6 - Development

Summary

The decades of the 1970s and 1980s together constituted a tumultuous period with inflation and unemployment ravaging the global economy. Many countries in the Global South also accumulated massive amounts of foreign debt. High interest rates prevailing at the time exacerbated the debts of a number of poorer countries; and falling export revenues, as global demand for their exports fell during the crisis, made this debt unsustainable. The 1980s were also significant because they constituted a watershed moment with regard to the nature of economic and social policies and their legal underpinnings in conventional thinking.