International Economic Disorder and North-South Relations: An Introduction

Abstract

The decade of the 1970s has been characterised by turbulence and disorder within the world economy. The most severe recession since the 1930s checked the general post-Second World War mood of optimism and self-confidence with respect to growth and increased already existing anxieties concerning the efficacy of macroeconomic management. At the same time, rapid inflation in the industrialised countries proved extremely difficult to curb, and intensified latent social and political tensions. The ‘international economic order’ carefully erected during the 1940s was placed under increasing stress, eventually sufficient to bring down its monetary arrangements and threaten those in the sphere of trade. As if all of this were not enough, the developing countries—both individually and in groups—launched a vigorous intellectual, political and policy attack upon the old ways of ordering the world economy. Most dramatically successful in the OPEC case, they formed a variety of new collective bargaining units and pressed for a number of reforms in international institutions and practices, all under their new banner of ‘The New International Economic Order’. By now there is a fairly general expectation that the industrialised countries of the North will grow more slowly during the 1980s than heretofore.

For comments on an earlier draft the author is most grateful to Rita Cruise O’Brien, Keith Griffin, Bruce Herrick and Ernesto Tironi, none of whom is to be held responsible for the contents of the present version.