First World

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World 

The "Three Worlds" of the Cold War era, April – August 1975

  First World: Western Bloc led by the USA, UK, NATO, Japan and their allies

  Second World: Eastern Bloc led by the USSR, Warsaw Pact, China and their allies

  Third World: Non-Aligned Movement (led by India and Yugoslavia) and other neutral countries

The concept of First World originated during the Cold War and comprised countries that were aligned with United States and the rest of NATO and opposed the Soviet Union and/or communism during the Cold War. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the definition has instead largely shifted to any country with little political risk and a well-functioning democracy, rule of law, capitalist economy, economic stability, and high standard of living. Various ways in which modern First World countries are usually determined include GDP, GNP, literacy rates, life expectancy, and the Human Development Index. In common usage, "first world" typically refers to "the highly developed industrialized nations often considered the westernized countries of the world".

History

After World War II, the world split into two large geopolitical blocs, separating into spheres of communism and capitalism. This led to the Cold War, during which the term First World was often used because of its political, social, and economic relevance. The term itself was first introduced in the late 1940s by the United Nations. Today, the terms are slightly outdated and have no official definition. However, the "First World" is generally thought of as the capitalist, industrial, wealthy, and developed countries. This definition includes Australia & New Zealand, the developed countries of Asia (South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan), and the wealthy countries of North America and Europe, particularly Western Europe. In contemporary society, the First World is viewed as countries that have the most advanced economies, the greatest influence, the highest standards of living, and the greatest technology. After the Cold War, these countries of the First World included member states of NATO, U.S.-aligned states, neutral countries that were developed and industrialized, and the former British Colonies that were considered developed. It can be defined succinctly as Europe, plus the richer countries of the former British Empire (USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand), Israel, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. According to Nations Online, the member countries of NATO after the Cold War included:

• Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, West Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The Western-aligned countries included:

• Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, and Taiwan

The neutral countries included:

• Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia

Shifting in definitions

Since the end of the Cold War, the original definition of the term "First World" is no longer necessarily applicable. There are varying definitions of the First World; however, they follow the same idea. John D. Daniels, past president of the Academy of International Business, defines the First World to be consisting of "high-income industrial countries". Scholar and Professor George J. Bryjak defines the First World to be the "modern, industrial, capitalist countries of North America and Europe". L. Robert Kohls, former director of training for the U.S. Information Agency and the Meridian International Center in Washington, D.C., uses First World and "fully developed" as synonyms.

Other indicators

Varying definitions of the term First World and the uncertainty of the term in today's world leads to different indicators of First World status. In 1945, the United Nations used the terms first, second, third, and fourth worlds to define the relative wealth of nations (although popular use of the term fourth world did not come about until later). There are some references towards culture in the definition. They were defined in terms of Gross National Product (GNP), measured in U.S. dollars, along with other socio-political factors. The first world included the large industrialized, democratic (free elections, etc.) nations. The second world included modern, wealthy, industrialized nations, but they were all under communist control. Most of the rest of the world was deemed part of the third world, while the fourth world was considered to be those nations whose people were living on less than US$100 annually. If we use the term to mean high-income industrialized economies, then the World Bank classifies countries according to their GNI or gross national income per capita. The World Bank separates countries into four categories: high-income, upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income, and low-income economies. The First World is considered to be countries with high-income economies. The high-income economies are equated to mean developed and industrialized countries.

Three World Model

Current NATO member countries

The terms "First World", "Second World", and "Third World" were originally used to divide the world's nations into three categories. The model did not emerge to its endstate all at once. The complete overthrow of the pre–World War II status quo, known as the Cold War, left two superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) vying for ultimate global supremacy. They created two camps, known as blocs. These blocs formed the basis of the concepts of the First and Second Worlds.

Early in the Cold War era, NATO and the Warsaw Pact were created by the United States and the Soviet Union, respectively. They were also referred to as the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The circumstances of these two blocs were so different that they were essentially two worlds, however, they were not numbered first and second. The onset of the Cold War is marked by Winston Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech. In this speech, Churchill describes the division of the West and East to be so solid that it could be called an iron curtain.

In 1952, the French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the term Third World in reference to the three estates in pre-revolutionary France. The first two estates being the nobility and clergy and everybody else comprising the third estate. He compared the capitalist world (i.e., First World) to the nobility and the communist world (i.e., Second World) to the clergy. Just as the third estate comprised everybody else, Sauvy called the Third World all the countries that were not in this Cold War division, i.e., the unaligned and uninvolved states in the "East-West Conflict". With the coining of the term Third World directly, the first two groups came to be known as the "First World" and "Second World" respectively. Here the three-world system emerged.

