Rhetorical Appeals and Strategic Cooptation in the Rise and Fall of The New International Economic Order

Abstract

The global governance institutions that structure economic relations between industrialized and developing countries have been contested since their inception. This contribution revisits elements of the struggle over the 'new international economic order', or NIEO, in the 1970s. Contemporaneous observers and political leaders saw the initiative as part of the first major shift in global power after 1945. Using strategies of rhetorical coercion and persuasion that aimed to radically reform global economic governance, a large coalition of developing nations proposed a reform agenda designed to expand the authority of the United Nations and reduce the importance of Bretton Woods institutions. In response, a small coalition of industrialized countries adopted strategies of cooptation that entailed 'case-by-case' cooperation with developing countries with the goal of limiting overall reforms. The contribution uses historical archives from deliberations within and among industrialized countries to reveal the sources behind their response to the NIEO and follow-up initiatives. It shows that industrialized countries chose to deemphasize strategies of argumentation in favor of strategies of cooptation in their efforts to limit transformative change in global economic governance. Policy Implications • Global economic governance has been historically contested, but fundamental reform has been elusive. The scope of reform has remained heavily constrained by institutional designs from the 1940s and efforts by large industrialized economies to limit reform. Contemporary balances of global power make it unlikely that past impasses will be overcome. • Supporters and opponents of fundamental change in global economic governance have used a variety of rhetorical and bargaining strategies to shape paths of institutional development. Industrialized economies have long favored cooptation strategies, while developing nations have shifted from strategies of rhetorical coercion to strategies of principled persuasion. Major shifts in these choices are unlikely given existing distributions of global power. • A necessary condition for fundamental reform to global economic governance is agreement among G7 members. While the role of the G7 is less apparent today in a context of more organizations and populist nationalism, the reliance on strategies of cooptation by G7 members have had long legacies that continue to give its members disproportionate power over global economic governance reform.

Beyond Mainstreaming? Past, Present and Future of UN Support for South-South and Triangular Cooperation

“…Following the setup of the UN in 1945 and the expansion of operations in the 1950s, the UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Group of 77 as the inter-governmental alliance of developing countries were established in 1964 (Toye 2014). They offered a crucial space and reference for a growing number of institutional mechanisms and fora to advocate for alternatives to the multilateral status quo that would take the concerns and agency of countries in the so-called developing world into account (Weiss and Abdenur 2014;Fioretos 2020). In the 1970s, it was under the umbrella of "Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries" and its acronym "TCDC" that UN bodies-including the General Assembly-contributed to setting up a more formal framework for assistance processes within and between developing countries and regions (UNGA 1978).…”