1. I focus on the five major powers because of their dominant role in the international economic order. In the period under study, the GNPs of these five nations together accounted for about 66% of the gross world product. Moreover, they provided 66% of official development assistance as well as private flows from OECD donor countries to developing countries, while accounting for 75% of the total population of OECD countries. In addition, they purchased half of the world exports of the 18 primary commodities included in the UNCTAD Integrated Program for Commodities.

2. Thus, for example, content analyses of UN delegation speeches are questionable indicators of government policies. See Hart, Jeffrey, “Interpreting OECD Policies toward the New International Economic Order,” in Kegley, Charles W. Jr. and McGowan, Pat, eds., The Political Economy of Foreign Policy Behavior (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981), pp. 215–32Google Scholar.

3. Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S., “Transgovemmental Relations and International Organizations,” World Politics 27 (10 1974), pp. 43, 46–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Keohane, and Nye, , eds., Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar. Transgovemmental networks and coalitions have been observed and analyzed in a variety of issue-areas. See Russell, Robert W., “Transgovemmental Interaction in the International Monetary System, 1960–1972,” International Organization 27 (Autumn 1973): 431–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keohane, and Nye, , “Introduction: The Complex Politics of Canadian-American Interdependence,” International Organization 28 (Autumn 1974): 595–607CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nye, , “Transnational Relations and Interstate Conflict: An Empirical Analysis,” International Organization 28 (Autumn 1974): 961–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dickerman, C. Robert, “Transgovemmental Challenge and Response in Scandinavia and North America,” International Organization 30 (Spring 1976): 213–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hopkins, Raymond, “The International Role of‘Domestic’ Bureaucracy,” International Organization 30 (Summer 1976): 405–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meltzer, Ronald I., “The Politics of Policy Reversal: The U.S. Response to Granting Trade Preferences to Developing Countries and Linkages between International Organizations and National Policy Making,” International Organization 30 (Autumn 1976): 649–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Keohane, , “The International Energy Agency: State Influence and Transgovemmental Politics,” International Organization 32 (Autumn 1978): 929–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S., Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), pp. 24–29Google Scholar.

5. Keohane, and Nye, , “Transgovernmental Relations,” pp. 45–46Google Scholar. See also Keohane, , “International Energy Agency,” pp. 948–49Google Scholar.

6. Keohane, and Nye, , “Transgovernmental Relations,” p. 47Google Scholar; Keohane, , “International Energy Agency,” p. 949Google Scholar; and Meltzer, , “Politics of Policy Reversal,” p. 665Google Scholar.

7. Russell, , “Transgovernmental Interaction,” p. 457Google Scholar.

8. I interviewed over 150 individuals representing 14 national governments, 7 intergovernmental organizations, and a number of nongovernmental groups as well. While all of the respondents were involved in at least one of the issues, many were familiar with both. Most of the interviews were carried out in Washington, D.C., in November and December 1977, June 1978, April 1979, and July 1982; in Geneva, Paris, Brussels, and London during 1978; and at the UNCTAD V conference in Manila in May 1979. I also made use of many unpublished documents related to the negotiations.

9. Even after the major powers reach consensus, differences between them and other developed countries may persist, but the latter generally have little independent influence on the outcome of the negotiations.

10. This proposition implies a very limited role for legislatures or parliaments in shaping positions taken in negotiations on North-South economic issues. Even the most influential legislature in the major powers, the U.S. Congress, must rely mainly on the power of ultimate veto over executive initiatives, a rather blunt tool of influence. Often, when Congressmen or their staffs do become involved in an issue while it is still being negotiated, they are responding to leadership provided by executive agencies seeking outside allies.

11. See Allison, Graham, Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), p. 169Google Scholar; and Allison, and Szanton, Peter, Remaking Foreign Policy: The Organizational Connection (New York: Basic Books, 1976), p. 22Google Scholar.

12. “A participant who has the President's ear quickly acquires a reputation for being able to win. Not only will his support be sought, but proposals will be dropped rather than brought forward against his opposition.” Halperin, Morton H., Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1974), p. 221Google Scholar. See also Cohen, Stephen, The Making of United States International Economic Policy (New York: Praeger, 1977), p. 105Google Scholar; and Allison, and Szanton, , Remaking Foreign Policy, pp. 69–70Google Scholar.

