He predicted globalization’s failure, now he’s planning what’s next

PolicyCast

For more than a quarter century, economist and Harvard Kennedy School professor Dani Rodrik has been ringing alarm bells about the dangers of globalization. And for a long time, it didn’t seem like a whole lot of people were listening. Now as record economic inequality, a climate in crisis, and global financial shocks from to the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have exposed the vulnerabilities and shortcomings of unchecked globalization and neoliberal orthodoxy about the primacy of markets, Rodrik may be having the world’s least-satisfying “I told you so” moment. But while the temptation might be to look backward for vindication, Rodrik is choosing to look toward solutions instead. He says that finding a way forward for the world economy will require two kinds of thinking: small picture—about how to create good jobs in an equitable way in specific settings—and big picture: imaging possible futures and what a more inclusive, post-globalization economy might look like. And he says it will also mean freeing political and economic discourse from what he calls a “prison of ideology” that rigidly limits policymakers’ ability to consider solutions outside of market-centric approaches. Rodrik recently launched a new project called Reimagining the Economy with fellow professor Gordon Hansen, supported by a $7.5 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The initiative will be based at the Kennedy School's Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy.