Reinventing South-South solidarity

By Bob Sugeng Hadiwinata

BANDUNG (JP): After being postponed for several months, the G- 15 summit held last month in New Delhi once again failed to achieve quorum.

This gloomy indicator of South-South solidarity tends to bring about major disappointment among political leaders as well as scholars in Third World countries.

The main conundrum before us could be: why should the Third World solidarity established in the 1970s have reached the point of diminishing returns?

There are at least three "new" realities in global political- economic relations in the last 20 years which have changed the nature of North-South as well as South-South relations.

First, as a result of the improvement of education and training in most of the developing counties, a global standardization of technological ability seems to be underway.

The improved quality of human resources has given some developing countries the ability to produce goods that meet international standards.

This is the case with textiles, garments, footwear, electronics, and other industries. This situation has led to the so-called New International Division of Labor (NIDL) in which developing countries no longer serve as suppliers of raw materials and importers of manufactured goods.

Some countries which can easily adjust to new technologies gain more than those which tend to adjust slowly. Through the operation of Multinational Corporations across nations some sectors relocate their production bases to those developing countries which have sufficient technical skills and produce cheaper than at home.

Second, in dealing with debt crises, some countries of the developing world prove to be successful by following the policy guidance from the International Monetary Fund as well as the World Bank but others fail to do so.

Some countries manage to minimize their Debt Service Ratio by tightening their monetary policy and increasing their exports.

Just as more and more developing countries deliberately expand most sectors of industry for export, so they soon find themselves as competitors in the world market.

Many political leaders of the developing world prefer to maintain "special" relationships with advanced industrial states -- particularly Japan and the United States -- in order to secure accesses for their exports.

This situation seems to cause suspicion among the less- successful developing countries that South-South solidarity has been betrayed. The charge posed against the Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) such as Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan is so often associated with this suspicion.

Third, it appears that different orientations on development strategies seem to pose serious threats to the establishment of the so-called "Third World Collective Self-Reliance".

This problem has to do with the process of global democratization which started in early 1980s in some Latin American countries and some other parts of the world.

While at the same time, some developing countries were satisfied with authoritarian rule as proved to be the case for some East Asian NICs.

These countries were indeed accused of being "developmentalist states that sacrifice citizens' political rights." This charge was posed not only by advanced countries but also by some countries of the developing world.

Under these circumstances the very idea of a "collective Third World Voice" remains a dream.

These three "new" realities in current world political- economic affairs seem to disavow any appeal for South-South solidarity.

It is not surprising that for some Third World countries such an appeal is simply obsolete rhetoric consisting of confrontative sentiments against the Western world.

For those who enjoy the benefits of industrial relocation, the building of South-South solidarity is no longer a top priority.

Moreover, the growth of "special" relationships with the West made by some developing countries and different orientations on development strategies have created disguised rivalries within the Third World.

Therefore, the establishment of South-South solidarity on the basis of a formal-ceremonial mechanism is no longer relevant to the interests of most developing counties.

Is there still any chance for the restoration of South-South cooperation? If there is, how do we recreate the momentum for the establishment of South-South solidarity?

Current studies of international cooperation have increasingly focused on the significance of non-state actors, like groups of scholars and experts with different fields of study.

International relations theorists call this particular group the "Epistemic Community." Many scholars consider this particular segment of world community as relatively free from the blaring competition for the achievement of national interests.

Interestingly, the strong intellectual and academic background of the "Epistemic Community" puts them in the course of universal norms and values that enable them to cooperate with each other regardless of their national backgrounds.

In this kind of cooperation we can imagine a number of economists from developing countries sitting together and talking about policy options for the developing world.

Meetings of this sort can be extended to other areas such as environment, technology, debt crisis, political system, mass media, and so on.

What can be expected from the cooperation among the "Epistemic Community" of the developing countries is that this particular group may form ad hoc expert groups across national boundaries with a special task of reviewing every possible policy option for every country.

Just as this kind of cooperation can remedy the outpouring of rhetoric and national sentiment, so the chance for the building a novel, pragmatic-functionalist and informal South-South solidarity appears to be possible.

While the old type of rhetoric-ceremonial and formal cooperation failed to last, it is about time to turn to the more pragmatic and functionalist feature that can perfectly be done by non-state actors.

The problem is whether political leaders from the developing world will let the "Epistemic Community" organize among themselves beyond state boundaries.

The writer is a lecturer for the Department of International Relations at the University of Parahyangan in Bandung.

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