However, Shuswap Chief George Manuel believes the Three World Model to be outdated. In his 1974 book The Fourth World: An Indian Reality, he describes the emergence of the Fourth World while coining the term. The fourth world refers to "nations", e.g., cultural entities and ethnic groups, of indigenous people who do not compose states in the traditional sense. Rather, they live within or across state boundaries (see First Nations). One example is the Native Americans of North America, Central America, and the Caribbean.

Post Cold War

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Eastern Bloc ceased to exist and with it, the perfect applicability of the term Second World. The definitions of the First World, Second World, and Third World changed slightly, yet generally describe the same concepts.

Relationships with the other worlds

Historic

During the Cold War era, the relationships between the First World, Second World and the Third World were very rigid. The First World and Second World were at constant odds with one another via the tensions between their two cores, the United States and the Soviet Union, respectively. The Cold War, as its name suggests, was a primarily ideological struggle between the First and Second Worlds, or more specifically, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Multiple doctrines and plans dominated Cold War dynamics including the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan (from the U.S.) and the Molotov Plan (from the Soviet Union). The extent of the tension between the two worlds was evident in Berlin -- which was then split into East and West. To stop citizens in East Berlin from having too much exposure to the capitalist West, the Soviet Union put up the Berlin Wall within the actual city.

The relationship between the First World and the Third World is characterized by the very definition of the Third World. Because countries of the Third World were noncommittal and non-aligned with both the First World and the Second World, they were targets for recruitment. In the quest for expanding their sphere of influence, the United States (core of the First World) tried to establish pro-U.S. regimes in the Third World. In addition, because the Soviet Union (core of the Second World) also wanted to expand, the Third World often became a site for conflict.

The Domino Theory

Some examples include Vietnam and Korea. Success lay with the First World if at the end of the war, the country became capitalistic and democratic, and with the Second World, if the country became communist. While Vietnam as a whole was eventually communized, only the northern half of Korea remained communist. The Domino Theory largely governed United States policy regarding the Third World and their rivalry with the Second World. In light of the Domino Theory, the U.S. saw winning the proxy wars in the Third World as a measure of the "credibility of U.S. commitments all over the world".

Present

The movement of people and information largely characterizes the inter-world relationships in the present day. A majority of breakthroughs and innovation originate in Western Europe and the U.S. and later their effects permeate globally. As judged by the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, most of the Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years were from former First World countries (e.g., the U.S. and countries in Western Europe).

The disparity between knowledge in the First World as compared to the Third World is evident in healthcare and medical advancements. Deaths from water-related illnesses have largely been eliminated in "wealthier nations", while they are still a "major concern in the developing world". Widely treatable diseases in the developed countries of the First World, malaria and tuberculosis needlessly claim many lives in the developing countries of the Third World. 900,000 people die from malaria each year and combating malaria accounts for 40% of health spending in many African countries.

The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced that the first Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) would be available in the summer of 2010. These include non-Latin domains such as Chinese, Arabic, and Russian. This is one way that the flow of information between the First and Third Worlds may become more even.

The movement of information and technology from the First World to various Third World countries has created a general "aspir(ation) to First World living standards". The Third World has lower living standards as compared to the First World. Information about the comparatively higher living standards of the First World comes through television, commercial advertisements and foreign visitors to their countries. This exposure causes two changes: a) living standards in some Third World countries rise and b) this exposure creates hopes and many from Third World countries emigrate – both legally and illegally – to these First World countries in hopes of attaining that living standard and prosperity. In fact, this emigration is the "main contributor to the increasing populations of U.S. and Europe". While these emigrations have greatly contributed to globalization, they have also precipitated trends like brain drain and problems with repatriation. They have also created immigration and governmental burden problems for the countries (i.e., First World) that people emigrate to.

Environmental footprint

Some have argued that the most important human population problem for the world is not the high rate of population increase in certain Third World countries per se, but rather the "increase in total human impact". The per-capita footprint – the resources consumed and the waste created by each person – varies globally. The highest per-person impact occurs in the First World and the lowest in the Third World: each inhabitant of the United States, Western Europe and Japan consumes 32 times as many resources and puts out 32 times as much waste as each person in the Third World. However, China leads the world in total emissions, but its large population skews its per-capita statistic lower than those of more developed nations.

