The Third World Challenge: Negotiating the Future
Article Summary and Author Biography
The deadlock in the U.N. Special Session in September 1980 over efforts to organize global negotiations on a New International Economic Order is not a cause for pessimism but an invitation to sober reflection. The breakdown was not just over procedures, though that was the way it appeared. The breakdown came because there are still substantive and fundamental differences between the approaches of the North and the South to these negotiations. Unless we honestly face up to these differences, a mere patch-up of procedural wrangles to revive the global negotiations will not achieve any significant results.
Mahbub ul Haq is Director of Policy Planning at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Washington, D.C., and is the author of The Poverty Curtain and other works. The views in this paper are expressed entirely in a personal capacity.
The deadlock in the U.N. Special Session in September 1980 over efforts to organize global negotiations on a New International Economic Order is not a cause for pessimism but an invitation to sober reflection. The breakdown was not just over procedures, though that was the way it appeared. The breakdown came because there are still substantive and fundamental differences between the approaches of the North and the South to these negotiations. Unless we honestly face up to these differences, a mere patch-up of procedural wrangles to revive the global negotiations will not achieve any significant results.
The first question we must face is: Why should the North-the industrialized nations-enter into any serious dialogue at all about restructuring the existing international economic order? The South-the developing nations-wishes to gain more economic power and participation in international decision-making, but why should the North willingly surrender its present privileged position? Unless there is a convincing answer to this question, North-South negotiations are likely to deteriorate into a ritual and skillful exercise in non-dialogue.
I believe that the only real answer is that change in international structures is inevitable, whether there is a dialogue or not. The real experiment involved in the North-South dialogue is whether the pace of change can be accelerated through common consent, and whether the pains of transition can be eased through orderly negotiations. It is tempting, but totally wrong, to jump from pessimism about the prospects of the North-South dialogue to pessimism about the prospects for change itself. The failure of the dialogue so far will not stem the underlying forces of change: it only means that change will continue to be disorderly and disruptive. The real case for the dialogue is that it can lead to an orderly transition and that bargains can be struck by which all sides gain, though not in equal measure.
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