The United Nations and Seven Decades of Development

Abstract

This article highlights the intellectual influence of the UN through its flagship publication, World Economic and Social Survey, first published in 1948, as World Economic Report, and three pioneering reports published between 1949 and 1951. It will also reflect on the changing role of the UN in setting development agenda—from a leader to a minor player—and attempts to recapture its lost glory. It argues that despite UN’s ‘ahead of the curve’ and enduring analytical contributions, there have been conscious and concerted efforts by interested parties to undermine the UN. Its leading economists came under attack during the infamous McCarthy witch-hunts era; and it has been working on a shoestring budget, while the powerful countries diverting their fundings to ideologically driven international financial institutions, especially since the early 1980s with the triumph of neo-liberalism. Despite the UN being able to claw-back its leading role in agenda setting since the 1990s, its independent analytical work is now threatened again as severely budget-constrained UN seeks partnership with the corporate sector.

Annex: Background

With the ratification of the UN Charter by the majority of its signatories, including the five permanent members of the Security Council, the United Nations officially came into existence on 24 October 1945. This followed the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco between 25 April and 26 June 1945. A total of 46 countries were invited to San Francisco, all of which had declared war on Germany and Japan. The conference directly invited four additional countries: Denmark (newly liberated from Nazi occupation), Argentina and the Soviet Republics of Belarus and Ukraine. 850 delegates, along with advisors, employees and staff of the secretariat, attended the conference, totalling 3,500 attendees. In addition, the conference was attended by 2,500 representatives of the media and observers from numerous organizations and societies. Colonies, too, were invited. Sir A. Ramaswami Mudaliar, Supply Member of the Governor-General’s Executive Council was the leader of the delegation of India. Sarojini Naido attended the conference representing the people of India.

At its second session, in resolution 118 (II) of 31 October 1947, the General Assembly recommended to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC):

(a) That it consider a survey of current world economic conditions and trends annually, and at such other intervals as it considers necessary, in the light of its responsibility under Article 55 of the Charter of the United Nations to promote the solution of international economic problems, higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development, (b) That such consideration include an analysis of the major dislocations of needs and supplies in the world economy and (c) That it make recommendations as to the appropriate measures to be taken by the Assembly, the States Members of the United Nations and the specialized agencies concerned.

The first report, World Economic Report 1947, was launched in January 1948 at Lake Success, New York. In a sense, the World Economic Report can be considered a continuation of the World Economic Survey published annually by the League of Nations from 1932 to 1939 and every two year during the Second World War, as the statistical activities of the United Nations were also inherited from the work undertaken by the League of Nations.

In writing the preface for the second issue of the Report, the Assistant-Secretary-General (ASG) in charge of Economic Affairs, David Owen (later Sir David) hoped that in addition to fulfilling the mandate of the General Assembly, ‘it will also serve students of economics and the general public throughout the world’ (Report 1948: iii). The Report (later Survey) remains as the oldest and truly global post-World War II publication of this kind that records and analyzes the performance of the global economy and social development trends as well as offering relevant policy recommendations.²⁹

In response to resolution 266 (X) of the ECOSOC,³⁰ since 1949 the World Economic Report included a separate companion volume, Review of Economic Conditions in Africa, until 1957. Between 1949 and 1963, the Secretariat also produced Review of Economic Conditions in the Middle East as a supplement to the World Economic Report. These companion volumes complemented the regional surveys prepared annually by the Secretariats of the United Nations Economic Commissions for Europe (ECE), for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE, later ESCAP) and for Latin America (ECLA, later ECALC).³¹

The Report’s format changed through time, from year to year in the early issues. From the WER 1950–1951 to the WER 1953–1954, it was organized into two parts, the first referring to the evolution of national economic conditions and a second to the system of international trade and payments. The Report become World Economic Survey in 1955 (henceforth referred to as Survey). In addition to the analysis of contemporary economic conditions, since 1956, the Survey regularly included analyses of longer-term issues in response to the request of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), contained in a resolution of August 1956 that ‘future surveys should continue to focus attention upon long-term problems of general interest’. The longer-term issues were analyzed in part I and current developments in part II. Some of the longer-term issues, dealt with in the early years, were economic growth, balance of payments, inflation, commodity trade and policies, and investment trade and policies in the post-war period.

The surveys organized the analysis of the world economy by classifying countries into three groups: the ‘economically developed private enterprise economies’—‘industrial economies’ since the WES 1955, the ‘centrally-planned economies’ (mainland China being included in this group since the victory of revolution in early 1949), and a third group that changed through time, to include first selected economies of Latin America and the Far East (including Japan) and later the primary exporting countries.³² The ‘under-developed countries’ –the term that was used generally at the time—was also considered as a group for specific analysis for the first time in the WES 1955. Before that, they were analyzed as part of the primary exporting countries. Beginning in 1962, the category of under-developed countries changed to developing countries and a sub-category of least developed countries was introduced in the 1970s. Since 1992 ‘economies in transition’ replaced the category of centrally-planned economies.

