The North–South Distinction: From Consensus to Contestation

Abstract

Rooted in the field of intellectual history, this article examines how the meaning of the North–South distinction has changed since its appearance in the 1960s. It explains how the largely consensual vision espoused during the early years has gradually given way to growing polarization and contestation. This evolution is unpacked by studying the genealogy of North–South narratives formulated through the ideologies of liberal internationalism and systemic reformism. The article shows that the 1960–1990 period brought about an international compromise regarding the existence of a North–South divide. Moving to the post-1990 period, the analysis then dissects the growing disagreements over the utility of the North–South terminology for interpreting the global order. While today moderate and radical reformists continue to argue that the North–South cleavage remains a structural feature of global politics, most liberals maintain that it simply fails to describe the real world. Overall, the article helps to clarify what makes the North–South distinction highly contested and nonetheless “sticky” in contemporary global affairs.

Ancré dans le domaine de l'histoire intellectuelle, cet article analyse l’évolution de la signification de la distinction Nord-Sud depuis son apparition dans les années 1960. Il explique comment la vision largement consensuelle du début a progressivement laissé place à une polarisation et une contestation croissantes. L'article décortique cette évolution en étudiant la généalogie des récits Nord-Sud formulés à travers les idéologies de l'internationalisme libéral et du réformisme systémique. Il montre d'abord comment la période 1960–1990 a conduit à un compromis international quant à l'existence d'une division Nord-Sud. Se penchant ensuite sur la période post-1990, l'analyse expose les désaccords grandissants qui sont survenus à propos de l'utilité de la terminologie Nord-Sud pour l'interprétation de l'ordre mondial. Alors qu'aujourd'hui les réformistes modérés et radicaux s'entendent pour affirmer que le clivage Nord-Sud reste une caractéristique structurelle de la politique mondiale, la plupart des libéraux soutiennent que ce clivage ne correspond plus au monde réel. Au final, l'article aide à comprendre pourquoi la distinction Nord-Sud est à la fois fortement contestée et persistante dans les affaires mondiales contemporaines.

Este artículo se encuentra enraizado en el campo de la historia intelectual y estudia cómo ha cambiado el significado de la distinción Norte-Sur desde su aparición en la década de 1960. El artículo explica cómo la visión mayoritariamente consensuada, que había sido propugnada durante los primeros años, ha ido dando paso a una creciente polarización e impugnación. Desentrañamos esta evolución mediante el estudio de la genealogía de las narrativas Norte-Sur, formuladas a través de las ideologías del internacionalismo liberal y el reformismo sistémico. El artículo muestra que el período entre 1960 y 1990 trajo consigo un compromiso internacional con respecto a la existencia de una división Norte-Sur. A continuación, el artículo se centra en el período posterior a 1990 y nuestro análisis disecciona los crecientes desacuerdos sobre la utilidad de la terminología Norte-Sur para interpretar el orden mundial. Mientras que hoy en día tanto los reformistas moderados como los radicales siguen argumentando que la división Norte-Sur sigue siendo una característica estructural de la política global, la mayoría de los liberales sostienen que, simplemente, esta división no logra describir el mundo real. En general, el artículo ayuda a aclarar qué es lo que hace que la distinción Norte-Sur sea tan controvertida y, sin embargo, esté tan “arraigada” en los asuntos globales contemporáneos.

Supranational identities, such as those associated with regions or civilizations, are always difficult to grasp. The challenge is particularly acute with respect to the identities of “North” and “South,” which have fueled international analyses for more than half a century. Rooted in the field of intellectual history, this article examines how the meaning of the North–South distinction has evolved since its appearance in the 1960s. In short, I explain how the largely consensual vision espoused during the early years has gradually given way to growing polarization and contestation. Indeed, until the 1990s, the idea of a “North–South divide” was widely shared and sought to encapsulate the economic, political, and social disparities separating developed from developing countries. Today, however, there is a lively debate about the relevance of the North–South framework and the significance of the categories of “Global North” and “Global South” (see Thérien 1999; Hurrell 2013; Farias 2019; Horner 2020; Haug, Braveboy-Wagner, and Maihold 2021; Sud and Sánchez-Ancochea 2022). Tellingly, while the leaders of the G7 countries decided to avoid any reference to the “Global South” in the final communiqué of their Hiroshima meeting in 2023, the 134 members of the G77, who held the third South Summit in January 2024, continue to insist on the term’s utility (Japan Times 2023; G77 2024a).

Substantively, the paper historicizes North–South discourses by unpacking their origins and evolving patterns. Although this approach cannot by itself explain the source of North–South inequality, it helps us to better understand how the increasing questioning of global economic asymmetries and political hierarchies undermines the liberal international order. The current discursive battle over the use of the concepts “North” and “South” also demonstrates that, far from being merely a technical issue, development is a deeply political process that defies any attempt at univocal definition. Ultimately, the article suggests that the prospects for a global convergence around common values and institutions are increasingly remote. Methodologically, this analysis probes the North–South distinction to illustrate how intellectual history can contribute to global studies through a concept “biography” (Allcock 1971; Berenskoetter 2016, 2017; Russell 2021). As Felix Berenskoetter (2016, 2) aptly reminds us, “behind each concept lurk multiple meanings that have evolved over time and space.” Tracing a given concept’s public trajectory and sociopolitical context allows to see how it becomes polysemous as it is appropriated or contested by different social groups. As will be shown, examining the changing interpretations of the North–South concept during its lifetime sheds light on the political conflicts to which global inequalities of power and wealth have given rise.

