Building pro-development multilateralism: towards a “New” New International Economic Order

This paper explains how a “New” New International Economic Order (NNIEO) may
be emerging from the slowly crumbling neoliberal international economic order that
came into being in the 1980s and 1990s. First, it examines how the neoliberal order
has been fading and is being reshaped in the wake of the decline of the multilateral
international trading system (embodied by the World Trade Organization (WTO))
and the 2008 global financial crisis. It then discusses how recent changes in the
world economy and in prevailing ideas, together with a number of contingent factors
—such as climate change, the rise of China and the coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
crisis— are making the emergence of an NNIEO more likely, while recognizing that
some factors may hinder progress towards it.