Nor has the Third World’s experience of globalization been uniform. It has
been argued that the ‘globalization’ of market economics and pluralistic
democracy, apparently heralded by the end of the Cold War, further challenges
the validity of the concept of a Third World (Berger, 1994). This is not just
because the process of globalization integrates economies, cultures and tech-
nology. It is also because the benefits of globalization – increased trade, for-
eign investment and the dissemination of technology – are not spread equally
across the Third World. Some regions, such as East Asia, have taken advantage
of globalization to generate growth in manufactured exports. Others remain
marginalized because of their continuing dependence on primary commodi-
ties. Within East Asia, recovery from the financial crisis of 1997–9 has been
uneven. The spread of information and communications technologies is also
very uneven. The poorest countries of the Third World have dangerously small
shares of world trade and access to foreign investment.
As some less developed countries have welcomed or at least accepted the
inevitability of foreign investment and the dependency that it brings, includ-
ing subordination in the international division of labour, non-alignment is
further undermined. So even by the end of the 1960s Third World countries
were by no means behaving in unity towards East–West relations. A stri-
dently anti-communist group of Asian states emerged – Indonesia, Malaysia,
Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. This brought an end to the Third
World as a coherent voting block in the United Nations, splitting it along
ideological lines. Similarly in 1979 at the United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD V) the more industrialized of the Third
World countries vetoed a code of conduct for multinational corporations
(MNCs) that the less industrialized Third World states wanted to bring in,
demonstrating their need to avoid antagonizing MNCs on whose presence
even the rich Third World countries so heavily depend for their develop-
ment. Worsley has argued that the material, economic basis of non-align-
ment had become very weak by 1980 making it difficult for dependent
economies to express political sovereignty and to form a solid bloc hostile
to one or other of the major economic blocs in the developed world upon
which they depend for foreign investment, technology, aid and technical
assistance. Politically, the majority of Third World countries have been very
‘aligned’ (Worsley, 1984, p. 324).
The deep internal divisions within the Third World significantly reduce the
credibility of the solidarity which the term was once intended to convey. That
solidarity has been undermined by a number of developments. First, many
organizations expressing regional common interests have been weak or dis-
appeared. Those organizations that have survived have been geared to the
The Idea of a ‘Third World’ 17