GLOSSARY/287and in Asia and the Pacific: Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Since
1994, three Third World countries have entered the OECD: Turkey,
also a candidate for the EU; Mexico, also part of NAFTA with its two
North American neighbours; and South Korea (December 1996).
Since 1995, three countries of the former Eastern Bloc have joined:
the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. Recent additions to the
OECD faithfully reflect the configuration of the Triad as described in
this book, i.e. the three central axes of the USA (plus Canada),
Western Europe and Japan (plus Australia) and their respective
peripheries.
List of the 29 OECD member countries in 1997 in alphabetical
order: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic,
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland,
Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New
Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Turkey, UK, US.
OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE (ODA)
(See end of Chapter 8.)
OLIGOPOLY
'A state of limited competition when a market is shared by a small
number of producers or sellers' (Shorter OxfordDictionary, 1983). The
condition of oligopoly arises from the interdependence between the
firms that make it up: 'firms which no longer react to impersonal
forces coming from the market, but to their rivals, personally and
directly' (Pickering, 19 74). The global oligopoly is an 'area of rivalry',
defined by mutual market-dependent relations between the small
number of large groups which manage to acquire and keep the status
of effective competitor, within an industry (or within a complex of
industries with a common generic technology), on a world scale. The
oligopoly is the focus both of ferocious competition and of collabora
tion between groups (Chesnais, 1996).
THE PARIS CLUB
This group of lender states, specialising in dealing with non-payment
by developing countries, was founded in 19 5 6 at the time of the Suez