As large consumers of fossil fuels, First World countries drew attention to environmental pollution. The Kyoto Protocol is a treaty that is based on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was finalized in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio. It proposed to place the burden of protecting the climate on the United States and other First World countries. Countries that were considered to be developing, such as China and India, were not required to approve the treaty because they were more concerned that restricting emissions would further restrain their development.

International relations

Until the recent past, little attention was paid to the interests of Third World countries. This is because most international relations scholars have come from the industrialized, First World nations. As more countries have continued to become more developed, the interests of the world have slowly started to shift. However, First World nations still have many more universities, professors, journals, and conferences, which has made it very difficult for Third World countries to gain legitimacy and respect with their new ideas and methods of looking at the world.

Development theory

During the Cold War, the modernization theory and development theory developed in Europe as a result of their economic, political, social, and cultural response to the management of former colonial territories. European scholars and practitioners of international politics hoped to theorize ideas and then create policies based on those ideas that would cause newly independent colonies to change into politically developed sovereign nation-states. However, most of the theorists were from the United States, and they were not interested in Third World countries achieving development by any model. They wanted those countries to develop through liberal processes of politics, economics, and socialization; that is to say, they wanted them to follow the liberal capitalist example of a so-called "First World state". Therefore, the modernization and development tradition consciously originated as a (mostly U.S.) alternative to the Marxist and neo-Marxist strategies promoted by the "Second World states" like the Soviet Union. It was used to explain how developing Third World states would naturally evolve into developed First World States, and it was partially grounded in liberal economic theory and a form of Talcott Parsons' sociological theory.

Globalization

The United Nations's ESCWA has written that globalization "is a widely-used term that can be defined in a number of different ways". Joyce Osland from San Jose State University wrote: "Globalization has become an increasingly controversial topic, and the growing number of protests around the world has focused more attention on the basic assumptions of globalization and its effects." "Globalization is not new, though. For thousands of years, people—and, later, corporations—have been buying from and selling to each other in lands at great distances, such as through the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and Europe during the Middle Ages. Likewise, for centuries, people and corporations have invested in enterprises in other countries. In fact, many of the features of the current wave of globalization are similar to those prevailing before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914."

European Union

The most prominent example of globalization in the first world is the European Union (EU). The European Union is an agreement in which countries voluntarily decide to build common governmental institutions to which they delegate some individual national sovereignty so that decisions can be made democratically on a higher level of common interest for Europe as a whole. The result is a union of 27 Member States covering 4,233,255.3 square kilometres (1,634,469.0 sq mi) with roughly 450 million people. In total, the European Union produces almost a third of the world's gross national product and the member states speak more than 23 languages. All of the European Union countries are joined together by a hope to promote and extend peace, democracy, cooperativeness, stability, prosperity, and the rule of law. In a 2007 speech, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Commissioner for External Relations, said, "The future of the EU is linked to globalization...the EU has a crucial role to play in making globalization work properly...". In a 2014 speech at the European Parliament, the Italian PM Matteo Renzi stated, "We are the ones who can bring civilization to globalization".

Just as the concept of the First World came about as a result of World War II, so did the European Union. In 1951 the beginnings of the EU were founded with the creation of European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). From the beginning of its inception, countries in the EU were judged by many standards, including economic ones. This is where the relation between globalization, the EU, and First World countries arises. Especially during the 1990s when the EU focused on economic policies such as the creation and circulation of the Euro, the creation of the European Monetary Institute, and the opening of the European Central Bank.

In 1993, at the Copenhagen European Council, the European Union took a decisive step towards expanding the EU, what they called the Fifth Enlargement, agreeing that "the associated countries in Central and Eastern Europe that so desire shall become members of the European Union". Thus, enlargement was no longer a question of if, but when and how. The European Council stated that accession could occur when the prospective country is able to assume the obligations of membership, that is that all the economic and political conditions required are attained. Furthermore, it defined the membership criteria, which are regarded as the Copenhagen criteria, as follows:

• stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities
• the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union
• the ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union

It is clear that all these criteria are characteristics of developed countries. Therefore, there is a direct link between globalization, developed nations, and the European Union.

