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It is remarkable how few commentators or analysts raised the alarm before the great financial crash of 2008. One who did was a journalist for the Financial Times called Gillian Tett. It may be germane to the understanding of why Gillian Tett perceived dangers in the reckless behavior of bankers that her colleagues did not, that she was educated not as an economist, but as a social anthropologist. In the course of earning her PhD in social anthropology, Tett spent a year milking goats in Tajikistan, an experience she insists helped her to understand the behavior of the bankers and other financial actors, and to predict the crisis, to widespread derision and hostility from bankers and treasury officials, two years before it happened.

Isabel Hilton and Anthony Barnett argue that global terrorism, fundamentalism and the imposition of the neo-liberal form of globalization threaten to halt and even reverse democracy. They show how these three forces are weakening democratic governments and discrediting democracy as a political aspiration in the eyes of those who do not yet live in democratic states. They look at ways to strengthen and make more relevant the principles and values of democracy. Development (2007) 50, 17–22. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100330