The article is organized into three parts. The first section explains how the notions of narrative and ideology can be used to elaborate a biography of the North–South binary. Subsequent sections explore the genealogy of North–South narratives over the past six decades. To this end, part 2 briefly summarizes the 1960–1990 period to expose the conditions that made possible a fragile consensus on the existence of a North–South divide. Focusing on the post-1990 period, part 3 then dissects the growing disagreements over the utility of North–South terminology for interpreting the global order. Through this intellectual history, the article will help clarify what makes the North–South distinction at once highly contested and “sticky” in contemporary global affairs (Sud and Sánchez-Ancochea 2022, 1126; see also Fortin, Heine, and Ominami 2023).

North–South Narratives and Ideologies: An Analytical Perspective

From the outset, one must admit that the North–South division has always been a metaphor rather than an accurate representation of reality. It is highly counterintuitive, for example, to consider Australia and New Zealand as belonging to the North. More fundamentally, it seems obvious that the segmentation of 193 countries and 8 billion people into two categories cannot be anything other than a simplification of world politics. Revealingly, governments, international organizations, activists, and scholars who use the signifiers “North” and “South” often prefer to take the meaning of these terms as given rather than defining them with any rigor (Haug, Braveboy-Wagner, and Maihold 2021, 1926).

Moreover, the North–South opposition is part of a lexical field that includes all sorts of contested dichotomies: developed–developing, rich–poor, core–periphery, First World–Third World, West–Rest, and civilized–uncivilized (Farias 2019). For any student of geography, it is particularly puzzling that what is otherwise understood as a North–South divide is sometimes recast as an opposition between West and East (Said 1994, 346–9). Finally, one cannot ignore the asymmetry in the way the concepts of North and South are mobilized in the global agora. It is much more common for developing countries to self-identify as part of “the South” than for developed countries to refer to themselves as “the North.”

While deconstructing the “messy categories” (Hurrell 2013, 219) of North and South is obviously far from easy, this paper contends that both narrative and ideology are useful tools for analyzing their “social life” (Nay 2023, 171). Narratives—“the stories people tell”—are defined as “the ways in which we construct disparate facts in our own worlds and weave them together cognitively in order to make sense of our reality” (Patterson and Monroe 1998, 315). Daniel Deudney, John Ikenberry, and Katerine Postel-Vinay (2023, 5) have recently pointed to the prominent role played by “narratives of the global” in world politics. These authors conceive of such narratives as “macro-stories that actors generate to make sense of their place in the long span of historical development” (Deudney, Ikenberry, and Postel-Vinay 2023, 5). Accordingly, the North–South debate can be understood as a struggle between distinct macro-stories that seek to explain global inequality. Put differently, the politics of North and South constitute a major point of contention in what Josep Borrell (2020) has called the “global battle of narratives.”

Whether globally or locally oriented, however, political narratives do not fall from the sky. They are always derived from ideologies, conceived as systems of beliefs that provide guidance to individuals and groups on how the social world should be organized (Freeden 1996; Leader Maynard and Haas 2023). In brief, political ideologies can be viewed as intellectual infrastructures—akin to a grammar—that generate a never-ending flow of narratives. Here, it will be argued that the main narratives competing to make sense of the North–South distinction draw their overall coherence from their linkages with two distinct ideologies—those of liberal internationalism, which emphasizes the role of open economies and the rule of law in promoting global justice, and systemic reformism, which claims that global justice is hindered by enduring practices that structure the world political system.

Of course, reducing North–South debates to an opposition between liberals and reformists occludes many details and nuances. Today, for example, the reformist camp appears increasingly split, a point to which I will return below. Empirically, the whole issue of categorization can be dealt with using the notion of family resemblances developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1968 [1953], 31–2). As explained by Christopher Cochrane (2015, 28), a family resemblance describes “a pattern that emerges from similarities across multiple characteristics, rather than similarities on any single characteristic.” Following this approach, it is possible to identify family resemblances among liberal internationalists and systemic reformists of sufficient strength that such categories are rendered logical and intelligible to most observers. Albeit stylized, the liberal–reformist partition helps us to grasp the nature of North–South dynamics by focusing on the forest beyond the trees.

The narratives discussed below thus show the extent to which liberal internationalists and systemic reformists have embraced different understandings of the North–South binary at the heart of their respective worldviews. The “morphology” of these different understandings will be unpacked by laying out their underlying geopolitical, social, and epistemic arguments (Freeden 1996). Although these arguments sometimes overlap—they are, after all, interconnected—the tripartite breakdown proposed here allows us to paint a fairly comprehensive picture of the North–South debate. Geopolitical arguments concern the territorial dimensions of global inequality, social arguments speak to the social agendas that accompany each geopolitical vision of global inequality, and epistemic arguments refer to the conception of knowledge on which each of the approaches to the North–South divide and global inequality rests. In other words, the three chosen rubrics will address the multidimensionality of each worldview by looking at its foreign, domestic, and intellectual components. In the end, I seek to demonstrate that, far from being a purely rhetorical matter, current narratives about North and South reflect conflicting ideological perspectives on global ordering. In addition to showing how words can do things (Austin 1962), the article reinforces Robert Cox’s insight that “you look upon the world from a certain place in it” (2009, 321).

Several scholars have warned against essentializing the North–South dichotomy. While this is sound advice, it should not obviate the need for a systematic analysis of the narratives and ideologies that have informed the North–South distinction through history. This is precisely the task to which this article now turns.

The Liberal–Reformist Compromise (1960–1990)

This section outlines the geopolitical, social, and epistemic arguments that enabled the categories of North and South to frame international debates between 1960 and 1990. As the failure of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) vividly illustrated, this period was pervaded by profound ideological disagreements between liberal internationalists and systemic reformists on how best to spur development. Yet it was also marked by a level of consensus that has since disappeared. Indeed, until the 1990s, liberals and reformists alike took for granted the idea that the North–South divide was a structural feature of the global order.

