Review: International Economics: Reconstruction and Development in Nigeria
| Published date | 01 December 1974 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070207402900412 |
| Author | A.S. McGill |
| Date | 01 December 1974 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
654
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
gold
as
the
necessary
solution
to
the
international
monetary
problem
and
advocates
distribution
of
a
share
of
the
resulting
capital
gains
accruing
to
official
goldholders
to
the
less
developed
countries.
The
nalvetd
and optimism
of
these
authors
might
be
forgiven
if
they
had
not
themselves elsewhere
painted
such
realistic
portraits
of
the
true
prospects.
Is
there
evidence
that
international
violence
is
correlated
with
discrepancies
in
levels
of
living?
Can
we
really
buy
our
way
to
international
peace
and
harmony
by
four
dollars
a
year
per
head?
There
may
be short-term gains for
the
poor
in
employing
such
scare
tactics
in
the
rich
nations.
But
their
problems
will
not
be
so
easily
resolved.
Recent
experience
also
suggests
that
inaccurate
rationalizations
for
foreign
assistance
backfire
in
the longer
run.
Neither
of
these
authors
has
been
honest
about
the
enormity of
the
changes
in
the
international
economic
system
which
would
be
required
seriously
to
affect
'the
widening
gap.'
The
prospect,
in
their
certain
absence,
is
not
one
of
systemic
violence
but,
rather,
of
the
steady
de-
velopment
of
more
self-interested
and
self-reliant
policies
by
the
Third
World
-
default
on
foreign
debt,
OPEC-style
co-ordinated
con-
frontation
of
foreign
interests,
repudiation
of
international
patent
conventions,
and
so
forth;
as
far
as
'partnership
or
confrontation'
is
concerned,
the initiatives
and
the
choices
today
rest
primarily
with the
awakening
governments
of
the
less
developed countries.
The
rich
countries
no
doubt
would
prefer the
continued
appeals
of
supplicant
and dependent
states,
couched
in
terms of
'partnership.'
G.K.
Helleiner/University
of
Toronto
RECONSTRUCTION
AND
DEVELOPMENT
IN
NIGERIA
Proceedings
of
a
National
Conference
Edited
by
A.A.
Ayida
and
H.M.A.
Onitiri
Ibadan:
Toronto:
Oxford University
Press
for
the Nigeria
Institute
of
Social
and
Economic
Research,
1971,
xviii,
768pp,
$21.75
This
book contains
the
proceedings
of
the
Conference
on
Reconstruc-
tion and
Development
in
Nigeria
held
at
the
University
of
Ibadan
in
March
1969.
Each
of
the
fourteen
chapters
consists
of
the
text
of
one
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