The New International Economic (Dis)order: On Law, Privatization and Power

In 1976, Gillian White published her famous article ‘The New International Economic Order’ in the Virginia Journal of International Law, finding a ‘climate in which some genuine amelioration is possible’. Fifty years later, the New International Economic Order (NIEO) has clearly not materialised. Quite the contrary is the case: The exercise of power has become privatised, and with it, certain aspects of the international legal order. The proponents of the NIEO aimed to rein in corporations, yet today, corporations are more powerful than ever. As a subspecies of the diverse family of corporate entities, tech companies highlight in disconcerting ways how corporate power operates beyond the reach of state authority, while conveniently hiding behind the states’s corporate veil – most notably to evade accountability under international law. Corporations also push into traditional intergovernmental fora; they fund international organisations and at least informally participate in lawmaking. At the same time, international organisations are increasingly run like companies, emphasizing efficiency and output, adopting business-style performance indicators, and restructuring internal bureaucratic hierarchies. This privatization of the exercise of power coincides with a growing turn by states toward bilateral and plurilateral ‘deal-making’, a development that may undermine community interests. This lecture will explore what is left of the promise of the NIEO to foster equality and equity among developing and developed states in their economic relations.

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Host or Publisher Manchester International Law Centre