South–South cooperation and the rise of the Global South

Globalizations, 2023

Framed by the North–South conflict, this article conducts a historico-conceptual analysis of the politics of South-South cooperation (SSC) from a decolonial Global South perspective. Based on documentary analysis and a review of academic SSC literature, three distinct periods of SSC post-1945 are identified: Concertation (1945–1981); Containment (1981–1995); and Cooptation vs Confrontation (1995–present). This periodization complements previous endeavours of its kind, whereby the rationale here is that a historical understanding of SSC politics and neo-colonial/imperialist counter-politics is indispensable for emancipatory social praxis. With co-optation of SSC backed by coercion as the Global North’s contemporary tactic within the strategy of re-Westernisation, I argue for the Global South to reclaim SSC as a strategy to move from delinking as de-Westernisation towards delinking as decoloniality in the context of crisis of the capitalist world order. Free download: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/UAQFWD2T55IZMU45XVW7/full?target=10.1080/14747731.2022.2082132

2020

The years after World War II have held numerous critical global occurrences for the global North and South, striking among them is the North-South dialogue which started as a battle by third world nations for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). Quite a long while down the line, various dialogues existed among countries of the developing South and the developed North. However, increasing inequalities between the North and third world countries have endlessly brought up issues regardless of whether these dialogues have accomplished the reason for which they were built up. Thehypothetically alternative model, 'South–South cooperation' has been recognized as an important cooperation modality, but encounters contradictions that are not too different from those of its North–South counterpart. Providers of the South- South cooperation are highly heterogeneous in terms of policies, institutional arrangements, and engagement with international forums and initiatives. This pape...

Latin-American Historical Almanac, 2024

The article proposes a history of the concepts of “Global South” and “South-South Cooperation” and suggests that it has been progressively moving away from critical meanings and promises of transformation of the world system and the international arena. A fashionable concept in the international debate and of vague geographical/geopolitical origin, “Global South” has been associated or sharing space with other ideas that are even vaguer than it, such as “developing countries” and “emerging countries”. To make this brief history of the concept, it will be interesting to map ideas throughout a global history (since it began to exist) that have served to name roughly the same geographical space that today corresponds to the Global South. The article defends the thesis that, among all the alternatives that have already been developed, the notions of “center/periphery” and “dependency” are the ones with the greatest critical and emancipatory potential.

Handbook on the politics of international development, 2022

Our understandings of international development cooperation are organized by theory and reflected in the broad range of diverse and contending theoretical approaches. Development as a field of study became an issue of urgent priority following the end of the Second World War. Conventional wisdom generally accepts the argument that development is a universal patter

IDS Bulletin, 2013

This article examines how neoliberal reforms mediate and influence relationships between emergent powers and African nations centred on agricultural development. It investigates the impact of South-South relations on the nature of development and technical cooperation, aid and investment, and on the configuration of relations between states, farmers and the private sector. It examines the extent to which the experiences of China and Brazil in developing their agriculture result in qualitatively new paradigms for agricultural development, and whether they create new openings for a redefinition of development policy and practice. Moreover, the article assesses whether South-South development cooperation merely reinforces the drive to capital accumulation unleashed by global economic liberalisation, reflecting strategies by emergent powers to acquire new markets for agricultural technology, inputs, services and new sources of raw materials. In conclusion, the article questions the extent to which alternative paradigms for development cooperation can be created within the institutional framework created by neoliberal reform.

Critical Studies Journal, 2017

Alongside the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, the resultant restructuring of the traditional cooperation scheme was challenged by alternative mechanisms. These new relations offered new possibilities to previously relegated actors, enhancing however certain inequalities and reproducing certain logics of domination. This was shown in the new geopolitics of development posed by emerging countries, and the role of global player emulated by Brazil since 2003. To this end, this paper examines Brazil's foreign policy, paying attention to its South-South Cooperation with Angola. This analysis is aimed at opening the theoretical debate about whether or not these new mechanisms are tools of resistance to liberal hegemony.

International Studies, 2022

During the first decade of the 21st century, the international system underwent a process of transformation in which emerging actors gained prominence, promoting a new stage that enabled the resurgence of South-South cooperation (SSC). The field of international relations approached this phenomenon mainly through studies of international development cooperation, but also from a foreign policy analysis approach. Although at the beginning of the century attention was focused especially on emerging countries like China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, among others, the consolidation of SSC between middle-income countries, particularly in Latin America, gave rise to a broad debate on the distinct identities of the Southern partners. Considering the substantial literature produced, and emphasizing a perspective rooted in Latin America, SSC is analyzed with the goals of contributing to understand SSC from its conceptual formulation, link SSC to foreign policy considerations, and, finally, understand how SSC has affected the International Development Cooperation System.

Routledge Handbook of South–South Relations, 2018

The study of ‘South-South relations’ is of increasing interest to states, policy-makers and academics, often due to a professed desire to identify ways to maximise the potential benefits of the policies and practices developed by states across the global South. Especially since the 2010s, European and North American states and diverse international agencies have recognised (arguably especially in light of the financial crises which have led to pressures on their own aid allocations) the extent to which Southern states can ‘share the burden’ in funding and undertaking development, assistance and protection activities. As such, United Nations (UN) agencies, International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) and powerful donor states are actively promoting both the ‘localisation of aid’ and South-South partnerships more broadly as a means of promoting sustainable forms of human development. Following the expansion and reconfiguration in 2004 of the ‘Special Unit for South-South Coope...

Grounded in a review of past and present academic South-South cooperation literatures, this article advances ten theses that problematise empirical, theoretical, conceptual and methodological issues essential to discussions of South-South cooperation in the 21st century. This endeavour is motivated by a perceived undermining especially in the Anglophone academic South-South cooperation literature of the emancipatory potential that South-South cooperation has historically been associated with. By drawing from the interventionist South-South cooperation agendas of ‘left’-leaning Latin America-Caribbean governments, the article seeks to establish a dialogue between social science theories and less ‘visible’ analyses from academic (semi)peripheries. The ten theses culminate in an exploration of the potential of South-South cooperation to promote ‘alternative’ development.

Basingstoke: Macmillan Palgrave, 2016