The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2007

their grip on power while enriching their societies. However, Kurlantzick and others who present this argument skip over the inconvenient history of the Kuomintang in Taiwan, another Leninist party that maintained authoritarian control until economic and social changes swamped its dikes. Nor is there any acknowledgement here that economic modernization preceded political liberalization in Korea. Fortunately, however, we need not concern ourselves with such trifles. For Kurlantzick, China will never change. David Reuther, a retired Foreign Service officer, recently served as AFSA’s vice president for retirees. He frequently lectures and writes on China and East Asia. The Race to the Top Globalization and Labor Conditions: Working Conditions and Worker Rights in a Global Economy Robert J. Flanagan, Oxford University Press, 2006, $45.00, hardcover, 260 pages. R EVIEWED BY J AMES P ATTERSON Stanford University economist Robert J. Flanagan acknowledges that “Critics associate globalization with a particularly unsavory package of working conditions and labor rights: low wages, long work hours, unsafe and abusive conditions, child labor and suppression of collective repre- sentation.” Yet while anecdotal evi- dence of such conditions is widely reported, it is counterintuitive that global labor rights would deteriorate in the midst of an international move- ment toward free trade and economic growth. In Globalization and Labor Con- ditions: Working Conditions and Worker Rights in a Global Economy , Flanagan seeks to square such charges with Adam Smith’s con- tention that free trade among nations benefits both nations and workers. He rigorously examines various data sets on world labor conditions, focus- ing on three mechanisms associated with globalization: free trade, interna- tional migration and the growth of multinational companies. His conclusion is that those phe- nomena do not produce lower wages, longer work hours or unsafe and unhealthy labor conditions. In fact, they enhance labor conditions rather than degrading them. Nor does he find any evidence indicating labor markets are likely to deteriorate if these trends continue. To the con- trary, globalization has produced labor conditions consistent with economic growth for countries trading freely, leading to increased wages, standard- ized hours and safer working condi- tions. Flanagan then turns to the four international core rights of labor, set and enforced by the International Labor Organization of the United Nations for member-states: freedom of association (the right to organize), nondiscrimination, limitations on child labor and abolition of forced labor. Consistent with economic the- ory, he finds that these rights improve due to globalization and its associated economic growth. And where abuses do occur, they hardly represent a pol- icy of discrimination. Even so, critics often claim that the United States violates these basic rights. For example, foreign auto- makers locate their plants in the Deep South, where workers distrust unions. But this is hardly a violation of a right to organize. Similarly, Flanagan finds no indication that U.S.-based multina- tional firms locate plants in foreign countries with the intent of benefiting from child labor. In fact, unskilled child labor is more likely to disrupt work schedules and production plans than to benefit a company, removing any incentive to resort to it. Forced labor is another area where the United States comes in for criti- cism, due to the fact that some pris- oners perform work as part of their sentences. Yet prison work per- formed under government supervi- sion is exempt from the ILO’s defini- tion of forced labor. In any case, Flanagan sees such conventions as mainly symbolic, as shown by the fact that nations with strong labor standards already com- ply. He also declares that he finds that national labor standards are more effective than ILO conventions. In response to international labor abuses, the United States has threat- ened and, on occasion, imposed trade sanctions to improve labor conditions in foreign countries. Flanagan strong- ly opposes sanctions as a policy tool, for they generally worsen conditions. Because the author writes dispas- sionately on this controversial subject, eschewing assumptions and ideology for careful examination of the empiri- cal data, Globalization and Labor Conditions offers sensible analysis and policy implications. Anyone seek- ing a serious assessment of this thorny facet of the global economy would do well to read this book. Jim Patterson, a former Foreign Ser- vice officer, is an economist and free- lance journalist. His work has appear- ed in the San Francisco Chronicle , New York Times , The Hill , the eco- nomic magazine Choices and the For- eign Service Journal , among other publications. 84 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 B O O K S