Getachewfully and effectively in the international decision-making process in
the solution of world economic, financial and monetary problems.” This
claim of equal legislative power grounded the more ambitious claim that
sovereign equality had material implications: it required and entailed
an equitable share of the world’s wealth. According to the Declaration
on the Establishment of the NIEO, the welfare world aimed for “the
broadest co-operation of all the States members of the international
community, based on equity, whereby the prevailing disparities in the
world may be banished and prosperity secured for all.”
Fearing that Third World states would launch commodity embar-
goes on the model of OPEC’s 1973 oil embargo, Western statesmen
initially pursued a conciliatory policy of appeasement in public even as
they criticized the NIEO privately. In this context, postcolonial states
gained allies among social democrats in the Global North and secured
small victories. For instance, with the addition of Part 4 to the General
Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, postcolonial states were able to secure
lower tariffs in the Global North on some of their goods. Moreover,
postcolonial states were freed from the requirement of reciprocity in
trade agreements with the Global North. These special and preferential
provisions recognized the unfair character of international trade and
sought to strengthen the position of postcolonial states.
However, the political openings that made possible these con-
cessions and enabled the Third World to demand the NIEO proved
narrow. With commodity prices declining and debt skyrocketing, the
bargaining power of postcolonial states eroded rapidly. By the end of
the 1970s, the era of neoliberal globalization had dawned, displacing
visions of a welfare world. Leading the opposition to the NIEO, the
World Bank and IMF rejected its aspiration to democratic and universal
international economic law. Instead, these financial institutions insulated
the global economy from political contestation by recasting it as the