Power Passions and Purpose : Prospects for North-South Negotiations

Power, Passions, and Purpose contains twelve original essays and a joint statement by distinguished economists, political scientists, and policy-makers, aimed at exploring new directions in North-South negotiations.

Combining the talents of writers from different disciplines, it provides the first substantial treatment of the current stalemate in the North-South dialog, and shows how the situation can be creatively altered. The book addresses a political and economic disjunction that arose in the late 1970s in the world economy.

By that time, it was evident that the commodity power, which had given force to the Third World's demands for global negotiations concerning the rules of the international economic order, had vanished.

Yet, the passions evoked by the Third World countries' perception of such power and by their desire for political and economic equity had not subsided: They originally informed the need for negotiations and provided a purpose which still endures.

These contributions shed light on the history of North-South negotiations and offer a rigorous and imaginative analysis of the alternative course of action that must now be confronted. An introduction by Jagdish N. Bhagwati is followed by sections on Global Negotiations (Bhagwati, John Gerard Ruggie, Albert Bressand, Muchkund Dubey, John Sewell and William Zartman); Power Sharing and Institutional Change (Catherine Gwin); Debts, Finance, and Trade (Carlos Diaz-Alejandro, Martin Wolf, Jere Behrman); and USSR-South and South-South (Padma Desai, Sanjaya Lall).