ABSTRACT
The Deputy Managing Director of the World Bank also concurred, stating that he was "impressed" by the degree of consensus and convergence that had emerged in Monterrey. Global conferences are a long-standing characteristic of multilateral diplomacy, the origins of which may be traced back to the economic conferences organized in the early 1930s by the League of Nations. The approach of the Bretton Woods institutions, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and its successor organization World Trade Organization was to promote the globalization of the world economy through market-based trade and investment policies as means to achieve higher levels of welfare. More to the point, development finance had for decades been a stumbling block in the North-South dialogue. Negotiations over the agenda of Monterrey reflected long-standing deep differences between the industrial countries and the G-77. The Monterrey Consensus is a consensus less about substance than about a process based on general policy principles.
