Occasional Paper Series COD #7. The Contribution of South-South Cooperation to the Strengthening of Democratic Developmental States: Laying a Research Agenda

Although South-South cooperation has, in the past, inspired many developing countries, for a variety of reasons its potential has been far from being fully exploited. More recently, the impoverishment of wide strata of the population and the consequent drop in social standards in many Southern societies after several years of structural adjustment and other similar neo-liberal policies suggest that cooperation tending to uplift social areas is an urgent necessity. Therefore, the realities of the present-day global situation will require an increased South-South cooperation for the successful strengthening of democratic developmental states in the South. The declining interest in the North, in general, to assist the South makes South-South cooperation more urgent, while the increasing differences in stages of development within the South itself (and, consequently, the appearance of more and more complementarities among Southern countries) make it more feasible. In this light, South-South cooperation, particularly in social spheres of very urgent needs, might contribute to promote socio-political stability, to reduce dependency on countries of the North and therefore to increase, in general, the negotiating capacities of Southern countries vis-a-vis their Northern counterparts.