13. See Keohane, and Nye, , Transnational Relations and World Politics, p. 381Google Scholar.

^14. Keohane, and Nye, , “Transgovernmental Relations,” p. 50Google Scholar.

15. Ibid., p. 48.

16. Esman, Milton and Cheever, Daniel recognized the potential for this situation early with the OECD's Development Assistance Committee: “the DAC may become a relatively futile professional in-group influencing donor policies and actions only at the margin unless it can develop a more effective way to influence the domestic political process in member countries.” The Common Aid Effort (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1967), p. 243Google Scholar.

17. The problem of gauging relative capabilities on a particular issue and using that to predict outcomes is highlighted in Dickerman's study of U.S.-Canadian relations. He found that despite disparities in conventional measures of power, the outcome of bargaining on particular issues often favors the Canadians-especially when the Canadians act cohesively as a government and the Americans do not. Dickerman, , “Transgovernmental Challenge and Response,” pp. 233–34Google Scholar.

18. See Schelling, Thomas C., The Strategy of Conflict (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 121–22 and 160Google Scholar.

19. Schelling, Thomas C., Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 65–66Google Scholar.

20. It should be noted that if the commitment is made in a public or.quasi-public statement, the actual words are not as important as the signals they are meant to convey and the interpretation that is given them.

21. See UNCTAD Trade and Development Board Resolution 165(S-IX), in GAOR, 32d sess. (1978), Supp. no. 15, vol. I, part two.

22. See Resolution l(III) of the United Nations Negotiating Conference on a Common Fund under the Integrated Programme for Commodities, 3d sess., in UNCTAD Doc. TD/IPC/CF/ CONF/18 (March 1979).

23. The full text of the Manila Declaration and Programme of Action appears in United Nations, Proceedings of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Fourth Session, Nairobi, 5–31 05 1976, TD/218 (1977), vol. I, Annex VGoogle Scholar.

24. Reductions in the demands of the G-77 were probably due as much to opposition from influential members of the group who objected to radical proposals as to opposition encountered from the developed countries.

25. The developing countries had proposed postponement of CIEC in the hope that the new Carter administration in the United States would be more responsive to them.

26. Interview with U.S. State Department official, July 1982.

27. Interview with French Finance Ministry official, February 1978.

28. The proposal is reprinted in UNCTAD, The External Indebtedness of Developing Countries, TD/AC.2/5 (30 June 1977), Annex II, pp. 4–8.

29. This conclusion about the impact of the finance ministry coalition is based mainly on interviews with officials of the EC Commission in February 1978, an interview with a French Finance Ministry official in February 1978, and an interview with a British Overseas Development Ministry official in September 1978, as well as confidential documents made available to the author.

30. The Special Action Program agreed on at CIEC could be considered an exception; as a one-shot aid program of $ 1 billion spearheaded by the European Commission and the British Overseas Development Ministry, it was an effort to provide some immediate financial relief to the poorer countries and create a tangible achievement for CIEC.

31. Interview with British Foreign and Commonwealth Office official, July 1982.

32. Interview with British Treasury official, September 1978.

33. This reluctance was clear from an unpublished document made available to the author by a British official in September 1978.

34. The Dutch were also playing an active role in promoting RTA through DAC and the ExCSS.

35. Interview with a British Overseas Development Ministry official, September 1978.

36. An OECD official must have had Britain and West Germany in mind when he told the author in early February 1978 that he expected “some countries” would agree in March to help the poorer countries.

37. A recent study by Stephen Cohen, also based on confidential interviews, concludes that the initiative for change in U.S. debt relief policy, that is, for acceptance of the RTA concept, originated with Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff. See Cohen, Stephen C., “The Political Economy of US Policy on LDC Debt Relief: Executive-Legislative Relations, 1977–1980,” World Development 10 (1982): 147–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. By contrast, other authoritative sources in the State Department indicate that the initial impetus came from officials there, although the State Department role had to be concealed from Treasury, which was opposed to raising the issue with Congress. Despite Cohen's conclusion, it seems more plausible that officials in the State Department first perceived the desirability of compromise on this issue, although they could not communicate their views formally to Congress. As described earlier, a high-level British official reported the beginnings of a transgovernmental coalition on the issue at CIEC.

