African States’ Nepad Project

Abstract

Current discourses on international political economy generally contend that the decade of the 1970s generated significant shifts in economic, intellectual, and political spheres that continue to shape national and global developments. On the economic level, these discourses claim that the period saw the emergence of a serious global recession characterized by decline in production, high inflation, crisis of profits for the majority of firms, technological developments, rise in government deficits, and massive layoffs for workers. These economic developments and major changes in the political landscape of major countries in the global North in the late 1970s and early 1980s—the rise of Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Helmut Kohl in Germany, and Ronald Reagan in the United States—and intellectual shifts that called for the dismantling of the global Keynesian economic framework are highlighted as core factors that ushered in a new phase of globalization underpinned by neoliberal economic discourse.