ABSTRACT
The idea of the Global South emerged from the maelstrom of World War II as it was in the post-war period that the developing world began to "fit" into the wider international political economy in a way that had not been readily apparent in the pre-Cold War era. This chapter examines some of the attempts to institutionalize what is called the "Global South" through the creation of various organizations and forums. It explores the involvement of underdeveloped countries in global governance. The reassertion by the North came within the context where high debt levels and economic stagnation in most of the postcolonial world acted to drastically undermine the Global South's maneuverability. Bandung was followed by the Belgrade Conference of 1961, at which the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was officially launched. The NAM was established as a loose multilateral project with very little formal organization, which resulted in "conference diplomacy (becoming) a specific characteristic of nonalignment".
