ABSTRACT
Western powers experienced, and to a certain extent steered, profound economic policy changes in the aftermath of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil price rise of 1973. They reframed their perception of the international trade and finance system, with a strong emphasis on an unprecedented interdependence. Increasing global capital flows were the key rationale for the G7 existence, but they were also exacerbating its tensions and hampering cooperation. As the US economy led the downward slide into recession, the G7 started to be driven also by foreign policy issues. Yet, the G7 epitomized and publicized the ascendancy of market prescriptions to cope with expanding world trade and financial flows and perpetuate Western pre-eminence, albeit in a refashioned manner. The complex relationship between OPEC and the Western industrialized countries, against the background of the G77 claim for a New International Economic Order, was one of the key factors– in many ways the pre-eminent one– that drove late 20th-century globalization.