Multinational corporations

A majority of multinational corporations find their origins in First World countries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, multinational corporations proliferated as more countries focused on global trade. The series of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and later the World Trade Organization (WTO) essentially ended the protectionist measures that were dissuading global trade. The eradication of these protectionist measures, while creating avenues for economic interconnection, mostly benefited developed countries, who by using their power at GATT summits, forced developing and underdeveloped countries to open their economies to Western goods.

As the world starts to globalize, it is accompanied by criticism of the current forms of globalization, which are feared to be overly corporate-led. As corporations become larger and multinational, their influence and interests go further accordingly. Being able to influence and own most media companies, it is hard to be able to publicly debate the notions and ideals that corporations pursue. Some choices that corporations take to make profits can affect people all over the world. Sometimes fatally.

The third industrial revolution is spreading from the developed world to some, but not all, parts of the developing world. To participate in this new global economy, developing countries must be seen as attractive offshore production bases for multinational corporations. To be such bases, developing countries must provide relatively well-educated workforces, good infrastructure (electricity, telecommunications, transportation), political stability, and a willingness to play by market rules.

If these conditions are in place, multinational corporations will transfer via their offshore subsidiaries or to their offshore suppliers, the specific production technologies and market linkages necessary to participate in the global economy. By themselves, developing countries, even if well-educated, cannot produce at the quality levels demanded in high-value-added industries and cannot market what they produce even in low-value-added industries such as textiles or shoes. Put bluntly, multinational companies possess a variety of factors that developing countries must have if they are to participate in the global economy.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing, according to Grossman and Helpman, refers to the process of "subcontracting an ever expanding set of activities, ranging from product design to assembly, from research and development to marketing, distribution and after-sales service". Many companies have moved to outsourcing services in which they no longer specifically need or have the capability of handling themselves. This is due to considerations of what the companies can have more control over. Whatever companies tend to not have much control over or need to have control over will outsource activities to firms that they consider "less competing". According to SourcingMag.com, the process of outsourcing can take the following four phases.

1. strategic thinking
2. evaluation and selection
3. contract development
4. outsourcing management.

Outsourcing is among some of the many reasons for increased competition within developing countries. Aside from being a reason for competition, many First World countries see outsourcing, in particular offshore outsourcing, as an opportunity for increased income. As a consequence, the skill level of production in foreign countries handling the outsourced services increases within the economy; and the skill level within the domestic developing countries can decrease. It is because of competition (including outsourcing) that Robert Feenstra and Gordon Hanson predict that there will be a rise of 15–33 percent in inequality amongst these countries.

Global North and Global South

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South 

World map showing a traditional definition of the North–South divide (red countries in this map are grouped as "Global South", blue countries as "Global North")

The concept of Global North and Global South (or North–South divide in a global context) is used to describe a grouping of countries along socio-economic and political characteristics. The Global South is a term often used to identify regions within Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. It is one of a family of terms, including "Third World" and "Periphery", that denote regions outside Europe and North America, most (though not all) of these countries are low-income and often politically or culturally marginalized on one side of the divide, the other side being the countries of the Global North (often equated with developed countries). As such, the term does not inherently refer to a geographical south; for example, most of the Global South is geographically within the Northern Hemisphere.

The term as used by governmental and developmental organizations was first introduced as a more open and value-free alternative to "Third World" and similarly potentially "valuing" terms like developing countries. Countries of the Global South have been described as newly industrialized or in the process of industrializing, and are frequently current or former subjects of colonialism.

The Global North mostly correlates with the Western world—with the notable exceptions of Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Israel— and the South largely corresponds with the developing countries previously called "Third World," plus the Eastern world. Geographically, the Global South is mostly composed of regions that are neither Western nor Eastern such as the Latin Westand most African countries. The two groups are often defined in terms of their differing levels of wealth, economic development, income inequality, democracy, and political and economic freedom, as defined by freedom indices. States that are generally seen as part of the Global North tend to be wealthier and less unequal with large, well-developed infrastructure as well as advanced technology, manufacturing and energy industries. Southern states are generally developing countries with younger institutions. They tend to be heavily dependent on primary sector exports. The divide between the North and the South is often challenged.

