The Un And Global Political Economy

Against the backdrop of a 20-year revolt against free trade orthodoxy by economists inside the UN and their impact on policy discussions since the 1960s, the authors show how the UN both nurtured and inhibited creative and novel intellectual contributions to the trade and development debate. Presenting a stirring account of the main UN actors in this debate, The UN and Global Political Economy focuses on the accomplishments and struggles of UN economists and the role played by such UN agencies as the Department of Economic (and Social) Affairs, the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development, and the Economic Commission for Latin America (and the Caribbean). It also looks closely at the effects of the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, the growing strength of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the 1990s, and the lessons to be drawn from these and other recent developments.

The United Nations is in a time of major crisis in the history of the organization. The product of many leading scholars on both sides of the Atlantic, this work examines whether out of the crisis of mulitlateralism engulfing the organization in the late 1980s there could arise a renewed and strengthened global body. Pursuing the theme of the dynamics of international cooperation, thirteen authors look at three principal issue-areas: the principal UN organs, leading economic subjects, and leading social subjects. Two distinguished American scholars provide concluding commentaries. Running throughout the book is an emphasis on the economic dimension to international politics.

This book investigates the ways governments trade money for favors at the United Nations Security Council.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- Notes on contributors -- Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- List of abbreviations -- Introduction: the global political economy of Raúl Prebisch -- Part I Prebisch as architect and theorist of the global political economy -- 1 Development through tighter economic integration: how might Prebisch size up some trends and issues thus far into the twenty-first century? -- 2 Thinking big from the periphery: Raúl Prebisch and the world system -- 3 Raúl Prebisch and the theory of regional economic integration -- 4 The Latin American origins of Bretton Woods -- Part II Power and resistance in the global political economy -- 5 Raúl Prebisch and the historical roots of the current movement against corporate-led globalisation -- 6 From Palais de Nations to Centre William Rappard: Raúl Prebisch and UNCTAD as sources of ideas in the GATT/WTO -- 7 The West remains on top, economically and politically -- Part III Diagnosing structural change in the global political economy -- 8 A changing role for agriculture in global political economy? Brazil's emergence as an agro-power -- 9 Back to the future reloaded: Latin America's development strategy during the commodity boom -- 10 Raúl Prebisch and the terms of trade: how things have changed... -- Index.

This volume analyzes changing patterns of authority in the global political economy with an in-depth look at the new roles played by state and non-state actors, and addresses key themes including the provision of global public goods, new modes of regulation and the potential of new institutions for global governance.

The Long Battle for Global Governance charts the manner in which largely excluded countries, variously described as ‘ex-colonial’, ‘underdeveloped’, ‘developing’, ‘Third World’ and lately ‘emerging’, have challenged their relationship with the dominant centres of power and major institutions of global governance across each decade from the 1940s to the present. The book offers a fresh perspective on global governance by focusing in particular on the ways in which these countries have organised themselves politically, the demands they have articulated and the responses that have been offered to them through all the key periods in the history of modern global governance. It re-tells this story in a different way and, in so doing, describes and analyses the current rise to a new prominence within several key global institutions, notably the G20, of countries such as Brazil, China, India and South Africa. It sets this important political shift against the wider history of longstanding tensions in global politics and political economy between so-called ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ countries. Providing a comprehensive account of the key moments of change and contestation within leading international organisations and in global governance generally since the end of the Second World War, this book will be of great interest to scholars, students and policymakers interested in politics and international relations, international political economy, development and international organisations.

Dealing with the central themes and issues of the subject, this text outlines the different theoretical approaches of the global political economy, as well as engaging key contemporary debates such as worldwide trade and production.

The study of global governance has often led separate lives within the respective camps of International Political Economy and Foucauldian Studies. Guzzini and Neumann combine these to look at an increasingly global politics with a growing number of agents, recognising the emergence of a global polity.