Geopolitical Arguments

While the North–South distinction must be understood as an outgrowth of the 1955 Bandung Conference and the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement, it probably received its first systematic exposure in a book published in 1966 by David Horowitz. In Horowitz’s words, “the discrepancy between the industrialized and developed countries of the North and the poor and underdeveloped countries of the South” was the “acutest problem of our time” (1966, 3). In 1969, the report of the Commission on International Development offered a similar diagnosis, declaring “the widening gap between the developed and developing countries [. . .] a central issue of our time” (1969, 3).

When NIEO negotiations started at the UN in 1974, it was largely accepted that the world was intersected by a “poverty curtain” separating developed and developing countries (Ul-Haq 1976). This view was echoed in the Brandt Commission report of 1981, entitled North-South: A Program for Survival. Although that report recognized that there were “obvious objections to a simplified view of the world as being divided into two camps,” it further legitimized the idea that, “in general terms, and although neither is a uniform or permanent grouping, ‘North’ and ‘South’ are broadly synonymous with ‘rich’ and ‘poor’, ‘developed’ and ‘developing’” (Independent Commission on International Development Issues 1980, 31).

Born out of the retreat of imperialism, the North–South compromise was thus based on the idea that the international order was made up of two relatively well-defined groups of nation-states, and that global inequality resulted from a gap between them. The creation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the G77 in 1961 and 1964, respectively, did much to institutionalize this state-centric approach, which in turn gave rise to a plethora of international policies inspired by the recognition of developing countries’ special needs. Though founded on a shared vocabulary, the North–South narrative of yesteryear was certainly not free of controversy. While reformists complained that the formal political equality that accompanied developing countries’ independence had not translated into economic equality, liberals insisted that the primary responsibility for development lay with poor states’ own governments. In spite of this dialogue of the deaf, however, liberals and reformists concurred with realist scholar Stephen Krasner (1985, 313–4), who predicted in 1985 that “the North-South conflict will be an enduring characteristic of the international system.”

Social Arguments

Although generally considered an element of low politics, social issues were always at the center of North–South debates. From the 1960s on, liberals and reformists agreed that the greatest social challenge for developing countries was to catch up with the developed world. Based on the belief that developed countries offered a model worth emulating, the idea of catching up was formalized in the modernization paradigm (Meier and Seers 1984). With the help of foreign technology and capital, modernization was to be achieved through increased agricultural production, industrialization, and urbanization. As illustrated by successive United Nations Development Decades, much hope was put in the trickle-down effect that was supposed to ensue from an increase in economic output (Stokke 2009). In order to kick-start development, it seemed reasonable to favor the modern elites who enjoyed higher productivity. In the long run, it was argued, all social classes would benefit from economic growth. According to an image that was popular across North and South, the pie had to be made bigger before it could be shared.

Until the 1980s and the rise of neoliberalism, it was also understood that national and international institutions should actively support the modernization process. Influenced by Keynesianism (more on this below), the 1960s and 1970s were characterized by a bias toward public intervention to promote growth in developing countries. Planning and development assistance therefore became major instruments for modernization and for reducing the North–South gap. Curiously, beyond a few dissenting voices, little attention was paid during the 1960–1990 period to issues of redistribution. Inaugurated in 1973, the basic needs strategy promoted by the World Bank and the International Labour Organization was abruptly halted at the beginning of the 1980s (Hoadley 1981). The strategy’s failure was largely due to a tacit agreement between liberals and reformists to spare the elites of the South by avoiding a focus on the most vulnerable social groups. Despite this agreement, however, inequality remained a salient challenge. By 1985, the perverse effects of growth-based modernization had reached the point where even rich countries recognized that “the initial phases of accelerated economic growth were [. . .] widening economic disparities” (OECD 1985, 18).

Epistemic Arguments

The liberal–reformist compromise described thus far rested on a shared body of scientific and practical knowledge concerning development and North–South relations. Despite major disputes over the root causes of inequality, the extent of this shared knowledge was nonetheless striking. Thanks to development economists and aid professionals, the development doxa took the form of a technocratic project of social engineering in which democratic norms remained peripheral (Escobar 1995).

Created to help manage the imperial order, development economics emerged as one of the main subfields of economics after World War II. In the wake of the Marshall Plan, development economists argued that policy solutions should be tailored to the distinct needs of developing territories. Notwithstanding disagreements between its classical and its structuralist wings, development economics drew inspiration from Keynesian thinking, maintaining a positive view of state involvement in the economy. This approach helped to legitimize what Mark Berger called “the routinization of the nation-state as the unquestioned unit of development” (2004, 80). The growth of development economics was fueled by the establishment of research units in the major international organizations and by the creation of several think tanks—mostly in the North—that supported the production of development-related knowledge and helped shape public policy across South and North.

Another key evolution of the three decades after 1960 was the diffusion of development knowledge through what has been called the “aid complex” (Lumsdaine 1993). In turn, OECD countries created national agencies specifically dedicated to modernizing developing states. These agencies were key players in the establishment of an epistemic community supportive of a shared development ideology among bilateral donors and aid recipients. The North–South compromise of the 1960–1990 period also relied heavily on the knowledge produced by multilateral aid institutions. Significantly, the World Bank has been dubbed “the knowledge bank” in recognition of the fact that ideas are its main product (Kapur 2006). Similarly, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been described as “a knowledge-oriented organization” because of the importance it gives to research and experimentation (Murphy 2006, 347). The chief principle behind bilateral and multilateral aid programs was the idea that northern governments had the human and cognitive resources to help bring about “good change” in the South (Chambers 2005, 184–6). Stimulated by a discourse in which power relations were marginalized, development assistance was gradually assimilated to a set of social techniques for combating underdevelopment. This depoliticized vision of aid was successful in large part because it was based on the apparent evidence that “aid works” (Cassen 1994). In sum, the credibility given by liberals and reformists alike to the expertise of development economists and aid professionals contributed greatly to reinforcing the North–South paradigm through to the beginning of the 1990s.

