took the part of an instrument in the service of “an old-fashioned form
of realist power politics.”^81
As for the promotion of foreign direct investment, it was an integral
component of the vast movement in favor of the private sector and the
globalization of markets. The United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development (UNCTAD) estimated that between 1991 and 2002,
95 percent of all government measures dealing with foreign invest-
ment encouraged greater liberalization.^82 With the countries of the
South taking an active part in this international trend, foreign direct
investment began to play a much bigger role than before in develop-
ment financing. Between 1980 and 2004, flows of foreign direct
investment to the Third World grew 28-fold, surging from $8 billion
to $230 billion.^83
International institutions were instrumental in rehabilitating foreign
investment and in getting the developing countries to display a new
openness toward transnational corporations. The leadership role
played by the WTO was in this respect decisive. The Agreement on
Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights that was nego-
tiated during the Uruguay Round represented a particularly significant
innovation, as it gave large corporations increased protection for their
patents. At the same time, the structural adjustment programs imposed
by the IMF and the World Bank systematically required the govern-
ments of the South to relax their restrictive policies toward foreign
investors. As for the UN, whose previous hostility toward multinational
companies was well known, it effected “a change of 180 degrees.”^84
After the early 1990s, instead of advocating greater control over
transnational corporate activities in the Third World, the organization
took on the mandate of actively promoting foreign investment. This
ideological shift was aptly summarized by then Secretary-General Kofi
(^81) Payne,The Global Politics of Unequal Development, pp. 118 and 170.
(^82) UNCTAD,Development and Globalization: Facts and Figures, New York,
83 UNCTAD, 2004, p. 36.
Ibid., p. 33; UNCTAD, “Surge in Foreign Direct Investment in Developing
Countries Reverses Global Downturn,” press release, Geneva, September 29,
2005 (www.unctad.org/templates/webflyer.asp?docid¼6334&intItemID¼
84 3369&lang¼1).
G. C. A. Junne, “International Organizations in a Period of Globalization: New
(Problems of) Legitimacy,” in Jean-Marc Coicaud and Veijo Heiskanen (eds.),
The Legitimacy of International Organizations, Tokyo, United Nations
University Press, 2001, p. 204.
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