The Challenge of the New International Economic Order

This volume deals with the recent proposals in the United Nations and elsewhere for reconstructing the existing economic relations between less developed and more developed countries. The contributors to the book undertake to clarify the NIEO proposals, asking specifically to what extent they are really new, fully international, realistically economic, and are the constituents of workable order. The confrontation of NIEO demands and real-world constraints is a leading feature of the book, and each of the chapters deals with one or more elements of the NIEO proposals against the background of relevant conditions in both the countries and the international institutions and practices that interrelate them. The authors arrive at a considerable degree of consensus, mostly agreeing that the NIEO is not really a new order, but endorsing specific NIEO proposals that will achieve gradual progress for LDCs in absolute terms.