challenges that have achieved an acute salience in our
lifetime. It is remarkable that Narlikar has managed to elegantly connect such a
wide span of topics within a relatively succinct book.
Henrique Choer Moraes, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil and Leuven Centre for Global
Governance Studies, Belgium

The morals of the market: human rights and the rise of neoliberalism. By
Jessica Whyte. London: Verso. 2019. 278pp. £19.99. isbn 978 1 78663 311 8. Avail-
able as e-book.
The world and all the social, political and productive relations contained in it
have drastically changed with the rise of neo-liberalism. The speed of change is
increasing at a vertiginous pace, as we witness how what once was considered
implausible becomes real: Brexit; riots in France, Lebanon and Chile; the largest
pandemic hitherto; and, most recently, worldwide protests sparked by the death
of George Floyd in the United States. Underlying these political processes is the
unresolved tension between the moral duty of ensuring human rights and dignity
and the economic maxims advancing neo-liberalism and endless growth. Jessica
Whyte unravels this crucial tension in a compelling, rigorous, deep and passionate
study of the morals underpinning human rights and neo-liberal markets, providing
extremely relevant insights for students, social scientists and the general public.
The book is divided into seven sections, comprising an introduction, five chapters
and an afterword. Its main premise is clear: in opposition to sanitizing accounts that
portray neo-liberalism as a pure economic argument, Whyte demonstrates that it
has been built on a moral and institutional scaffolding (similar to Christianity),
aimed to make people submit to the free market order. Fundamental to this, she
explains, was the rise of human rights in the wake of the Second World War. A
rich historical depiction of the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR) and neo-liberalism provides strong evidence to support such a
relationship. Furthermore, Whyte’s use of direct quotes from the early neo-liberals
and UDHR drafters allows readers to gain a good grasp of how the UDHR was
influenced to enshrine a set of human rights tailored to promoting neo-liberalism.

1102
International Affairs 96: 4, 2020

INTA96_4_FullIssue.indb 1102 26/06/2020 13:14

 Political economy, economics and development

Morals, considered as both ‘sentiments about right and wrong action’ and a
‘system of informal rules of conduct that guide individual actions’ (p. 11), were
cardinal to early neo-liberals. For them, only what Hayek called ‘the morals of the
market’ could make civilization move towards a free and peaceful market society.
These morals comprised a set of highly individualistic values and dismissed others
directed at achieving shared goals. To underpin this vision, neo-liberals depicted

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article-abstract/96/4/1102/5866432 by Karolinska Institutet Library user on 10 July 2020

political arenas as spaces of never-ending violence, coercion and conflict. In contrast,
the market was attributed with a series of anti-political virtues and came to be seen
as promoting horizontal cooperation, peace and individual liberty and rights. In
this way, they aimed to separate the political from the economic, reducing political
participation while also fostering the ‘taming of the state’ (p. 29). In the proposed
neo-liberal utopia, the state ‘beats into submission’ anyone threatening the market
order (p. 24).
Whyte explains how these morals influenced human rights, in a context where
the values of western civilization were considered threatened by the rise of
empowered post-colonial states. When former colonies and Global South nations
rose against domination, they challenged the asymmetrical international order and
political relationships inherited from the past. Thus, the drafting of the UDHR was
transformed into a tug-of-war, where former colonizers and colonized struggled
to ensure ‘civilized’ individual market freedoms and ‘backward/savage’ universal
socio-economic and political rights. These neo-liberal ideas resonated in wealthy
capitalist nations, which pushed for more individualistic human rights as facilita-
tors of international trade and access to natural resources, while representatives
from the Global South and post-colonial states advocated for securing political and
resource sovereignty (p. 147).
The agreed list of human rights, Whyte posits, ultimately reflects a neo-liberal
victory. The more individualistic human rights were used to establish legal insti-
tutional frameworks securing private property, foreign investment and the
‘market freedom’ of acting without endangering market order. Along with the
morals of the market, these new legal institutions function as the second blade
of the neo-liberal scissors, created to sever the connection between civil society
and political participation. Likewise, the book details how the rise of neo-
liberalism occurred in parallel with the proliferation of human rights NGOs. Using
the infamous Chilean neo-liberal dictatorship as an example, Whyte describes how
those NGOs skewed the view of horrendous human rights violations through the
lens of individual attacks on people’s bodies, veiling the structural socio-economic
and political causes for the torture, killings and injustices still happening to this day.
The book closes with a short afterword, stressing that only through political
struggle ‘over ends’ (p. 242) can society overcome the stark inequalities of today’s
neo-liberalized world. In the face of bleak health, socio-economic and environ-
mental challenges, some may claim this is easier said than done, while orthodox
neo-liberals see ongoing re-politicization processes as signs of devolution into
savagery and chaos. The book never claims that such a shift will be easy, only that
it is possible and urgent. To interrupt neo-liberalism’s legacy against mass partici-

