solidarity against the continuing intervention and involvement of the pow-
erful economies in the developing economies and polities of the world, in an
attempt to strengthen economic sovereignty at a time when it was very obvi-
ous that political and economic autonomy did not necessarily go together,
and that the achievement of constitutional independence did not guarantee
freedom internally from external constraints. This idea will be taken up
again when we come to look at the concept of ‘neo-colonialism’ and the
way in which interpretations of political and economic development have
been formulated in such terms. The idea of a Third World thus tries to cap-
ture a common experience of exploitation by richer and more powerful soci-
eties. All Third World countries have experienced such exploitation to some
degree, and it was strongly felt by many Third World leaders that it was
persisting even after independence.
Fourthly, Third Worldism has been associated with the idea of regional
coherencethrough pan-nationalist movements. The Third World might not
represent a grouping of countries all with identical interests, but within the
Third World there could be groups of states that shared interests cutting across
national boundaries – for example, the pan-Arab world or the pan-African
world. Such concepts were important to political leaders in developing coun-
tries in the 1960s. Here was an attempt to prove that national boundaries were
not going to be as important as they were in other parts of the world. National
boundaries were seen as the creation of European colonialism, especially in
Africa. Thus they were to some extent alien, reflecting a colonial past.
Institutions were set up to reflect this internationalism and some still exist
though without the significance that they were originally intended to have.
Fifthly, since the early 1970s Third Worldism has reflected a campaign
for a new international economic orderunder which developing countries
would secure greater national control of their natural resources, and try to
protect their economies by collectively agreeing on the prices of raw mate-
rials upon which so many of their economies were dependent. Third
Worldism has been to some extent driven by a sense of grievance against the
developed countries who appear to have rigged the rules of the international
economy against less developed countries (Rothstein, 1977, p. 51). The
objective has been to strengthen through collective action the position of
individual Third World countries vis-à-vistheir main trading partners and
sources of foreign investment.
Third World countries also want to gain greater access to markets in
industrialized countries for their own manufactured goods by persuading
the governments in those countries to lower the trade barriers that protect
domestic industries from competition from Third World products. This call
The Idea of a ‘Third World’ 13