Joseph Stiglitz: The Citizen-Bureaucrat and the Limits of Legitimate Dissent

Since being forced to resign his high-ranking post at the World Bank in 2000 for publicly dissenting from neoliberal ideas, Joseph Stiglitz has become a global policy celebrity, celebrated as the “Rebel Within.” While much has been said about his neo-Keynesian policy framework, little has been done to explore the political significance of his iconic status as a renowned “citizen-bureaucrat.” Yet, Stiglitz's iconic image in many ways has had a greater political impact than his policy ideas. In a world in which government and corporate bureaucracies increasingly squeeze out alternative visions, the citizen-bureaucrat suggests that space still exists within these unwieldy bureaucracies for the independent-thinker to put forward a rebellious agenda. Through an assessment of Stiglitz's policy career, this article argues that the image of the citizen-bureaucrat is, to a large extent, an ideological fantasy that masks a more uncomfortable political reality: that the available options for the “good bureaucrat” in today's neoliberal era, far from expanding, are more narrow than ever before.     

Law reform

This article provides an overview on the structure and guiding principles of the new Law Commission of Ontario and considers the present state of law reform at the provincial level. The author suggests that the establishment of the Ontario agency continues a trend that started about a decade ago with provincial governments reversing earlier decisions to either close down or cut funding to agencies. ^{1 1} Gavin Murphy, ‘The Rise, Decline and Current Status of Canada’s Law Reform Agencies’ (2004) 30 CLB 900. He indicates that the launch of the Law Commission of Ontario is a positive development and could signal further interest and renewed support for provincial law reform in Canada. The article also examines the history, mandate and work of the Scottish Law Commission and concludes that the challenges it faces are similar to those confronting Canada’s provincial law reform agencies.     

Abe Isoo and Kawakami Hajime in Interwar Japan — Economic Reform or Revolution?

This article explores the views of two eminent professors of economics, Abe Isoo (1865-1949) and Kawakami Hajime (1879-1946), regarding their socialist economic theories for easing poverty in Japan during the interwar years (1918-1939). Prior to this period, Abe believed the cure to capitalism’s ills lay in a combination of socialist economic reforms (sangyô demokurashii) and individual spiritual refinement. Kawakami, at that time a bourgeois economist, prioritised the spiritual revolution of the rich over any socialist-type economic reform. Thus, although convinced of the need for a different approach to eradicating poverty, they nevertheless agreed in the need for gradual change rather than radical reform (Gavin East Asia An International Quarterly 24:1, 30). The year 1928 marked a significant turning point both for Japanese social movements and in the lives of Abe and Kawakami. That year heralded Japan’s first national election under the new Universal Male Suffrage Law, and saw the police exercise their extended authority as they undertook a nationwide round-up of students and intellectuals suspected of left-wing tendencies (the March 15 Incident). Also in that year, Abe and Kawakami resigned from academic posts to dedicate themselves to alleviating the privations of the working class. Abe, by then well known as the father of Japanese socialism and as a Christian pacifist, became a symbolic figure for Japan’s working class parties, although he later came to support the government during WWII. Kawakami, who was forced to resign from his post during the round-up, “washed his hands of bourgeois economics”, became a prominent spokesman for Marxism in Japan ([28], xi, pp. 76, 169). This article will reveal that both Abe and Kawakami’s social and economic theories changed during the interwar period, so that Abe came to see imperial sovereignty as crucial to socialist economic reform, while Kawakami came to see it as a minion of the capitalists and advocated institutional and political revolution.