Call for Articles “The Impact of the Global South on the International System”

Scientific coordination:

Rafael Grasa Hernández (UAB - CIDOB), Paula Ximena Ruiz Camacho (Universidad Externado de Colombia) 

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 31 May 2024

Send to:  publicaciones@cidob.org 

Barcelona, April 2024

Created in 1982, Revista CIDOB d'Afers internacionals is a cultural/academic journal on international relations which, publishing original works, is a pioneering publication in the Spanish-speaking world. Each issue, in the form of a monograph scientifically coordinated by experts, offers in-depth, interdisciplinary analysis of a current international issue. All articles undergo an external double-blind peer review process and are indexed and summarised in the leading academic databases of the social sciences, among them Scopus and Web of Science.  

Subject and content of issue 139:

“The Impact of the Global South on the International System”

The international system has been changing, as shown in several phases over the last three decades, since the end of the Cold War. Several factors have had an influence in this process including, but not exhaustively, the nature and distribution of power, the predominance of economic and technological factors in geopolitical disputes, increasing de-Westernisation, deterioration of the regulatory capacity of international institutions and organisations, difficulties of governance and decision-making on such crucial issues as climate change and management of armed conflicts and, in particular, changes in the mechanisms and tools of order and governance, including the values, norms, and regimes produced and applied by these mechanisms in the different agendas at the global, international, and regional levels.

In this situation, tensions and polarisations go beyond the struggles among real or aspiring hegemons and are manifested in multiple aspects of the international system and society. One example is in the debate about multilateralism, for which many countries express a clear preference, and another, in the so-called liberal international order, given its shortcomings and the clearly different ways of applying it depending on the issues, actors, and geographical areas.

In this context, Number 139 of the Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals will focus on the impact that one of these actors—or perhaps better said, group of actors—the heterogeneous and fragmented Global South, has on the agenda, institutions, norms, and order of the international system.

It should be recalled that, during the Cold War, it was difficult to count on third parties, although the so-called Third World – thus named by the French demographer and economist Alfred Sauvy, in analogy to the role of the Third Estate of the French Revolution – tried to play this role several times. The first attempt was in the 1950s with the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement after the Bandung Conference in 1955 (which was one of the times that is presently being upheld as a genuine contribution of values and organisations of non-Western countries in the international system), which was followed, in 1964, with the establishment of the Group of 77 (G-77) on the occasion of the first meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Things have changed today. The Third World no longer exists because there is no way it can function now as a Third Estate. It has been replaced by what is known as the Global South, a highly heterogeneous and numerous group of actors. Hence, 60 years after its creation, the G-77, now consisting of almost 130 countries, continues to have a key role in acting as one of the structuring elements of the Global South. By contrast, although it still exists and meets, the Non-Aligned Movement is now practically irrelevant. Moreover, the BRICS countries are gaining prominence, especially given the group’s current process of expansion, the increasing influence of some it its members in crucial areas of the agenda as well as in some regions where previously they had little influence, for example the Middle East. Suffice to recall, in this regard, the position of some of its members like India and Brazil in the United Nations debates and resolutions concerning the wars on Ukraine and Gaza.

Meanwhile, in the discipline of International Relations and in international theory, there has been a generalisation of critical discourse against Western centrism and the scant interest shown in the contributions coming from other civilisations and their ways of understanding the world, in a focus giving emphasis to nonbinary approaches (the Western-centric standpoint versus others that are established in accordance with different civilisational specificities).

Given this new reality, Number 139 of the Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internacionals aims to:

1. Contribute towards understanding and discussion of the impact of Global South in the agenda, institutions, and norms that make up the order of the international system.
2. Incentivise analysis relating various aspects of the factual change in the international reality with the roles and actions of the components of the Global South.
3. Reflect on specific functional/thematic and geographical cases of action by the Global South on the international agenda.
4. Analyse cases of debates and tensions among members of the Global South and other actors in international institutions and organisations, giving priority to those deriving from proposals and positions of the former.
5. Give attention to criticism of the international liberal order and to the norms applied to, and uses of it by members of the Global South and, in particular, alternatives to it in proposals made by the latter within the international organisms, either in documents detailing these suggestions or in particular actions arising from the policies and written statements of these countries.

All contributions of empirically and theoretically grounded original work will be welcome, especially in the following areas of research:

• Analysis of examples and cases of the influence of the Global South in the agenda of the international system, especially with regard to energy transition and climate change, trade, security and armed conflicts, disarmament and arms control, development and cooperation, artificial intelligence (AI), regulation of financial exchanges, and functioning of the United Nations system.
• Analysis of cases of influence of the Global South in the United Nations, regional intergovernmental bodies, and the financial and economic organisations.
• Proposals for reform of the United Nations system and intergovernmental financial bodies.
• Positions on how to manage such situations as the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of the World Health Organization in this regard, as well as proposals for reforming this institution.
• Positions and proposals regarding the wars on Ukraine and Gaza.
• External debt, financing for development, and reform of the international finance system.
• Energy transition and adaptation to climate change. Differentiated analyses and proposals.
• Cases of conflict and cooperation with the European Union, United States, China, and Russia.
• The BRIC countries as coordinators of the Global South, their critical positions and creation of new proposals.
• Use of the G-20 and G-77 as sounding boards and spaces for creating new norms.
• Examples of nonhegemonic international theories as a resource to legitimise criticisms and proposals from the Global South.