Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T00:34:55.890Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The new populism and the old: demands for a New International Economic Order and American agrarian protest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Get access

Extract

Parallels between the demands of the developing countries for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) and earlier demands of American agrarian populists suggest that the NIEO reflects the characteristic grievances of commodity-producing societies (agraria) vis-a-vis their industrial counterparts (industria). Such grievances arise when modernization produces growing interaction and interdependence that threaten the autonomy of agraria. Conflict between agraria's ideal of independence and the reality of interdependence raises political consciousness, enhances group identity, leads to protests and proposals for reform, and stimulates efforts to withdraw from the dependency relationship. Both American agrarian populism and the NIEO movement protested the existing distribution of wealth and power, adverse terms of trade, an “excessive” middleman's share, a monetary system dominated by industria, limited access to credit, and the burden of debt. Proposed solutions were also parallel, partly because they responded to similar grievances, partly because they have arisen in a similar political context. A central problem of late 19th century American politics and contemporary world politics has been the restoration of political order under circumstances where the scope of political and social interaction has vastly expanded but where power within the political system is still widely dispersed. The proposals of both populist movements sought to deal with this problem by restoring local control and weakening supralocal forces.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Piao, Lin, “Long Live the Victory of People's War,” in Fann, K. H., ed., Mao Tse-tung and Lin Piao: Post-Revolutionary Writings (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1972), pp. 395–99.Google Scholar

2. For the collective bargaining analogy cf., e.g., ul Haq, Mahbub, The Third World and the International Economic Order, Overseas Development Council development paper 22 (Washington, D. C., 1976), pp. 1221Google Scholar; for the equality analogy, Tinbergen, Jan, coordinator, RIO: Reshaping the International Order (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976), p. 61Google Scholar; for the cooptation analogy, Farer, Tom J., “The United States and the Third World: A Basis for Accommodation,” Foreign Affairs 54 (10 1975), pp. 9193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For critiques of these analogies see respectively Rothstein, Robert L., Global Bargaining: UNCTAD and the Quest for a New International Economic Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 195–98Google Scholar, and Tucker, Robert W., The Inequality of Nations (New York: Basic Books, 1977), esp. pp. 109112 and 197–200.Google Scholar

3. Analogies are not unknown even in the behavioral literature of the social sciences. Cf., e.g., Rosecrance, Richard et al. , “Whither InterdependenceInternational Organization 31 (Summer 1977), pp. 425–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which draws an analogy between international interdependence and interdependence within the United States.

4. See the discussion in Section 3 below.

5. I use the term “populism” in a very general sense to refer to American agrarian protest, not just to the People's Party or to other particular agrarian movements. The interpretation of American populism has been a matter of controversy among American historians for decades, and actual grievances and motivations of the populists (and the developing countries) may be inadequately reflected in publicly stated complaints and proposed reforms. Because they have not seemed relevant to my immediate purposes, I have not dealt with important regional and subregional differences in attitudes toward race, foreign affairs or foreign trade, though such differences were reflected in the populist movement. I am not, for example, concerned with regional differences in attitudes toward the tariff; I am concerned with protest against discrim. inatory internal barriers to trade (e.g., railway rates), which are analogous to the international barriers protested by developing countries.

6. Cf. Gusfield, Joseph R., “The Study of Social Movements,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences(New York: Macmillan and the Free Press, 1968), 14: 445–50.Google Scholar

7. On the importance of the center-periphery relationship to the emergence of populist movements see Minogue, Kenneth, “Populism as a Political Movement,” in Ionescu, Ghita and Geilner, Ernst, eds., Populism: Its Meaning and National Characteristics (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), pp. 197211, esp. pp. 209–210Google Scholar. Kindleberger, Charles, who develops the parallel between populism and the demands of the developing countries in a more general way, also sees the asymmetry between center and periphery as a broad perspective within which both sets of grievances can be analyzedGoogle Scholar: Kindleberger, , “World Populism,” Atlantic Economic Journal 3 (11 1975), pp. 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other treatments of populism in the Ionescu-Gellner book suggest that it is a product of modernization without, however, elaborating on that theme. See, e.g., Stewart, Angus, “The Social Roots,” pp. 180–96Google Scholar. Richard Rubenstein offers a somewhat parallel general explanation of protest and violence in the United States. He sees it as the consequence of a process that involves reducing the isolation of an out-group, increasing its interaction with more powerful in-groups, and a resulting effort by the out-group to preserve its autonomy through political coalition or protest and violence: Rubenstein, , “Rebels in Eden: The Structure of Mass Political Violence in America,” in Aya, Roderick and Miller, Norman, eds., The New American Revolution (New York: Free Press, 1971), pp. 97142.Google Scholar

