From ‘Bad Samaritans’ to ‘Bad Victims’: A Political Economy of Africa-Nigeria Nexus of Poverty

This paper examines the linkages between moral categorisations on the international economic order and the dysfunctions that negate efforts at combating the Africa-Nigeria poverty conditions in the contemporary period. Drawing from the thesis of Ha-Joon Chang’s ‘Bad Samaritans’, it analyses the contradictions in the often-repeated declarations on ‘fight against poverty’ in Nigeria and the endemic dysfunctions in leadership and institutions that ought to play significant roles in understanding and recalibrating the hegemonic influence of wealthy nations who control the global economy.

International Clout in the Political Salience of Traditional Leadership in South Africa

This paper argues that the international economic order, continental politics, and cultural movement have primarily shaped how traditional leaders evolved in South Africa. In this context, the overarching neoliberal economic influence can be understood from two interlaced factors: Firstly, post the soviet disintegration, South Africa necessarily underwent a structural transition in the sphere of political economy that opens up space for international actors. Secondly, the cultural plurality was increasingly recognised and protected, which further propitiates traditional leaders entrenching South Africa’s market economy. Therefore, understanding the political salience of traditional leadership in South Africa cannot be separated from the international clout that impinges on the local governmentality.

International Clout in the Political Salience of Traditional Leadership in South Africa

This paper argues that the international economic order, continental politics, and cultural movement have primarily shaped how traditional leaders evolved in South Africa. In this context, the overarching neoliberal economic influence can be understood from two interlaced factors: Firstly, post the soviet disintegration, South Africa necessarily underwent a structural transition in the sphere of political economy that opens up space for international actors. Secondly, the cultural plurality was increasingly recognised and protected, which further propitiates traditional leaders entrenching South Africa’s market economy. Therefore, understanding the political salience of traditional leadership in South Africa cannot be separated from the international clout that impinges on the local governmentality.

Counterstorytelling in International Economic Law

This chapter critically evaluates the phenomenon of counterstorytelling in the context of international economic law. The intellectual origins and conceptual assumptions of the narrative turn in legal thought are surveyed, before counterstorytelling is discussed—a style of narrative jurisprudence that emerged primarily in the context of critical race theory, and whose power inheres in its mythbusting potential. Counterstorytelling is illustrated with reference to the past, present, and future of international economic law, focusing respectively on: Adom Getachew’s historical account of the New International Economic Order in Worldmaking after Empire; the diagnostic of the current backlash against economic globalization in Lynn Nottage’s play Sweat; and efforts to forecast the trajectories of neoliberal capitalism.

‘Crude’ Alliance – Economic Decolonisation and Oil Power in the Non-Aligned World

The article examines Yugoslavia's and by extension the Non-Aligned Movement's relations with the Middle East, reflecting more broadly on the developmental hierarchies and inner divides between the oil producing and non-oil producing countries within the Movement. The ‘energy shocks’ of the 1970s had a dramatic impact on non-OPEC developing countries and sowed long-lasting rifts in the non-aligned/developing world. The article embeds these events within the debates about the ‘New International Economic Order’ (NIEO), economic decolonisation and the nationalisation of energy resources in the 1970s, but also seeks to provide a longer-term overview of the economic and political relations that non-aligned Yugoslavia sought to forge with the Middle East, in particular with other non-aligned partners such as Egypt, Iraq, Libya and Kuwait. New forms of Cold War developmental multilateralism emerged as a consequence of the energy crisis – the supply of Arab oil to areas which had traditionally relied on Soviet energy not only foreshadowed the emergence of a new hierarchical and dependent relationship between Yugoslavia and the Middle East, it also engendered new forms of economic cooperation and strategic economic multi-alignment through the pooling of resources and expertise from non-aligned, Eastern Bloc states and the United Nations, illustrated here through the Adria Oil Pipeline built in the 1970s and co-financed by Yugoslavia, Kuwait, Libya, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the World Bank.

Disenchantment and renewal

This chapter shows how the tide turned against technocratic internationalism in the 1970s and 1980s. The first section describes a general backlash against bureaucracy as an organizational form that also affected international organizations. Thomas G. Weiss’s criticism of the United Nations and their bureaucracy serves as a key work to illustrate the shifting perception. The chapter then discusses the return of the state and intergovernmentalism in international theory. A new generation of liberal-internationalist literature, influenced by economics and rational choice theory, put the emphasis on actors’ behaviour, on political will, and on the conditions under which international cooperation was negotiated. Few authors now seemed to believe that objective problem pressure alone would induce international cooperation. Yet other elements of the functionalist account remained almost unquestioned. This is illustrated with the emergent literature on global environmental problems, to be tackled by new international ‘regimes’, which became a new field for expert-driven, de-politicized governance. Technocratic ideas about public planning were still present on the left of the political spectrum. The partisans of a New International Economic Order suggested global administrative bodies should manage and re-distribute the world’s resources, such as the minerals of the deep seabed.

Economic Rights under the UN System and the Creation of a Newer International Economic Order

In the beginning of the human rights discourse, emphasis was on civil and political rights. Later, the thrust of the discourse moved to social and economic rights. Economic rights were demanded by the developing world manifesting in the form of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources and the New International Economic Order. Due to the untiring efforts of these members, economic rights are reflected, enunciated and promoted in the international human rights instruments created under the aegis of the UN. The OHCHR has an innovative approach towards the guaranteeing of economic rights. For instance, the Office has a human rights approach towards poverty alleviation. It also recognises different duty holders in promoting human rights like the Transnational Corporations apart from the governments and civil society in ensuring human rights (especially in the interlinkages on Business and Human Rights). These new approaches has transformed the promotion of economic rights. The question is whether the international economic order has benefited from the promotion and guaranteeing of the economic rights. The aim of the present article is to analyse the impact of UN efforts in promoting economic rights and its repercussions on the formation of a newer international economic order.