The Changing Dynamics of the North–South Debate (1990–2024)

With the fall of the Soviet empire and the rise of neoliberalism, the North–South compromise gradually crumbled, giving way to a profound rift between liberal internationalists and systemic reformists. While the North–South framework remained a key reference for the latter, it was increasingly contested by the former. And yet, for all their differences, both groups structured their views about North and South around geopolitical, social, and epistemic arguments.

liberal internationalists’ optimism

The dominant outlook that liberals came to adopt after 1990 did not appear ex nihilo. As early as the beginning of the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher (1981, 105) had declared the North–South terminology “an inadequate and often misleading description of the complex interrelationship that now exists between countries in a wide variety of economic circumstances.” Yet it was only with the end of the East–West conflict and the call for a “new world order” that the revised liberal internationalist interpretation, voiced mainly by OECD governments, gained real momentum.

Geopolitical Arguments

The liberal vision is based on the assertion that the international system has become much more fragmented than it was in the immediate aftermath of decolonization. Accordingly, the idea of dividing the countries of the world into two monolithic blocs has lost all relevance since what was referred to as the Third World during the Cold War now appears to be too heterogeneous. The interests of emerging countries, least-developed countries, small island developing states, and oil-producing countries seem too divergent for all these nations to credibly constitute a unified group. In 2010, former World Bank president Robert Zoellick denounced the “outdated categorizations of First and Third Worlds,” declaring, “We are now in a new, fast-evolving multipolar world economy—in which some developing countries are emerging as economic powers; others are moving toward becoming additional poles of growth; and some are struggling to attain their potential within this new system—where North and South, East and West, are now points on a compass, not economic destinies” (Zoellick 2010). For liberals, then, the global order is conceived as a ladder on which all states could ascend.

The rise of the so-called emerging countries is often considered the most convincing argument for the irrelevance of the categories of “South” and “Third World.” After the economic opening of the 1990s, the 2000s are said to have brought about a “great convergence” and the “shifting [of] wealth” from rich to poor nations (see OECD 2010; Mahbubani 2013). In 2010, noting that developing countries’ share of global output had surpassed that of their developed counterparts, the OECD called the rise of emerging countries “a structural change of historical significance.” The OECD further concluded that “the traditional split between North and South makes little sense in an increasingly multi-polar world where the largest and most dynamic economies may no longer be the richest, nor the world’s technological leaders” (OECD 2010, 15 and 27). Skepticism of the North–South distinction was institutionalized with the creation of the G20, premised on the claim that the world’s major economies must face global challenges as a united front. In more recent years, criticism of the “developed–developing” division has taken on new significance with the debate on China’s place in international affairs. Many observers find it absurd that the world’s second-largest economy continues to publicly identify itself as the “largest developing country” (Xuetong 2021, 40; see also Ikenberry 2024).

Another argument informing the liberals’ geopolitical worldview concerns the rise of what former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan called “problems without passports,” with climate change, pandemics, terrorism, and financial crises being the most frequently cited. Developed countries argue that such transboundary issues impact rich and poor nations alike, and therefore justify the establishment of a new global social contract requiring a more active role for emerging countries. The idea that borders no longer have the same meaning they once did—that “we all live in the same boat”—has led to a discursive shift whereby the old notion of “international” development is being replaced by the notion of “global” development (Horner 2020, 415–36). This shift was especially noticeable with the adoption by the United Nations of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. The SDGs have often been presented as a universal agenda that transcends the North–South divide and shows that “we are all developing countries” (Horner 2020, 427).

In short, liberals suggest that the North–South framework no longer makes geopolitical sense. On the one hand, they emphasize that globalization and the climate crisis have blurred the boundaries between developed and developing nations; on the other hand, they stress that the world’s increasing political and economic complexity is simply irreducible to a North–South cleavage. Lately, liberals have reacted in a haphazard way to the growing focus on the Global South in the wake of the COVID pandemic and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. A few have noted that recent events have given new life to the ideology of nonalignment (Ikenberry 2024). However, a majority of liberals remain steadfast in the belief that the notion of a Global South is characterized above all by its “conceptual incoherence” (Patrick and Huggins 2023), and that it has “little explanatory or predictive value in understanding our world” (Mohan 2023). In this context, it is worth noting that while liberals tend to see the North–South opposition as reductionist, this does not prevent many of them from speaking of the “West” as a relatively united bloc of nations (Kupchan 2012; Foa et al. 2022; Ikenberry 2024). Of course, such language is by no means new; what is new, however, is that liberals increasingly seem to embrace a geopolitical lens based on political and cultural values rather than on the distribution of wealth and power.

Social Arguments

Liberals’ rejection of the North–South distinction is also based on their positive assessment of the global social progress made in recent years. Simply put, liberals view the improvement of living conditions and the decline of poverty in developing countries as reasons to abandon the North–South framework.

After the lost decade of the 1980s, northern governments and international financial institutions gave unprecedented attention to the task of alleviating poverty in the developing world. Spurred by the Millennium Summit, this strategy led to the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2001, followed by the SDGs in 2015. The main goal of the MDGs was to reduce extreme poverty by 50 percent by 2015, while the SDGs aim to eradicate it altogether by 2030. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, these efforts brought some remarkable successes, with the share of the global population experiencing extreme poverty decreasing from 45 percent to 15 percent between 1990 and 2020. Described as the “best story in the world” by former World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, this arguably contributed to a decrease in North–South polarization (Kim 2015).