38. UNCTAD Trade and Development Board Resolution 165(S–IX)Google Scholar.

39. Interview with British Department of Trade official, September 1978.

40. U.K. Parliament, Hansard Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser. vol. 927 (1977): 1412Google Scholar.

41. A U.S. Treasury official characterized the U.S. posture in late 1976 and early 1977 as “passive opposition” to the Common Fund, which was to be combined with active involvement in consultations on individual commodities. It was hoped that this position would continue to be supported by “at least two major industrialized allies, the United Kingdom and Germany.” Vastine, J. Robert Jr “United States International Commodity Policy,” Law and Policy in International Business 9 (1977): 467–68Google Scholar.

42. This account of the Rome decision is based on interviews with British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department of Trade officials in January 1978, September 1978, and July 1982.

43. Whether the United States would have moved to support a Common Fund without the Rome decision cannot be known with certainty; most of the dozen or so respondents who were asked this question directly felt that it would not. In any case, U.S. officials were upset over the Rome decision, some because they disagreed with its substantive implications and some because they felt it gave away a concession that could have been made to better effect if it had not been offered until the final session of CIEC by the developed countries as a group. Interviews with U.S. State Department officials, 1978.

44. Annex to the Report of the Conference on International Economic Cooperation, doc. CCEI–CM6 (Paris, 2 06 1977), p. 51Google Scholar.

45. Participants in the Ad Hoc Group were fairly low-ranking; they saw their role as elaborating and harmonizing positions determined at higher levels and had neither the resources nor the motivation to define new policy directions. Interviews with participants, 1978 and 1979.

46. The G-77 view of the Common Fund is reflected in numerous documents prepared by the UNCTAD secretariat during the negotiations. For an early version, see A Common Fund for the Financing of Commodity Stocks: Amounts, Terms, and Prospective Sources of Finance– Report by the Secretary-General of UNCTAD, TD/B/C.1/184(24 June 1975); for a later version, see Elements of an Agreement on a Common Fund–Report by the UNCTAD Secreatariat, TD/IPC/CF/CONF/3(22 February 1977).

47. See the Draft Report of the United Nations Negotiating Conference on a Common Fund under the Integrated Programme for Commodities, TD/IPC/CF/CONF/L.7/Add.2 (12 December 1977), p. 2.

48. Although it is not possible to explore the internal dynamics of the Group of 77 here, the splits within the group, as in Group B, were an important factor in the negotiations. During and after the November conference, moderate leaders of the G-77 and the UNCTAD secretariat had to devoted considerable effort to developing consensus within their own ranks on more attainable objectives.

49. Interview with British Foreign and Commonwealth Office official, January 1978, and an internal French Foreign Ministry document made available to the author.

50. Delegation of France, “Un modele de fonds commun,” working paper (09 1977)Google Scholar. The paper was circulated as a confidential document both in the OECD Ad Hoc Group on the Common Fund in October and at the November 1977 conference.

51. The paper was also unenthusiastically received by the G-77, whose more radical members were determined that the Common Fund should finance other measures with assessed contributions.

52. Commonwealth Secretariat, “Final Communiqué,” Commonwealth Ministerial Meeting on the Common Fund: Summary Record and Memoranda (London, 04 1978)Google Scholar.

53. Interviews with British, U.S., and Commonwealth secretariat officials, 1978.

54. See UNCTAD, Report of the United Nations Negotiating Conference on a Common Fund under the Integrated Programme for Commodities on Its Second Session, TD/IPC/CF/CONF/14 (1979), Part II, Annex VIGoogle Scholar.

55. UNCTAD Doc. TD/IPC/CF/CONF/18 (March 1979).

56. Because of the politics of the G-77, this redefinition of the issues was less apparent on the official level than in more private, informal consultations between leaders of the G-77 and the G-5.

57. Keohane, and Nye, , “Transgovernmental Relations,” p. 61Google Scholar.