Small States In Multilateral Economic Negotiations PDF Download

Throughout the post-World War II era, North-South negotiations have failed to provide Southern states with many of the trade and aid benefits that they sought. The concerns of the Southern and Northern states have been well documented in the enormous literature on North-South relations. Various methodologies and alternative world views have yielded alternative explanations for the dilemmas of Northern and Southern states as they have negotiated over time in the international political-economy system. Most of this literature, we believe, does not acknowledge the rare cases where important gains by Southern states were won. Although the gains made by Southern states in a small set of bargaining cases with Northern representatives are modest when viewed in light of grand historical trends, we believe that these small advances by Southern states have been, and will continue to be important to citizens in Southern countries. Moreover, as the current international political economy undergoes enormous change, we believe it is important to analyze which trends of the future may most benefit Southern negotiators as they bargain with Northern representatives. Below, we review the prominent approaches to North-South relations and situate this paper in the vast body of North-South literature. We identify and analyze the small set of cases in which Southern states experienced success in bargaining with Northern states in the post World War period. Each of these cases shares a set of common bargaining conditions under which successful outcomes for Southern states were achieved. In this chapter, we identify the conditions under which Southern states were able to bargain successfully with Northern states. Then, we offer a theory of the conditions under which Southern states do best when bargaining with Northern representatives. Finally, we demonstrate how likely changes in the international political economy of the 1990s will influence bargaining outcomes in future North-South relations. We argue that while Northern policy makers may favor the continuation of a multilateral international economic order, Southern states will be more successful in their negotiations with Northern states in the 1990s under an international system characterized by economic blocs than one which is not.