1103
International Affairs 96: 4, 2020

INTA96_4_FullIssue.indb 1103 26/06/2020 13:14

 Book reviews
pation in politics for global socio-economic justice, Whyte concludes, means
completely breaking ‘with the morals of the market’ (p. 242).
Martín Arias-Loyola, Departamento de Economía, Universidad Católica del Norte, Antofa-
gasta, Chile

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article-abstract/96/4/1102/5866432 by Karolinska Institutet Library user on 10 July 2020

Europe

Stars with stripes: the essential partnership between the European Union
and the United States. By Anthony Luzzatto Gardner. London: Palgrave
Macmillan. 2020. 468pp. £32.99. isbn 978 3 03034 820 5. Available as e-book.
The Trump administration’s open hostility to the European Union has been unprec-
edented and represents a sharp break with half a century of American support
for European integration. President Donald Trump has not only questioned the
purpose of NATO but denounced the Paris climate agreements and the Iran
nuclear deal, two of the EU’s major diplomatic achievements. He slapped tariffs
on European steel exports in the name of ‘national security’ and even described
the EU as ‘a foe worse than China’. He further angered Brussels by openly champi-
oning Brexit and supporting populist movements in the EU.
Has Trump permanently damaged the transatlantic relationship? This is the
question Tony Gardner, the former US ambassador to the EU, confronts in his
very readable and substantive new book, arguing that although much damage has
been done, it is not irreparable––especially if there is a President Joe Biden in the
White House next year. Gardner, who in the 1990s served as both an intern in the
European Commission and a staffer in the US National Security Council, sketches
a detailed agenda of how to strengthen EU–US ties, drawing on his deep knowl-
edge of the policy process on both sides of the Atlantic.
Before proposing how to move this ‘essential partnership’ forward, Gardner
takes a swipe at Boris Johnson (they were contemporaries at Oxford) and Brexit,
arguing that the UK outside the EU will be a weakened global actor and will
struggle to make an impact. As regards a potential trade deal with the US, he
considers it is highly unlikely that the UK could extract from the US as favour-
able terms as the EU would do in an EU–US trade agreement, ‘due to the UK’s
diminished negotiating leverage’ (p. 98). While condemning Trump’s interference
in British and European politics, Gardner notes that Brexit and Trump have served
as ‘a mighty vaccine’ against Euroscepticism.
Despite the failure to secure an EU–US trade deal (TTIP), Gardner argues that
the negotiations were useful in leading to a better understanding of each side’s
concerns. He was shocked at the antipathy to the US, especially in Germany,
caused by the Snowden leaks and the National Security Agency (NSA) hacking
of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone. Gardner believes that a trade deal
would still be in the best interests of both sides and suggests that the US should be
‘more pragmatic’ in its approach. The thorny issue of investor–state dispute settle-
ment should be subject to a separate agreement, the US should ditch its opposi-

1104
International Affairs 96: 4, 2020

INTA96_4_FullIssue.indb 1104 26/06/2020 13:14