8. For a general discussion see Brown, Richard D., Modernization: The Transformation of American Life 1600–1865 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1976).Google Scholar

9. Cochrane, Willard W., The Development of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), pp. 69, 76, 89–92Google Scholar; Faulkner, Harold U., Politics, Reform and Expansion 1890–1900 (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), p. 56Google Scholar; Brown, , Modernization, pp. 169–70, 180.Google Scholar

10. Cf. Morse, Edward L., Modernization and the Transformation of International Relations (New York: Free Press, 1976), chap. 1.Google Scholar

11. The index for food and raw materials exports (excluding fuels) rose from 62 in 1953 to 115 in 1978 (1970:100): United Nations, Monthly Bulletin of Statistics 34 (07 1980), p. xciGoogle Scholar. On the composition of exports see Chenery, Hollis B. and Keesing, Donald B., The Changing Composition of Developing Country Exports, World Bank Staff working paper no. 314 (Washington, D. C., 01 1979).Google Scholar

12. On asymmetrical interdependence see Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S., Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), p. 11.Google Scholar

13. Cf. Griswold, A. Whitney, Farming and Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952)Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F. D. R. (New York: Knopf, 1963), chap. 1Google Scholar; Huntington, Samuel P., American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), chap. 2.Google Scholar

14. Cf. Harrison, Selig S., The Widening Gulf Asian Nationalism and American Policy (New York: Free Press, 1978), chap. 1.Google Scholar

15. Cf. Keohane, and Nye, on “vulnerability interdependence” (Power and Interdependence, pp. 1316)Google Scholar. It does not seem necessary or useful to become involved here in the complex issues surrounding the concept of interdependence or its measurement.

16. Cf. Woodward, C. Vann, Origins of the New South 1877–1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), chap. 9.Google Scholar

17. Hicks, John D., The Populist Revolt (1931; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), chap. 1.Google Scholar

18. Faulkner, , Politics, Reform and Expansion, p. 55.Google Scholar

19. The sense of threat from immigrants varied as between regions. The South was generally more anti-immigrant than the other agrarian areas.

20. On their perceptions cf. “Editorial,” South: The Third World Magazine (London), July 1981, P. 7.Google Scholar

21. On the declining world share of developing countries in food and raw material exports see U.N., Monthly Bulletin of Statistics 34 (07 1980).Google Scholar

22. For a useful discussion of the uncertainties with respect to this question see Hansen, Roger D., Beyond the North-South Stalemate (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), chap. 2.Google Scholar

23. North, Douglass C., Growth and Welfare in the American Past (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 142.Google Scholar

24. In using the “dependency” label, I do not intend to endorse “dependency theory.” That there is an asymmetry in wealth and power between agrana and industria that favors the latter, and that this asymmetry has a self-reinforcing tendency for a variety of economic and political reasons, seem indisputable. However, dependency theory goes far beyond such propositions. For an excellent critique see Smith, Tony, “The Underdevelopment of Development Literature: The Case of Dependency Theory,” World Politics 31 (01 1979), pp. 247–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Pollack, Norman, The Populist Response to Industrial America: Midwestern Populist Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), P. 18Google Scholar; Hicks, , Populist Revolt, pp. 406413.Google Scholar

26. “Problems of Raw Materials and Development: Declaration and Programme of Action” (adopted by the 6th Special Session of the United Nations on 1 May 1974), reproduced in Erb, Guy F. and Kallab, Valeriana, eds., Beyond Dependency (Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1975), Annex B-1.Google Scholar

27. “The Algiers Declaration” of the Group of 77 (United Nations Economic and Social Council E/AC 15 April 1975), p. 7.Google Scholar

28. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Arusha Programme for Collective Self-Reliance and Framework for Negotiations (UNCTAD TD/236, 28 February 1979), pp. 724.Google Scholar

29. Hofstadter, , Age of Reform, p. 47Google Scholar. For a tracing of the influence of the agrarian myth see Griswold, , Farming and Democracy.Google Scholar

30. This last point is particularly characteristic of dependency theorists. See Frank, André Gunder, “The Development of Underdevelopment,” in Rhodes, Robert I., ed., Imperialism and Underdevelopment: A Reader (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), pp. 417Google Scholar. For a general review of this perspective and a proposal for selective delinking see Diaz-Alejandro, Carlos F., “Delinking North and South: Unshackled or Unhinged?” in Fishlow, Albert et al. , Rich Nations and Poor Nations in the World Economy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978), pp. 87162Google Scholar. See also Parmer, Samuel L., “Self-Reliant Development in an ‘Interdependent’ World,”Google Scholar in Erb, and Kallab, , Beyond Dependency, pp. 327.Google Scholar