The 1994 issue was released as World Economic and Social Survey 1994—Current Trends and Policies in the World Economy, ‘signalling the intention to integrate more fully the treatment of the economic and social dimensions of development’. On its 60th Anniversary in 2007, it was claimed, ‘The Survey has fulfilled its mandate of surveying economic conditions, providing an analysis of the source of ‘dislocations’ and making appropriate recommendations’. Since then, it has been split into two volumes—one entitled World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP), which undertakes a more short-term economic analysis and the other World Economic and Social Survey (WESS), which deals with particular long-term economic, social and environmental issues.

Although the authors of the earlier issues remain anonymous, some of the world’s leading economists contributed to them. The 60th Anniversary issue (Survey 2007) advises that the famous Polish and Cambridge economist Michal Kalecki was the primary author of the 1948 Report.³³ Hans Singer, a pioneer of development economics, and one of the three economists to join the new Economics Department of the United Nations in 1947, was a leading member of the team preparing the Report (later Survey) for more than a decade.³⁴ Throughout its history the Report (Survey) benefited from the written inputs, advice and encouragement of major academic economists outside the United Nations system as well as economists working in other bodies within the system, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the regional commissions.

Three Pioneering Expert Reports

The UN also published three ground-breaking expert reports in response to its role in economic and social affairs, as enshrined in its Charter (Articles 55 and 56). They were: National and International Measures for Full Employment³⁵ in economically more developed countries (published in December 1949) and Measures for the Economic Development of Underdeveloped Countries,³⁶ (published in May 1951). In between there was a report on Latin America, The Economic Development of Latin America and Its Principal Problems (published in 1950), authored by Raúl Prebisch at the Economic Commission for Latin America (now ECLAC). In November 1951, the UN also published Measures for Economic Stability, prepared by a group of experts,³⁷ to supplement the first two expert reports.³⁸ It suggested ‘alternative practical ways’ of dealing with the problem of reducing the international impact of recessions.

The Secretary-General introduced the first expert report as one that examined ‘one of the outstanding economic and social problems of our time’ (p. iii). In accordance with the Economic and Social Council’s resolution 221 (IX) E, adopted on 11 August 1949, copies of the report were transmitted to all Member Governments. The Economic and Employment Commission was asked to advise the ECOSOC recommendations for action which seemed appropriate.

In making the second report available the Secretary-General commended to the fifth session of the General Assembly ‘for consideration in the development of a Twenty-Year Programme for Achieving Peace through the United Nations’, and ‘called upon the Members of the United Nations to develop, in the interest of the economic development of under-developed countries, a sound and active programme for the encouragement of broad-scale capital investment, using all appropriate private, governmental and inter-governmental resources’ (pp. iii-iv).

The Secretary-General’s preface to the supplementary report noted, ‘In the present report… following the instructions of the Economic and Social Council in resolution 341 (XII), attention is given to concerted international action to reduce fluctuations in the volume of trade and in the prices of primary commodities, and thus to moderate the swings in the terms of trade of under-developed countries which accompany such movements. In addition, measures are suggested to enable underdeveloped countries to maintain their programmes of economic development at a reasonably steady rate in the face of such fluctuations as persist’ (p. iii).

In transmitting the third report to the Secretary-General, the Executive Secretary of Economic Commission for Latin America, hoped that ‘its publication may arouse further interest in economic investigations in the Latin-American countries and that it will prompt the writing of similar works which aim at finding a solution to the basic problems confronting Latin America, the correct presentation of which has become a matter of immediate concern’ (p. v).

Needless it to say that the world economic and social conditions have changed significantly over the past seven decades and so have the policy recommendations of the Survey and the three pioneering reports. But the diagnosis and recommendations, provided seven decades ago, seem remarkably more pertinent today as the world currently struggles to regain high levels of employment and economic activity and accelerate sustainable economic development. For example, the 1947 Report observed:

Co-ordinated national and international actions are required [to deal with] the factors limiting the volume of production in the world... Coordinated national and international action could … facilitate and accelerate the flow of goods and services from surplus countries to those which urgently need them to rehabilitate, reconstruct, or develop their own production in a manner that would permit the most effective utilization of their resources and so fit them into an ‘expanding and integrated world economy’. (p. 29)

Both in the interest of promoting ‘higher standards of living, full employment and conditions of economic and social progress and development’³⁹as well as in the interest of creating and maintaining world economic conditions which would permit the eventual and orderly repayment of international loans that may now be extended for the purpose of promoting economic reconstruction and development, it is essential that national and international action be considered now… so as to ensure that high levels of employment and economic activity are maintained. (p. 30; emphasis added)

Also consider the diagnosis of the economic problems of the time presented in the 1951–52 issue of the World Economic Report:

The areas of continuing economic difficulty may be considered under three main headings - problem relating to the maintenance of economic stability, those concerned with persistent disequilibrium in international payments, and those arising from the relatively slow advance of the under-developed countries. While the three problems are conceptually distinct, they are in practice closely interrelated and the solution of each depends on to some extent upon the success achieved in dealing with the others. (p. 11)

The basic economic problems which confront the world do not change rapidly from year to year. In all countries the long-term problem is still how to make the best use of available resources for the satisfaction of human needs; and the creation of productive capacity for raising standards of living in under-developed countries continues to be of particularly crucial importance (p. 3).