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Environmental characteristics and organizational ideology: UNCTAD—the lessons of 1964
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2009
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THE United Nations Conference on Trade and Development came nto existence in 1964. Its creation was viewed with a degree of cautious enthusiasm by the Third World and with a certain amount of apprehension by the rich countries. Its performance has dampened the enthusiasm and heightened the apprehension. Its contribution to substantive changes in trade policies has not been spectacular. Whatever improvement in commodity prices and hence in the terms of trade of the poor countries that occurred in the early 1970s was attributable to fortuitous circumstances – not to a negotiated settlement between the rich and poor countries, enabling the latter to retain a larger portion of the gains from trade. Can we3 therefore3 say that UNGTAD has been ineffective? That it has failed to perform its global task? And if so, what is the cause of this failure? Is the organizational ideology unsuitable in the sense that it is not representative of the national objectives of viable coalitions among UNGTAD constituents? Or has the leadership failed to evolve a strategy which links the pursuit of specific sub-goals to the transformation of the system in accordance with the organizational ideology? This present paper attempts to look at the first question and to venture an opinion on the effectiveness of UNGTAD in the light of these findings.
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- Copyright © British International Studies Association 1978
References
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page 136 note 1 Integration may of course be achieved in other ways. Indeed it can be a consequence of unintended action. An international organization may also of course play a disintegrative role.
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page 137 note 1 Viability implies that such coalitions can in the first place be constructed (a coalition between South Africa and Zambia, Tanzania and other sub-Sahara states is not stable). Secondly, that such a coalition is capable of sustaining ideological modification and task expansion for the organization concerned (a coalition consisting of landlocked countries is not viable for an international organization which seeks to change maritime law).
page 137 note 2 i.e. at the birth of an international organization.
page 137 note 3 This is discussed in Section 3.
page 138 note 1 The following countries are included in this category: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, West Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, U.K., U.S.A. These countries are included in the “B” Group within UNCTAD which also includes the mini-states of Europe, Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Greece. These latter may more properly be regarded as less developed states.
page 138 note 2 The socialist countries had no part in the running of the international economic order either. This has been a cause of increasing concern to them as economic isolationism has been abandoned. The USSR has repeatedly called for the creation of an International Trade Organization and the East European states have shown great interest in the expansion of East-West trade.
page 139 note 1 Indicator (viia): the state of growth of exports to LDGs.
page 140 note 1 I hope to do this at a later stage of the project.
page 140 note 2 This assumes that the poorer consumers consume more of primary products and low technology goods than do such consumers in the West.
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page 144 note 1 These environmental characteristics are derived from an estimation of 21 indicators.
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page 146 note 1 These were (i) General Principle 13 proposing special measures for the land locked countries; (ii) Special Principle 6 proposing help for commodities affected by the development of synthetics and (iii) Special Principle 10 advocating accelerated technical assistance.
page 146 note 2 UNGTAD Final Act and Report (New York, 1964).Google Scholar See statements by Group “B” countries, pp. 69–83.
page 150 note 1 Ten countries opposed and all others abstained. Similarly 12 Group “B” countries voted against Special Principle 7 and most of the others abstained.
page 150 note 2 See Table 3.
page 150 note 3 These include all roll call votes in plenary sessions as well as votes on which states expressed dissent in their declarations but exclude votes in the Special Committees.
page 151 note 1 Embodied in the General and Special Principles.
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page 152 note 2 If Xi is country i's voting rank X is the average voting rank and Sx is the standard deviation of the Xs, then a standardized voting rank is 
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page 152 note 3 However, there is also a strong case for lumping the No’s together (as was done in the preceding tables in this Section), for the practical consequence of opposition to and abstention on UNGTAD resolutions was similar. Countries which did not support a specific recommendation did not feel obliged to abide by it.
page 153 note 1 The practical correlation coefficients between e.g. GNP and indicators (xiv), (xv) and (xvii) (in Table 3 were – 0.5361 (0.014) – 0.5133 (0.018) – 0.7632 (0.001)respectively. The association with GNP is thus not strong enough to render totally meaningless the association of the economic structure variables with voting patterns.
page 155 note 1 Initially all 17 indicators were used but the resulting correlation matrix was ill-conditioned due to the equality of the number of countries (variables) and indicators (factors) and the existence of multi-colinearity among the indicators. Hence three indicators had to be dropped.
page 156 note 1 See footnote 1 on p. 105.
page 157 note 1 The. cold war may have been an important factor in the convening of the 1964 Conference, but its importance as a determinant of voting behaviour of Group “B” countries at the Conference is very limited. There is, for example, little evidence that the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. competed with each other to win the favours of the Third World countries in Geneva in 1964.
page 159 note 1 Held in September 1975.
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