31. For a contemporary critique of populism of this kind see McVey, Frank LeRond, “Socialist Tendencies of the People's Party,” in Saloutos, Theodore, ed., Populism: Reaction or Reform? (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), pp. 5054Google Scholar. The best known parallel critique of Third World views is Moynihan, Daniel P., “The United States in Opposition,” Commentary 59 (03 1975), pp. 3144Google Scholar. Cf. also Bissell, Richard E., “Political Origins of the NIEO,” in Thompson, W. Scott, ed., The Third World: Premises of US. Policy (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1978), pp. 227–40Google Scholar. The influence of socialism in the developing world (for reasons much more complex than those suggested by Moynihan) has undoubtedly made governmental intervention in the economy more acceptable to developing countries than to the United States. There were socialists in the American populist movement whose ideas had some influence, but populist proposals for regulation or government ownership of business appear to have derived more from a basic antimonopolism than from socialism as an ideology. See McArthur Destler, Chester, “Western Radicalism, 1865–1901: Concepts and Origins,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 31 (12 1944), pp. 335–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Margaret Canovan, in her comparative study of populism, suggests that “socialism” is not a very good designation for American populist ideas: Canovan, , Populism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), pp. 5657.Google Scholar

32. See Mazrui, Ali, “The New Interdependence: From Hierarchy to Symmetry,”Google Scholar in Howe, James W. et al. , The United States and World Development: Agenda for Action 1975 (New York: Praeger for the Overseas Development Council, 1975), pp. 118–34.Google Scholar

33. Quoted in Woodward, , Origins of New South, p. 285.Google Scholar

34. “The Dakar Declaration” reproduced as Annex B-3 in Erb, and Kallab, , Beyond Dependency, p. 218.Google Scholar

35. Omaha Platform, Hicks, , Populist Revolt, p. 433.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., p. 438.

37. Erb, and Kallab, , Beyond Dependency, Annex B-1, p. 187.Google Scholar

38. On the domination of Southern industry see Woodward, , Origins of New South, chap. 2.Google Scholar

39. Nyc, Russell B., Midwestern Progressive Politics (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1959), p. 12.Google Scholar

40. Quoted in Pollack, , Populist Response, p. 77.Google Scholar

41. Cf. Woodward, , Origins of New South, chap. 11Google Scholar; Saloutos, Theodore and Hicks, John D., Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West 1900–1939 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951), p. 562CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nye, , Midwestern Progressive Politics, pp. 78.Google Scholar

42. Speech of Carlos Alzomora, Permanent Representative of Peru to the United Nations, delivered to Center for Interamerican Relations (n.d.).

43. Argersinger, Peter H., Populism and Politics: William Alfred Peffer and the Peoples Party (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1974), p. 306.Google Scholar

44. “Declaration and Action Programme on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order,” in Erb, and Kallab, , Beyond Dependency, p. 187.Google Scholar

45. Arusha Programme, p. 33.

46. On forces for unity and disunity in the G-77, see Hansen, , Beyond the North-South, chap. 4Google Scholar. The history of populism is replete with evidence of the precariousness of unity within populist organizations.

47. Arusha Programme, pp. 4–5.

48. For the American data see North, , Growth and Welfare, pp. 138–39Google Scholar; for developing country data, UN, Monthly Bulletin of Statistics 34 (07 1980), p. xciGoogle Scholar. The effect of the oil price rise was postponed for a year in the case of nonoil-producing developing countries by the commodity boom that occurred in the early 1970s. There are many pitfalls in measuring and interpreting changes in commodity terms of trade, including the effect of the choice of base year, the fact that industrial products change in their real composition because of changes in technology, and the fact that improvements in the productivity of raw materials producers may result in lower unit prices but greater exports and an improvement in welfare.

49. Cochrane, , Development of American Agriculture, p. 93Google Scholar. For evidence that raises some question about the fixed character of debt repayment obligations see, however, North, , Growth and Welfare, pp. 141–42Google Scholar. Cochrane also points out that the fact that prices of nonfarm goods were falling at about the same rate as farm prices was not of great moment to farmers because they were not yet major consumers of nonfarm goods.

