A Banner of Hope? North-South Negotiations and the New International Development Strategy for the Eighties

Abstract

Holm, H.-H. A Banner of Hope? North-South Negotiations and the New International Development Strategy for the Eighties. Cooperation and Conflict, XVI, 1981, 197-215.

In this article the development strategy for the Third United Nations Development Decade is analysed through a comparison with the previous UN development strategies and by looking at the negotiations preceding the adoption in the General Assembly. It is shown that the development strategy is without realistic goals and has no means for ensuring that the development is guided in the direction wanted. Through discussion of the content of the new development strategy, the North-South debate is treated on the basis of four different models: the union-bargaining model, the ideological model, the power model and the economic structure model. The co-existence of confrontation and compromise, posi tive-sum game and negative-sum game is explained by combining factors from these four models, and it is concluded that there is a great need for concrete analysis of the political economy of international negotiations.