Bulletin n. 3/2007
December 2007
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Bair Jennifer
    From the Politics of Development to the Challenges of Globalization
    in Globalizations , Volume 4, Issue 4, December 2007 ,  2007 ,  486 - 499
    Abstract During the 1970s, the United Nations was the central front in the G-77's struggle to realize a 'New International Economic Order' (NIEO). A key plank in the NIEO platform was the regulation of multinational corporations; this objective was pursued via a draft Code of Conduct on Transnational Enterprises, formulated by a UN Commission created largely for that purpose. Although the Code was abandoned in 1992 after 14 years of negotiations, multinationals were back on the UN agenda later that same decade. As then Secretary-General Kofi Annan observed when announcing this new initiative between the United Nations and corporate partners, the Global Compact recognizes that a fundamental shift has occurred in recent years in the attitude of the UN towards the private sector. This paper explores the rehabilitation of the multinational corporation implied in the journey from Code to Compact as a way to understand the transformation of development discourse that occurred during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Focusing on the history of contestation that lies beneath the current orthodoxy, I emphasize that the Code of Conduct, and the broader NIEO agenda of which it was part, represented an effort by the G-77 countries to define development as a struggle for recognition of the 'sovereign equality' of Southern and Northern states, and as a demand for redistribution via structural reform of the existing order and the creation of a more equitable international regime.
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