Eslava: Development, International Law, and the Cold War: A Long History of Disembedding

Luis Eslava (Univ. of Kent - Law) has posted Development, International Law, and the Cold War: A Long History of Disembedding (in The Cambridge History of International Law (Vol. XI) - International Law during the Cold War (1945-1990), forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

In this chapter, I first trace how development, alongside equivalent ideas, graduated from its early usage in the colonial project and the activities of the League of Nations to become a key concept in the lexicon of international law and institutions after 1945. In the second section, I examine the framing of development programmes and activism around the concept according to the parameters set by the Cold War, from the mid-1940s to the early 1980s. In the third and final section, I discuss how the Cold War’s unravelling and the ascent of private interests, individual rights, financial logics, and expansive security in the late 1980s made even more intractable the promise of development and the emancipatory potential of international law. The events described here came at the clear cost of the dreams of much of the developing world and its allies. These peoples’ hopes for gaining control of their destinies, for a new world order in which past colonial wrongdoings could be reversed, and the uneven operation of the global economy levelled out by a justiciable version of development, were confined to a claim rather than an enforceable duty. In this history of disembedding relations, the biggest losers were marginalised populations across the planet and the natural environment.