The creation of regional economic organizations in the Third World in the 1960s

Figure 30.1 The number of regional economic cooperative arrangements 1945-2000 473 Figure 30.2 Regional economic cooperative arrangements in four regions 1950-80 474

Creation of regional organizations in the South

The policy that the Northern states initiated at Bretton Woods to tackle development after the reconstruction of Europe encouraged the South to reflect on a strategy of its own. This resulted in import substitution and regional economic cooperation as policies to enhance the world market position of Southern states. Southern regional cooperation was not an imitation of European integration (albeit that European experience was taken into account), but a development that had its main roots in the North-South divide and in analyses such as the dependency theory (see §29.2). This strategy resulted in the ongoing creation of economic regional international organizations, which over time had their ups and downs (see §30.2), but which remained a permanent component of the Southern strategy (see Figure 30.1).