ABSTRACT
The attempt to create a new regime in commodities was the central issue on the North-South agenda from 1974 to 1979. The terms of the debate were set by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) Integrated Program for Commodities (IPC), a strikingly ambitious attempt to restructure the entire commodity order so that the developing countries would earn a greater share of the income and wealth derived from commodity production and trade. Recent forecasts of the world economy have been dominated by expectations of slower growth if not stagnation, retrenchment, increased self-centeredness and nationalism, rising difficulties in implementing collective efforts at reform, and political instability. An initiative in commodities thus seems virtually inevitable in the context of the time, but an initiative centered on the IPC and the Common Fund was not.