The decline in poverty has been accompanied by new patterns in the distribution of global wealth. One relates to the increase in the number of super-rich individuals in the South. For example, according to Forbes (Hyatt 2023), the number of billionaires in China (495) is fast approaching the number in the United States (735). More fundamentally, the rise of a “global middle class” is touted as one of the most resounding achievements of development policies (Milanovic 2016). Of course, exactly how one defines this “global middle class” remains the subject of controversy, but the notion has nevertheless increasingly shaped public debates on inequality. In 2013, the UNDP (2013, 14) estimated that “between 1990 and 2010, the South’s share of the global middle class population expanded from 26 percent to 58 percent.” Anticipating the global stratification of the future, the UNDP added that “by 2030, more than 80 percent of the world’s middle class is projected to be residing in the South and to account for 70 percent of total consumption expenditure.” Associated with globalization and the opening of markets, the rise of a global middle class has led to a certain standardization of consumption practices and values. The emergence of the so-called McWorld phenomenon, coupled with the influence of global cities, has contributed to a homogenization of national cultures that has further blurred patterns of inequality and weakened the distinction between North and South. In light of this process, many have argued that “the global middle class helps to close the gap between developed and developing countries” (Burrows 2015, 10).

Interestingly, for the first time since NIEO negotiations, the SDGs have succeeded in putting inequality back on the global agenda. SDG #10 specifically aims to address inequality within and between countries. But while doubtless a political breakthrough, it is revealing that the reintroduction of inequality to the global agenda was largely framed in liberal terms (Fukuda-Parr 2019; van Driel et al. 2023). First, if we consider the SDGs as a whole, the fight against global inequality remains a much lower priority than the fight against poverty. Second, the targets of SDG #10 suggest that inequality within countries is of much greater concern than inequality between countries. And third, the issue of inequality between countries remains rather abstract, since the criteria that would govern any future redistribution of wealth are nowhere specified.

The liberals’ optimistic social outlook is ultimately based on data that suggest a decrease in inequality and a scaling down of the North–South gap. The most persuasive figures relate to the evolution of life expectancy. On this indicator, the disparity between developed and developing countries has shrunk from twenty-two years in 1960 to nine in 2021—an unprecedented development in human history. In terms of wealth distribution, the data are less clear-cut because different measures tell different stories. The World Bank (2016, 9) has nonetheless argued that global inequality declined continuously between 1988 and 2013, adding that such a reduction was unprecedented since the 1820s. Some experts have cautioned against drawing hasty conclusions from this observation, as inequality within countries is on the rise and the disparities between the wealthiest and the poorest are widening. However, their call for caution has not always been heeded.

Epistemic Arguments

On an epistemic level, liberal internationalists rely on a positivist vision of social science as independent from the spatial and temporal conditions of its production. They basically argue that the North–South distinction reflects an ideological posture that does not correspond to today’s reality.

The liberal approach to knowledge production seeks to deal with objective facts rather than intersubjective understandings. This inclination is particularly well illustrated by its conception of economic development. Because they believe that the laws of development are similar across rich and poor nations, most liberals seek to confer a veneer of universal validity upon neoclassical economics (Leys 1996; Lal 2002). While often questioning the very scientificity of development economics, liberals maintain that development policies should be less politicized and more evidence-based. In their view, research and experience clearly indicate the best practices for promoting growth and fighting poverty. Crucially, most of these practices refer to the principle of fiscal discipline and the benefits of competition. Nurtured by the failure of socialist planning, the liberal credo suggests that, compared to states, markets allow for more effective resource allocation and price regulation (Bhagwati 2007; van der Vossen and Brennan 2018). Claiming to reconcile the objectives of economic efficiency and social justice, many studies have sought to show that “trade is good for growth” and that “growth is good for the poor” (Dollar and Kraay 2004). For liberals, the success of emerging countries and the graduation of some of them within the OECD empirically demonstrate that underdevelopment is not the result of any structural constraints, as many North–South analyses would suggest. On the contrary, it is argued, all countries could escape poverty if they would simply adopt the right policies.

It is worth pointing out that in recent years, the liberal narrative has sought to better integrate development issues through two distinct research programs: the theory of global public goods and the randomized experiments approach. Conceived as nonexcludable and nonrival, global public goods are regularly depicted as the most effective path toward development (Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern 1999). Insofar as they could be defined by experts in a technical and neutral way, such public goods as an open trade system, a clean environment, or global health would be “above politics.” Oblivious to the exclusionary forces of international negotiations, the theory of global public goods seeks to marginalize social conflict and highlights the potential convergence of interests between North and South (Pouliot and Thérien 2023). For its part, the randomized experiments approach brings a real breath of fresh air to liberal internationalism because it relies on extensive fieldwork and offers more modest conclusions (Banerjee and Duflo 2011; World Bank 2015). That said, the experimental method maintains the positivist vision of mainstream economics by touting its reliance on evidence and what it sees as its impartiality. Moreover, its microeconomic framing tends to reduce development to a fight against poverty (Labrousse 2010). In sum, the theory of global public goods and the randomized experiments approach have relatively little to say about the root causes of global inequality and the power relations that structure the North–South cleavage.

