UNCTAD and the Alternatives to Embedded Liberalism

Abstract

This chapter is devoted to the debates about changes to the embedded liberalism compromise that took place at the first United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) conference and in the years to follow. With resolution 1785 the United Nations General Assembly paved the way for the first UNCTAD conference, which was to be held in late 1963, or in early 1964 at the latest.1 In January 1963 UN Secretary General U Thant appointed Raúl Prebisch as the first Secretary General of UNCTAD. Thus the Argentine economist was in a privileged position to influence the pace of the preparations, together with his assistant Wladyslaw Malinowski (Prebisch, 1964, 1985). Over the year 1963 a Preparatory Committee compiled the official agenda of the Conference according to the guidelines of the GA resolution (Cordovez, 1967).2 31 countries were represented in this Committee, 18 developing countries plus Yugoslavia, three Eastern European and ten Western developed countries.3 The debates in this forum anticipated the main fissures that emerged at UNCTAD between three negotiation groups.KeywordsFree TradeBall PositionEuropean Economic CommunityPreference SystemTrade PreferenceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.