The Political Economy of International Shipping in Developing Countries.

• Author: Katalinas, David J.

OKECHUKWU C. IHEDURU, THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES; Associated University Presses, Inc.; London (1996); ($45.95); ISBN 0-87413-552-4; 300 pp. (hard cover).

Through the context of the international shipping industry, this book presents the ongoing conflict involving the industrialized states' struggle to maintain global hegemony and the lesser-developed states' futile attempts to implement change in the regimes that govern its international relations. Specifically, evidence of the Southern states' failed demand for a new international economic order (NIEO) has been seen through their quest for a new international maritime order (NIMO), which emerged soon after the 1974 United Nations Convention on a Code of Conduct for Linear Conferences. In relations between the North and South, trade has been acknowledged as the major contributor to this asymmetry. This book emphasizes the role of shipping as the channel through which trade has occurred.

Consideration of three African states (Cote' d'Ivorie, Ghana and Nigeria) and four states in southeast Asia (Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea) provide examples of the South's fruitless experiences. Through these specific models, the author analyzes empirical generalizations and strident attempts by the South to restructure the liberal order of world shipping. In this respect, numerous tables, charts and graphs are included to illustrate the relevant figures. The book combines this ,data with such related issues as technological changes, the skewed distribution of power in world shipping, and the role of agency and intragroup politics in development. All of these issues contributed to the retardation of the shipping industry in the South.

The book' main argument is that the frustrations of "late-industrialization," as experienced individually and collectively by the South's developing states, played a leading role in the failure of the South to establish a NIEO or its derivative, the NIMO. The author explores other factors leading to the South's inability to affect change, including...