Noting that the “North-South divide has given way to a more diverse and heterogeneous world” and that “international inequalities remain, but along a more graduated spectrum of development levels” (Alonso 2018, 2), liberals have devoted considerable effort to establishing sophisticated and ostensibly objective indicators of international stratification. To avoid reducing the global order to a ranking based solely on income per capita, experts have proposed the construction of a “multidimensional taxonomy of developing countries” (Vázquez and Sumner 2016). To date, this project remains a work in progress, but its epistemic rationale is nonetheless attractive for many: it consists in finding a “methodology where data—rather than judgment or ad hoc rule”—would help make sense of the global order through technical and depoliticized categories (Nielsen 2011). For its proponents, an important benefit of such a methodology would be its ability to empirically justify the disavowal of the North–South terminology.

systemic reformists’ unity in diversity

Conveyed by developing country governments, as well as some international institutions, NGOs, activists, and scholars, today’s systemic-reformist discourse assumes moderate as well as radical forms, both of which adhere to the North–South framework and converge on the idea that “inequality defines our time” (United Nations 2020). Moderates differ from radicals, however, in that they are concerned with international inequality, while radicals are chiefly preoccupied with transnational inequality. And although it is difficult to assess the current balance of power between reformists and liberals, it is clear that the reformists’ geopolitical, social, and epistemic arguments occupy a subordinate position in global governance.

Geopolitical Arguments

According to moderate reformists, who are to be found mainly within the governments of developing countries and some NGOs, disparities between nations of the North and those of the South are still a structural feature of the global order. In 2024, for instance, Oxfam (2024, 21) noted that countries of the Global North, who represent 21 percent of the world population, owned 69 percent of global wealth. Moreover, many point out that despite the outstanding performance of countries like Singapore and Qatar, and the unprecedented decline in global poverty overall, “international income hierarchies [. . .] seem strikingly stable” (Lees 2021, 104). Faced with this assessment, the third South Summit, held by the G77 and China to celebrate the Group’s sixtieth anniversary in 2024, denounced “the gap between developed and developing countries [that] has continued to widen” (G77 2024b). The G77 also solemnly reaffirmed “its unity and solidarity” as well as “its vision of fair, just and equitable multilateral relations, [and] the commitment of its member States to the well-being and prosperity of the peoples of the South” (G77 2024b).

Developing countries promote their “vision” across a wide range of issues with a remarkable degree of diplomatic coordination (see Timossi 2019; Johnson and Urpelainen 2020; Nurullayev and Papa 2023). In recent years, for instance, governments of developing states have consistently advocated respect for sovereignty and nonintervention in domestic affairs, the right to development, and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. They have often supported collective positions on climate change, sustainable development, international taxation, COVID, and the reform of international financial institutions. In response to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, countries of the South have maintained their distance from Western policies and promoted their own peace measures. In the case of Ukraine, they have adopted a strategy of neutrality and “hedging” (Spektor 2023), while in Gaza, they have been early supporters of a humanitarian cease-fire (Heine 2023). Despite all sorts of counterexamples, there are a great variety of circumstances in which developing countries have demonstrated like-mindedness by adhering to shared goals.

One striking effect of southern concert has been the expansion of South–South cooperation since the early 2000s (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley 2019; Benabdallah 2022). Stemming from the notion of “collective self-reliance,” as formulated in the 1970s, South–South cooperation is expressed in an increasingly institutionalized set of practices. Although these practices are not intended to replace North–South cooperation altogether, they are becoming an ever more important part of developing countries’ foreign policies. South–South cooperation is premised on the idea that developing countries have different needs and interests than those of the North. The distinct nature of this type of cooperation is epitomized by emerging countries’ rejection of OECD norms relating to aid effectiveness. As Waibisch explains, recent policy debates over South–South cooperation have brought to light “unsolved North-South disputes over power, status, and responsibility in international development and international affairs, more broadly” (2022, 335).

Given the sizeable economic and social differences among developing countries, it is difficult to assess the strength of the glue that holds this bloc of nations together. Yet it is important to note that even economic powerhouses like Brazil, India, and China continue to insist on being recognized as “developing” (Schöfer and Weinhardt 2022, 1956). For some analysts, the South’s rhetoric of solidarity is primarily instrumental in the sense that developing country status is a bargaining resource that entitles those on whom it is bestowed to certain material benefits in the aid, trade, and climate regimes. However, self-interest notwithstanding, one must also consider that the southern grouping is the political expression of a collective identity. Braveboy-Wagner notes that “the global south is formed by countries which have had different socialization experiences in the international system than those of the north” (2018, 9). The most important source of southern concord is arguably the shared experience of subordination through European colonization. This provided the crucible of values that birthed the South as an “imagined community.” The impact of colonization remains the subject of immense debate, but, as United Nations secretary-general António Guterres recently emphasized, “the legacy of colonialism still reverberates” in the power relations between what he explicitly called “the Global North” and “the Global South” (United Nations 2020).

Beside the moderate reformist outlook, a second geopolitical version of the North–South divide developed in the 2000s by way of the impetus provided by some NGOs and critical scholars. Based on a contrast between what Vijay Prashad terms the “South from above” and the “South from below,” this radical narrative suggests that the North–South divide actually sets individual citizens, rather than states, against one another (Prashad 2012, 13; see also Eckl and Weber 2007; Kloß 2017). More specifically, radical reformists insist on a convergence of interests between popular forces across developed and developing countries. For Vicente Navarro (2006), then, “the primary conflict in today’s world” is “not between North and South but between an alliance of dominant classes of North and South against dominated classes of North and South.” Several authors have echoed this idea, claiming there is a North in the South and a South in the North.

