view of the world, inherited from the gradualist conception of history
associated with the theory of modernization, suggested that under-
development was not ineluctable, and that states who made the right
decisions could achieve prosperity. UN agencies, for their part, were
more inclined to stick to the old core–periphery vision. These terms,
however, were given a different meaning from the one they had in the
1970s, when they were popularized by dependency theory. As UNDP
head Kemal Dervis put it: “It is no longer a geographical center, but
a sociological center, and the periphery is the people around it and
they may include the suburbs of Paris or New Orleans.”^107 Dervis’
analysis, which reconceptualized the unequal and antagonistic nature
of the global system, provided a forceful reminder that, in the field of
development, the values and beliefs of the left remained altogether
distinct from those of the right.
Conclusion
At the end of the twentieth century, a rapprochement took place
between the left and the right. In national politics, this movement
toward the center saw the right soften its stance on market competi-
tion, individualism, and a leaner state, while the left was coming to
terms with the legitimacy of the market, the virtues of competition,
and the need for efficiency. On the left, the most articulate rendition of
this ideological adjustment came from Third Way advocates such as
Tony Blair, Gerhard Schro ̈der, and Anthony Giddens, who proposed
a modernized social-democracy, sensible to the challenges raised by
globalization, neoliberalism, post-industrialism, and new social move-
ments. In global politics, a similar process took shape around the idea
of a new development consensus, able to combine the right’s prefer-
ence for markets and competition with the left’s concern for social
justice. For a time, this new compromise seemed sufficiently powerful
Annual Boehm-Bawek Lecture, Innsbruck, November 17, 2005, p. 2107 (www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2005/111705.htm).
Kemal Dervis, “Globalization: Key Challenges for Governance and
Multilateralism,” keynote speech by the Administrator of the UNDP at the
Conference on “The Challenge of Globalization: Reinventing Good Global
Governance,” November 4, 2005, p. 3 (http://gstudynet.org/governance/
panels/keynote.php).
Twenty-first-century rapprochement 195