ABSTRACT
Many commenters in the West celebrate the 'rise of the Rest' to the extent that Southern states accept the frame of Western foreign policy. In this frame, America leads a system of Western democratic-capitalist states in changing the world in the West's own image, superseding the Westphalian notion of state sovereignty where necessary. This chapter examines the distribution of economic 'weights' and political leadership. It considers the politics of particular international organizations in order to recognize the micro-processes through which Western states keep their lead. The chapter presents case studies to show how Western states have managed to retain global leadership even after they became the epicentre of the Great Slump in 2008 and even as Southern criticism of their rule rises. Prebisch and colleagues envisaged UNCTAD as a policy-oriented think tank under predominantly Southern control, within the UN family of organizations, to counterbalance the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), as well as the World Bank and IMF.
