L'organisation internationale, rose des vents dans l'espace cardinal

Abstract

The South exists only where group expression can be found, and universal international organizations represent " cardinal space " par excellence. Third World states have tried to use international bodies to build their own political space and to try to loosen the outside constraints weighing on their development. They have used a threefold strategy : reappropriation and reinterpretation of Western norms for their own ends, non-alignment, and collective bargaining. After a semblance of success in the early 1970s, the South seems to have lost ils bargaining power and ils capacity to shape itself into a political force. The forums in which it holds the majority adopt resolutions which can have no practical consequences, while there is an increase in the bilateralization of public aid and the influence of the international financial institutions with which each country negotiates individually. The Third World does however have its own political culture, a way of perceiving itself as a group of developing countries and of conceiving international relations. The crisis of international organizations is to a large extent a cultural crisis and the result of a North-South/East-West confrontation over social organization models and concepts of man, none of which obtains recognition as applicable to the entire world.