50. North, , Growth and Welfare, pp. 142–44.Google Scholar

51. Cf. Hansen, , Beyond the North-South, p. 51Google Scholar; Helleiner, G. K., “World Market Imperfections and the Developing Countries,” in Cline, William R., ed., Policy Alternatives for a New International Economic Order (New York: Praeger for the Overseas Development Council, 1979).Google Scholar

52. Shannon, Fred A., The Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860–1897 (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1945), pp. 301–2Google Scholar. Lawrence Goodwyn characterizes the crop lien-furnishing system as “ubiquitous” in the South, indicating that it affected the daily existence of “most Southerners who worked the land”: Goodwyn, , Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 27.Google Scholar

53. See the “Dakar Declaration' in Erb, and Kallab, , Beyond Dependency, p. 214.Google Scholar

54. The Texas Exchange, like other such exchanges, was a consumers' as well as producers' cooperative. On this and similar efforts see Goodwyn, , Democratic Promise, pp. 90, 121–36, 143–46.Google Scholar

55. On the conditions for successful cartel action see Behrman, Jere R., International Commodity Agreements (Washington, D. C.: Overseas Development Council, 1977), chaps. 2 and 3.Google Scholar

56. The UNCTAD stall' has pointed to this parallel in “Towards an Integrated Commodity Policy,” UNCTAD Briefing Paper no. 1 (06 1975), pp. 89.Google Scholar

57. For accounts of such cooperative efforts see Taylor, Carl C., The Farmers Movement 1820–1920 (New York: America Book Co., 1953), pp. 157, 234–43Google Scholar; Goodwyn, , Democratic Promise, chap. 5Google Scholar; Saloutos, and Hicks, , Agricultural Discontent, pp. 114–18 and chap. 15.Google Scholar

58. For a brief survey see Singer, Hans W. and Ansari, Javed A., Rich Countries and Poor Countries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 109116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59. North, , Growth and Welfare, pp. 139–41.Google Scholar

60. Haq, Mahbub ul, Third World, pp. 45.Google Scholar

61. In addition to such populist efforts, private enterprise in this period began to develop manufacturing enterprises in the South that processed local raw materials, most notably industries producing cotton textiles, lumber, and pig iron.

62. For an account of monetary policy in this period see Faulkner, Harold U., American Economic History, 8th ed.(New York: Harper & Row, 1960), chap. 24.Google Scholar

63. Quoted in Pollack, Norman, ed., The Populist Mind (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), p. 230.Google Scholar

64. Faulkner, , Politics, Reform and Expansion, p. 59.Google Scholar

65. On these issues see also Nugent, Walter T. K., Money and American Society 1865–1880 (New York: Free Press, 1968).Google Scholar

66. Cf. Goodwyn, , Democratic Promise, chap. 1., esp. pp. 1416.Google Scholar

67. Haq, Mahbub ul, Third World, p. 4.Google Scholar

68. Smith, Gordon W., The External Debt Prospects of the Non—Oil-Exporting Developing Countries (Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1977), pp. 56.Google Scholar

69. Goodwyn, , Democratic Promise, p. 27.Google Scholar

70. North, , Growth and Welfare, pp. 141–42Google Scholar; Hicks, , Populist Revolt, p. 82Google Scholar. Cochrane, , without citing specific figures, characterizes rates as “prohibitively high” (Development of American Agriculture, p. 53)Google Scholar.

71. World Bank, World Development Report 1982 (New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 1982), p. 15Google Scholar. Total debt service in 1980 was $80–90 billion (OECD, 1980 Review of Economic Cooperation [Paris: OECD, 1980], p. 219Google Scholar). Cf. also Watson, Paul M., Debt and Developing Nations: New Problems and New Actors (Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1978).Google Scholar

72. For an articulation of developing country grievances on credit and debt see the “Manila Declaration and Programme of Action” (UNCTAD TD/195, 12 February 1976). See also Haq, Mahbub ul, Third World, pp. 2429Google Scholar. Increases in average nominal interest rates from 1971 to 1981 were very modest (from 2.8% to 4.0%); because of inflation real interest rates were substantially negative. Cf. OECD, 1981 Review of Economic Cooperation (Paris: OECD, 1981), p. 72.Google Scholar

73. Many of these proposals were made, and some were enacted in the 20th century. See especially Saloutos, and Hicks, , Agricultural Discontent, pp. 174, 446–48Google Scholar; Faulkner, , American Economic History, p. 664.Google Scholar

74. Included in the demands of the National Agricultural Wheel at its 1887 convention: Pollack, , The Populist Mind, p. 265Google Scholar. On the farmers' objections to the patent system, see also Nyc, , Midwestern Progressive Politics, p. 43.Google Scholar

75. See “Preliminary Proposal Submitted by the Group of 77 to the Committee on Review and Appraisal of Implementation of the International Development Strategy for the Second United Nations Development Decade” (UN Conference Room Paper no. 4/Rev. 14 June 1975, pp. 24–25; Arusha Programme, pp. 62–68).

