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From Bretton Woods to Neoliberal Globalization. The History of the Global Economic Order Since 1944

Jonas Kreienbaum

Kommentar

When delegations from 44 Allied Nations met at Bretton Woods in July 1944 to discuss the rules of the future global economic and financial order, many regions of the world were underrepresented (or not represented at all) because they were still part of Western colonial empires. Soon socialist states opted out of the Bretton Woods order establishing their own economic and trading system. And after most former colonies had become independent nation states in the years following the war, the “Third World” challenged this Western dominated order demanding the establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in 1974. With the onset of a major international debt crisis hitting both large parts of the Global South and many socialist states of Eastern Europe in the early 1980s, the demand for the NIEO collapsed. Major Western creditors and international financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank pushed for the liberalization and opening up of debtor economies paving the way for “neoliberal globalization” since the 1990s. The seminar will discuss this history of the global economic order since the end of the Second World War, situating it both in the history of the Cold War and the North-South conflict. Schließen

Literaturhinweise

Jeffry A. Frieden: Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century, New York 2006; Eric Helleiner: Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods. International Development and the Making of the Postwar Order, Ithaca 2014; Margarita Fajardo: The World that Latin America Created. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era, Cambridge/London 2022. Schließen