Adopting a people-centric rather than a state-centric approach to global politics, the radical narrative is thus rooted in the changing patterns of human geography. While economic elites in poor countries have doubtless become highly integrated into a transnational capitalist class, rich countries are home to various marginalized social groups, including Indigenous peoples, unskilled workers, the unemployed, and immigrants. Alina Sajed (2020) argues that the Global South “incorporates not only spaces that used to be referred to before as Third World, but also spaces in the North that are characterized by exploitation, oppression and neocolonial relations.” For some, the Global South concept has thus become unmoored from any particular geographical place, and instead corresponds to “a political consciousness resulting from the recognition by diverse peoples of their shared experience of the negative effects of globalization” (Mahler 2015, 95). Accordingly, authors advocating what is referred to as Third World approaches to international law (TWAIL) have distinguished two phases in the evolution of this school of thought—what Balakrishnan Rajagopal describes as “TWAIL I” with its “nation-state-centric, territorial approach to thinking about North and South” and “TWAIL II,” which “has attempted to move beyond [. . .] to a cultural geography of North and South” (2012, 178). In sum, while the North–South distinction may no longer enjoy the same widespread acceptance it once did, it clearly remains a rallying cry for a wide range of global actors.

Social Arguments

Much like the governments of developed countries, moderate reformists contend that growth and integration into global capitalism together make the most effective recipe for advancing social development globally. Revealingly, the G77 recently expressed its “firm commitment to a rules-based, transparent, nondiscriminatory, open and inclusive multilateral trading system as embodied in the World Trade Organization” (UNCTAD 2021a, 2). The G77 added that “international trade is key to fostering inclusive economic growth and development, as well as poverty eradication” (UNCTAD 2021a, 5). Yet while accepting the basic rules of economic globalization, developing countries stress the need to promote a distinct form of neoliberalism “with Southern Characteristics” (Prashad 2012, 166). And as they pursue this objective, they consistently maintain that the colonial structures that have historically hindered their development are still operative in reproducing North–South inequalities.

Moderate systemic reformists thus challenge the rosy picture of social development painted by liberal internationalists. Southern governments and many NGOs consider the social progress won in recent years to be too slow and too fragile. In support of this view, they can point out that in 2018, despite a decline in “extreme” poverty, the World Bank (2018) estimated that “nearly half the world live[d] on less than $5.50 a day.” Moreover, ongoing developments in global inequality remain a matter of methodological debate. What is certain is that the alleged reduction was largely due to China’s spectacular economic performance. It has also proved to be reversible. Indeed, the World Bank (2023) has noted that 2020 saw “the largest increase in global inequality since 1990.”

According to moderate reformists, developed states have a political responsibility to address this imbalance. Developing countries argue that their traditional collective demands, such as increasing the level of aid to 0.7 percent of developed countries’ wealth or restructuring major international economic institutions, remain fully legitimate. In addition to these historical claims, new demands have been added, such as the creation of an annual $100 billion climate fund or the more active use of Special Drawing Rights to accelerate development. More broadly, developing countries are calling for a new approach to global governance that would give more policy space to southern governments, particularly in the fiscal area. This last demand has taken on particular significance with the pandemic, prompting the United Nations and developing countries to put forward a “debt crisis action plan” so as “to avoid Governments being forced to choose between servicing debts and servicing their people” (UNCTAD 2021b, 6).

Radical reformists who advocate a redefinition of the North–South opposition along nongeographical lines rarely oppose the claims formulated by the governments of developing countries head-on. Their own approach, however, is quite different, suggesting that the globalization of capitalism has led to “a worldwide class struggle” and that the North–South conflict is inseparable from the face-off between capitalism and socialism (Navarro 2006). Anchored in the belief that “another world is possible” (Logan 2024), the radicals’ program proposes a “conjunction between the struggles of peoples in the South with those of peoples in the North” (Amin 2017, 114). Noting the inherent limitations of traditional political parties operating within a national framework, radical reformists argue that civil society is the only social force capable of overturning the domination of the global ruling class. The World Social Forum (WSF) is often seen as a first move in this direction. Tellingly, the late Samir Amin (2018), once a leading figure of the WSF, put forward a plan of action that would have literally revolutionized North–South relations. He called for the creation of a Fifth International that would unite the Global South around a project of global democracy based on a redistribution of wealth, greater attention to the environment, and disarmament. Although no more than a distant possibility, Amin’s project attests to the enduring character of the North–South distinction in the global battle of narratives.

Epistemic Arguments

Like liberals, moderate reformists support a positivist approach to knowledge premised on universal rationality and objectivity. This proximity of views, however, does not preclude the existence of profound epistemic disagreements between the two groups.

For moderate reformists and governments of developing countries, the production of knowledge is insufficiently attentive to the problems of development, and it does not adequately account for the asymmetries of power between North and South. Southern states stress, for instance, “the need to not only build consensus, but also set a developmental narrative on issues affecting global trade and the global economy” (UNCTAD 2021a, 3). In fact, moderate reformists are not challenging the principles structuring the international order as much as what they consider their poor application (Narlikar 2020, 193). In particular, they argue that free trade operates suboptimally and that global public goods are not defined rationally. More fundamentally, however, they maintain that the fruits of knowledge are not distributed fairly. Articulated during the 1970s as part of the negotiations on technology transfer, this long-standing critique assumed a new sense of urgency with COVID. Appealing to the self-interest of developed countries more than their ethical principles, developing countries have often repeated the refrain that “we will not end the pandemic anywhere unless we end it everywhere.”

Radical reformists offer a different reading of the epistemic foundations of the North–South divide as they challenge the universalist claims of the social knowledge produced by the North. Their postpositivist and “pluriversalist” vision is inspired by one of Michel Foucault’s principal ideas: that the production of knowledge is shaped by power structures. Radical scholars emphasize that the social sciences were built around the experience of European and North American countries. Achille Mbembe, for instance, argues that colonization was accompanied by a “discursive infrastructure” that reflected northern interests and values and that marginalized those of the South (Mbembe et al. 2006 , 123). From the radical reformists’ perspective, this “Western-centric” bias has given rise to an intellectual hegemony through which major theories are formulated in the North and disseminated through northern outlets. According to this viewpoint, the entire history of modern science has been marked by the imperial experience and the North–South divide.

