Developing World and International Relations

The recently held summit meeting of G-20 countries in India has emphatically pointed out that the developing world is not as straight forward as it seems. Its inherent evolution is an important source of cleavages observed in the international system.

To begin with is the fact that the two crucial participants of the G-20 summit are still considered a veritable part of the developing world though the top industrial nations of the so-called developed world are unwilling to consider India and China as part of the developing world as it is generally perceived. It must be kept in view that the G20 consists of 19 countries and the European Unionmaking up about 85 per cent of global GDP and two-thirds of the world’s population and this description is completely unlike the description of the developing world in vogue.

Within the developing world, countries were usually classified as having relatively low and medium levels of development. Through the mediation of international institutions, the dynamics of international relations has progressively defined the notion of developing world.

For instance, the United Nations Development Programmeuses its Human Development Index to measure development in terms of several indicators such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and human poverty. Whatever category it is put in it is, however, a reality that the developing world is an element in international relations but its changing nature required reviewing its position in the global perspective.

The developing world was the world politically created by peoples of Africa and Asia meeting in Bandung in 1955; the Bandung conference was the beginning of the collective claim of Third World countries for decolonisation and development. From this conference, a collective consciousness of belonging to the underdeveloped world and a clear resolution to change international relations arose.

For this reason, the trademark of developing countries in international relations has been and still is the denunciation of the international order. In the same way that Westphalia constitutes a mythical reference for the foundation of European public order, Bandung is a reference in international relations.

The Bandung conference was a Third World appropriation of principles of European public law and the United Nations Charter. The creation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961 in Belgrade was part of the same dynamics. The developing world is a world in rebellion against the international order but the clash between the developing world and the developed world is relative as the developing world does not refer to an autonomous entity.

It is generally recognised that the developing world is the world on which developed countries wield their power through various means: economic, cultural, political, or military.

Economically, the lower position is reflected by the weakness of the national currencies, raw materials dependent on the trade structure, high rate of human poverty, or insufficient industrialization. In international relations, developing countries are to a large extent subordinate to developed countries, which create explicitly or implicitly international clientelism: Patron states are developed states; client states are developing states. Clientelism makes it difficult for developing states to have diplomatic autonomy or to go beyond vocal affirmation of sovereignty.

However, the economic dependence of the developing world is not an absolute. Ideological, political, or religious parameters may determine the diplomatic demarche of a developing state.

As a specific space of action, the developing world has at least two meanings. The developing world emerges from the solidarity approach to international relations used by states and international organisations in their action. Each developed state defines its south.

For instance, while the United States had privileged South Asia and Latin America during the Cold War era, France was organizing its aid policy with an emphasis on Africa. International organisations such as the World Bank or UNDP elaborate quantitative criteria to measure underdevelopment and then rationalise the contribution of the international community. In this regard, the developing world is the space filled by world generosity.

The developing world has influenced the structuring of international relations through the agencies, funds, and programs aimed at the development of Third World countries. In as much as the developing world induces the creation of development organisations, international institutions crystallize the existence of the developing world.

Owing to their very nature, presence of cleavages is very obvious in international relations and here they are translated through the antagonism between the developed world and the developing world.

The concept of the developing world is an important one that has acquired an enduring meaning in international relations. The developing world cannot be understood without reference to the developed world—they form an antagonistic couple. Each of these worlds has specific attributes. It could be said that while the developed world is a world of high economic performance and standard of living, the developing world is a world of relative or absolute deprivation. However, it is important to bear in mind that the concept of the developing world is an over generalisation of a complex reality. Instead of a single developing world, there are several such worlds.

There is a hierarchy within the developed world in which some countries of the South are seen as nearer to those of the North. Moreover, the developed world is not a monolithic world.

It is also important to keep in view the phenomenon of international relations in which the developing world intervenes as an actor and its dynamics come into play. Like all social relations, international relations are structured by the balance of forces. In this context, power is based on the level of development.

The developed world is the dominant world, the world of the powerful, while the developing world is the dominated world, the world of the powerless. Thus, the developing world stands as testimony to the inequality in international relations and constitutes a specific field of action.

The existence of an international hierarchy is confirmed by the category of developing world. In contemporary international relations, the developing world has often been named the Third World used for countries that were neither Western capitalist countries (First World) nor the socialist countries of Eastern and Central Europe (Second World). The term Third World indicates the lower position occupied by countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

To some extent, developing countries have succeeded in constructing the “North” as the enemy of the “South” through a mobilisation of the history of colonisation, the systematisation of neocolonialism, and the explanation of underdevelopment by exogenous factors. In international relations, the developing world has been institutionalised as a category of vision, division, and action.

It is a basis of solidarities of both resemblance and interests: solidarity of resemblance through the regrouping of developing states in circles such as the Group of 77 and solidarity of interests due to the relative similarity of the economic problems of developing states, as exemplified in the dialogue between the European Union (EU), Asian, African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States.

The underdeveloped world is the product of the development of the capitalist mode of production at the periphery. Therefore, the relations between developed countries and underdeveloped ones are like metropole–satellite relations. The argument of the dependence of the underdeveloped world is based on several elements among which are internal colonialism, which is the domination of the economy by the metropolis, and the extraversion toward central states of the economy.