Walden Bello Associate

Our people — Advisor

Walden Bello was awarded the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) in 2003 for "... outstanding efforts in educating civil society about the effects of corporate globalisation, and how alternatives to it can be implemented." Bello has been described by Naomi Klein as the 'world's leading no-nonsense revolutionary.' He is the author and co-author of more than 25 books.

Twitter: @WaldenBello (external link)

Walden is concurrently the International Adjunct Professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, and Co-Chairperson of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

His 25 books include Counterrevolution: The Global Rise of the Far Right (Nova Scotia: Fernwood, 2019), Paper Dragons: China and the Next Crash (London: Bloomsbury/Zed, 2019), Food Wars (London: Verso, 2009), Capitalism’s Last Stand? (London: Zed, 2013), Dragons in Distress: Asia’s Miracle Economies in Crisis (London: Penguin, 1990), and Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines (San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1982).

He has been named Outstanding Public Scholar by the International Studies Association in San Francisco in 2008. He has honorary doctorates from Panteion University in Athens (2006) and Murdoch University in Perth (2012).

As a human rights and peace campaigner, academic, environmentalist and journalist, he has faced prison, libel cases and repression, but has stood up for social and environmental justice in the Philippines and internationally. Between 2009 and 2016 he served as a Congressman in the Philippines, successfully pushing for laws benefiting migrant workers and being a principal author of a number of key laws, including the Reproductive Health Law, Agrarian Reform Extension Law, and Compensation for Victims of Human Rights Abuse Law.

Latest work

The Biden Presidency: A New Era, or a Fragile Interregnum?

Hewing to its centrist instincts will be a disaster for the Biden administration. The left must seize the initiative.

Article by

Walden Bello

Publication date: 3 December 2020
Power, empire and US elections: internationalist perspectives Webinar recording

Authoritarianism
Four activist scholars reflect on the 2020 US elections. The attention to Trump has distracted from Biden's agenda. How will his administration reshape geopolitics and global governance, for poverty and war, for migration and climate, for democracy and tyranny around the world? What will the elections mean for the current set of authoritarian rulers around the world, and what will they mean for progressive forces worldwide? What will be the challenges and opportunities for campaigns committed to social and environmental justice?
Video by

Laura Flanders

Phyllis Bennis

Walden Bello

Cathy Feingold

Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Publication date: 10 November 2020
The Global Rise of the Far Right In conversation with Walden Bello
Authoritarianism

Shrinking Space

Social Movements
In this wide ranging interview, Walden Bello outlines the key ideas behind his book, Counterrevolution: The Global Rise of the Far Right
Podcast by

Walden Bello

Shaun Matsheza
Publication date: 15 September 2020

See all work by Walden Bello

Key documents

Global Finance Power and Instability
State of Power

Finance
Longread by

Walden Bello

Publication date: 24 January 2019
Food Wars

Food Sovereignty
Article by

Walden Bello

Mara Baviera
Publication date: 8 July 2009
Dilemmas of Domination The Unmaking of the American Empire

Book by

Walden Bello

Publication date: 15 October 2005
The Anti-Development State The Political Economy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines

Debt
Book by

Walden Bello

Herbert Docena

Marissa de Guzman

Mary Lou Malig
Publication date: 1 May 2005