76. Cf. Rothstein, , Global Bargaining, pp. 1415, 195–98Google Scholar; the quotation is from p. 15. See also Young, Oran R., “Anarchy and Social Choice: Reflections on the International Polity,” World Politics 30 (01 1978), pp. 241–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Fromkin, David, The Independence of Natioar (New York: Praeger, 1981).Google Scholar

77. Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order 1877–1920(New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), p.4.Google Scholar

78. Ibid., p. 12.

79. Ibid., p. 37.

80. Ibid., pp. 27–28.

81. Ibid., p. 21.

82. Huntington, , American Politics, pp. 96Google Scholar (quotation), 115.

83. For an account of some of these changes see, inter alia, Brown, Seyom, New Forces in World Politics (Washington, D. C.: Brookings, 1971)Google Scholar; Hansen, , Beyond the North-South, chap. 2.Google Scholar

84. On the first point, cf. Krasner, Stephen D., “American Policy and Global Economic Stability,” in Avery, William P. and Rapkin, David P., eds., America in a Changing World Political Economy (New York: Longman, 1982), pp. 2948Google Scholar; on the second, cf. Nye, Joseph S., “U.S. Power and Reagan Policy,” Orbis 26 (Summer 1982), pp. 391411, esp. p. 396.Google Scholar

85. Rothstein, Robert argues that “Implementation of many of the developing country demands would…appear to require a vast and unprecedented increase in central direction of the international economy”Google Scholar: Rothstein, , The Third World and U.S. Foreign Policy: Cooperation and Conflict in the 1980s (BoulderWestview, 1981), p. 230Google Scholar. Similarly, such proposals of the American populists as government ownership of the railroads or Treasury control of the currency involved considerable centralization.

86. The argument here is from Wiebe, , Search for Order, chap. 5Google Scholar, but I draw as well on the conceptual framework in Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), chap. 2.Google Scholar

87. Wiebe, , Search for Order, p. 166.Google Scholar

88. Hofstadter, , Age of Reform, p. 122.Google Scholar

89. Griswold, , Farming and Democracy, pp. 163–74.Google Scholar

90. Rothstein, , Third World and U.S. Policy, pp. 2433.Google Scholar

91. Ibid.

92. Young, , “Anarchy and Social Choice,” pp. 249–52Google Scholar. The other major possibilities mentioned by Young are coercive diplomacy and organized warfare, which are obviously of little or no relevance to the handling of NIEO issues.

93. An excellent survey of this issue, the judgments of which have been confirmed by developments in the seven years since it was published, is Hansen, Roger D., “The Political Economy of North-South Relations: How Much Change?International Organization 29 (Autumn 1975), pp. 921‐47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

94. Cf. Bergsten, C. Fred, “The Threat from the Third World,” Foreign Policy no. 11 (Summer 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Bergsten's, follow-up articles, “The Threat is Real” and “The Response to the Third World,” Foreign Policy nos. 14 and 17 (Spring 1974; Winter 19741975), pp. 8490, 3–34Google Scholar; and Krasner, Stephen D., “Oil is the Exception,” Foreign Policy no. 14 (Spring 1974), pp. 6884.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95. Rothstein, , Global Bargaining, pp. 148–66.Google Scholar

96. Tucker, , Inequality of Nations, chap. 4Google Scholar; Cooper, Richard N., “A New International Economic Order for Mutual Gain,” Foreign Policy no. 26 (Spring 1977), esp. pp. 7881.Google Scholar

97. Cf. Hansen, Roger, Can the North-South Impasse Be Overcome? (Washington, D. C.: Overseas Development Council, 1979), p. 24.Google Scholar

98. Implementation of Mathieson, John A.'s proposal for a working group of the industrial countries and the ADCs to carry out the task of “integrating the ADCs into the world economy”Google Scholar would very likely lead to organization of just such an ADC bloc (cf. Mathieson, , The Advanced Developing Countries: Emerging Actors in the World Economy [Washington, D. C.: Overseas Development Council, 1979], pp. 5862)Google Scholar. I am not suggesting that the ADCs can be coopted, on the analogy of rising classes within a domestic political system. For a variety of reasons, general cooptation seems unlikely. For a critique of that idea see Tucker, , Inequality of Nations.Google Scholar

99. For such an interpretation of New Deal farm programs see Faulkner, , American Economic History, p. 655.Google Scholar