Nourished by postcolonialism, subaltern studies, TWAIL, and Marxism, radical reformists ultimately aim to demonstrate that the South can offer an alternative to the truth regime put forward by the North. This epistemic project involves a dual process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Deconstruction primarily implies the identification of lacunae in dominant theories, including those relating to gender, race, or ethnicity; more broadly, though, deconstruction entails a recognition of the basic fact that North and South experience the international in different ways (Smith and Tickner 2020, 11). Radical reformists are also engaged in an enterprise of knowledge reconstruction that is conditional on a dismantling of global structures of domination. Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2018, 1), for example, speaks of “an epistemological, non-geographical South” that would include “all knowledges born in struggles against capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy.” There is ample questioning of the relationship between radical reformism and mainstream social science (Aydinli and Biltekin 2018). Some have called for a form of pluralism such as the one promoted by the Global IR movement. In favor of a rapprochement between Western and non-Western intellectual traditions, Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan, for example, argue that “IR theory needs to be more reflective of the Global South” (2019, 295). Others believe that, because of their different assumptions, any dialogue between alternative approaches and mainstream social science is bound to terminate in a dead end. Here, it is sufficient to note that all systemic-radical thinkers emphasize the centrality of the North–South cleavage in the development of social knowledge.

Conclusion

As this concept biography has shown, the North–South distinction has played a key role in the construction of “narratives of the global” for more than half a century. These narratives are of interest because they shed light on how debates about global economic asymmetries and political hierarchies have evolved over the last six decades. The North–South compromise struck by liberal internationalists and systemic reformists in the 1960s underwent a gradual erosion—such that by the 1990s, the North–South framework was no longer a shared paradigm. While today moderate and radical reformists continue to argue that the North–South divide remains a structural feature of global politics, most liberals maintain that it simply fails to describe the real world (Table 1 ).

Table 1.

Contemporary North–South narratives

		Systemic reformists
	Liberal internationalists	Moderates	Radicals
Geopolitical arguments	We are all developing countries	The international system is divided into developed and developing nations	There is a North in the South and a South in the North
Social arguments	The world is winning the war against poverty	Global inequality is rising	Class struggle has become global
Epistemic arguments	The laws of development are universal	Development knowledge should better reflect southern interests	Another form of knowledge is possible

The ongoing battle of narratives about North and South reflects the complex web of power relations and values in which it has unfolded. While national development trajectories are clearly more diversified than ever, as governments of developed countries repeatedly emphasize, developing states nevertheless present themselves as a “we” with an alternative vision of global order. In recent years, this alternative vision has been particularly apparent in discussions on climate, COVID, immigration, and the reform of the international trade and finance systems. At the same time, there is a growing split among those who continue to emphasize the salience of the North–South distinction. Indeed, the “Global South” is a polysemous term that is interpreted quite differently by moderate and radical reformists. The moderate reformist viewpoint defended by developing country governments, who emphasize the international dimension of North–South politics, is increasingly challenged by radical activists and intellectuals who stress the transnational and nongeographical dimensions of world inequality. As such, the radicals highlight power relations between social groups and classes rather than between states. Admittedly, this perspective receives relatively little attention in mainstream scholarship and the media, but its growing appeal among civil society provides further evidence that the global order is less state-centric than it once appeared.

Although it is impossible to predict the future with any certainty, it is safe to assume that North–South terminology is unlikely to disappear anytime soon for at least two reasons. First, even those who contest its validity have to recognize that the North–South framework plays an important performative role. In this respect, it has become a major political resource for many global actors. As Amrita Narlikar (2020, 21) has shown, “south-led poverty narratives” can be significant sources of power. The term “Global South” is thus increasingly used to rally a coalition of nations around an alternative project of world ordering (Fortin, Heine, and Ominami 2023). One of the main factors explaining the resilience of the North–South distinction, as well as the political traction enjoyed by the “Global South” concept, is that they enable the historicization of contemporary debates on global inequality, thereby connecting present and past (Jerónimo and Monteiro 2018).

Second, a striking feature of the North–South lexicon is that it has spread throughout the social sciences and humanities. The North–South divide is no longer of interest only to economists, international relations scholars, and geographers. It is increasingly apparent that global inequality impinges on a host of related issues, including race, ethnicity, culture, and knowledge production (Gani and Marshall 2022). The North–South binary and the category of “Global South” provide a common thread uniting these different fields of social struggle across a wide range of scholarly disciplines, including sociology, history, law, anthropology, education, comparative literature, and cultural studies (see Tikly and Barrett 2013; Puri and Castillo 2015; Wasserman 2018). In other words, the transdisciplinarity of the North–South lens reflects its ability to illuminate the multidimensional nature of inequality.

While it has always been criticized as an oversimplification of geopolitics, the North–South distinction seems to have compensated for this deficit by way of its parsimony. Its stickiness follows from the fact that it provides a heuristic shortcut to understanding global politics. Whether this shortcut can lead to a major transformation of the world order, however, remains to be seen.

Funder Information

This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) grant #435-2021-0326.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Louise Fawcett, Orfeo Fioretos, Eric Haney, Andrew Hurrell, Anna Leander, Lucile Maertens, Vincent Pouliot, Ryan Perks, Jennifer Welsh, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article. I am also grateful to Frédéric Aubé, Brendon Novel, and Frédéric Rivard for their research assistance.