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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
While the demand for economic development by underdeveloped countries has a long history, two landmarks call for brief comment: 1960, when a massinflux of newly-independent underdeveloped countries lent political strength to their clamours; and 1973, when the spectacular rise in oil prices became a potential weapon of the developing countries. The chief political forum of the latter has been the General Assembly of the United Nations, but battle has also been done in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), chief forum on international trade. Some concessions have been wrested from the developed countries, but progress in the two chief fora of public international finance, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, has been slow. Both of these international institutions have become the focus of manoeuvre between the developing and the developed countries.
1 Horsefield, J. K. (ed.), The International Monetary Fund, 1945–1965: Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation, Vol. III (documents): Keynes Plan, 3–36, White Plan, 37–96.Google Scholar
2 Harry Dexter White noted in 1942 that the matters concerning balance of payments and economic development should be kept strictly separate.
3 See SirGold, Joseph, Legal and Institutional Aspects of the International Monetary System: Selected Essays, Washington, 1979, 506.Google Scholar
4 The British Executive Director, for instance, has the wealth of experience of both the Bank of England and the Treasury at his beck and call. In contrast, some developing countries are represented by directors from the developed countries.
5 SirGold, Joseph, in Horsefield, J. K., op. cit., 254 and 520.Google Scholar
6 Full name: Inter-Governmental Group of Twenty-Four on International Monetary Affairs and Related Matters.
7 SirGold, Joseph, Legal and Institutional Aspects of the International Monetary System: Selected Essays, Washington, 1979, 269.Google Scholar
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10 Keynes's precise words on that occasion were “… such discretionary rights as might be accorded to the Fund should be framed to distinguish between the case of a developed country managing its affairs prudently so as to avoid recourse to the Fund, and that of an irresponsible small country anxious to exploit a new source of borrowing”. See Horsefield, J. K., The I.M.F., 1945–1965: Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation, Vol. I, 76–77.Google Scholar
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