Global South leaders became more assertive in world politics in the 1990s, a trend that has continued into the 2020s with massive trillion-dollar initiatives such as China's BNR (Belt and Road Initiative). South-South cooperation has increased to "challenge the political and economic dominance of the North." This cooperation has become a popular political and economic concept following geographical migrations of manufacturing and production activity from the North to the Global South and the diplomatic action of several states, like China. These contemporary economic trends have "enhanced the historical potential of economic growth and industrialization in the Global South," which has renewed targeted SSC efforts that "loosen the strictures imposed during the colonial era and transcend the boundaries of postwar political and economic geography." Used in several books and American Literature special issue, the term Global South, recently became prominent for U.S. literature.

Definition

World map representing Human Development Index categories (based on 2019 data, published in 2020).

0.800–1.000 (very high)   0.700–0.799 (high)   0.550–0.699 (medium)

0.350–0.549 (low)   Data unavailable

The terms are not strictly geographical, and are not "an image of the world divided by the equator, separating richer countries from their poorer counterparts." Rather, geography should be more readily understood as economic and migratory, the world understood through the "wider context of globalization or global capitalism."

Generally, definitions of the Global North is not exclusively a geographical term, and it includes countries and areas such as Australia, Canada, the entirety of Europe and Russia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. The Global South is made up of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, and the developing countries in Asia, including the Middle East. It is generally seen as home to Brazil, India, Indonesia and China, which, along with Nigeria and Mexico, are the largest Southern states in terms of land area and population.

The overwhelming majority of the Global South countries are located in or near the tropics.

The term Global North is often used interchangeably with developed countries. Likewise, the term Global South is often used interchangeably with developing countries.

Society and culture

Digital and technological divide

The global digital divide is often characterized as corresponding to the north–south divide; however, Internet use, and especially broadband access, is now soaring in Asia compared with other continents. This phenomenon is partially explained by the ability of many countries in Asia to leapfrog older Internet technology and infrastructure, coupled with booming economies which allow vastly more people to get online.

Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has stated that it intends to invest heavily in augmenting the technological landscape in countries like Kenya and Peru.

Religion and spirituality

Spirituality tends to be more widespread in the Global South than in the Global North. Countries like Nepal and Brazil are known for their ubiquitous religious presence while India is regarded as the birthplace of four of the world's major religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. In 2013, the election of Pope Francis from Argentina marked the first time in history that a pope has been elected from the Global South.

Outside of the major religions, most of the world's indigenous population live in the Global South. Africa is home to more than 3,000 ethnic groups, while Latam is home to more than 58 million indigenous people spread across 826 indigenous groups. In 2015, the synthesis of an anti-malarial drug using an herb employed in Traditional Chinese Medicine was awarded a Nobel Prize For Medicine.

Notable religions and spiritual traditions to have come from the Global South include:

• Islam - Saudi Arabia
• Hinduism - India
• Buddhism - India
• Sikhism - India
• Taoism - China
• Jainism - India

Media representation

When looking at media coverage of developing countries, a generalized view has developed through Western media. Negative images and coverage of the poverty are frequent in the mass media when talking about developing countries. This common coverage has created a dominant stereotype of developing countries as: "the 'South' is characterized by socioeconomic and political backwardness, measured against Western values and standards." Mass media's role often compares the Global South to the North and is thought to be an aid in the divide.

Mass media has also played a role in what information the people in developing countries receive. The news often covers developed countries and creates an imbalance of information flow. The people in developing countries do not often receive coverage of the other developing countries but instead gets generous amounts of coverage about developed countries.

Development of the terms

  Countries described as high-income by the World Bank in 2019

 

Heads of State and Heads of Government at the 1981 North–South Summit in Mexico

The first use of Global South in a contemporary political sense was in 1969 by Carl Oglesby, writing in Catholic journal Commonweal in a special issue on the Vietnam War. Oglesby argued that centuries of northern "dominance over the global south […] [has] converged […] to produce an intolerable social order."

The term gained appeal throughout the second half of the 20th century, which rapidly accelerated in the early 21st century. It appeared in fewer than two dozen publications in 2004, but in hundreds of publications by 2013. The emergence of the new term meant looking at the troubled realities of its predecessors, i.e.: Third World or Developing World. The term "Global South", in contrast, was intended to be less hierarchical.

The idea of categorizing countries by their economic and developmental status began during the Cold War with the classifications of East and West. The Soviet Union and China represented the East, and the United States and their allies represented the West. The term Third World came into parlance in the second half of the twentieth century. It originated in a 1952 article by Alfred Sauvy entitled "Trois Mondes, Une Planète". Early definitions of the Third World emphasized its exclusion from the east–west conflict of the Cold War as well as the ex-colonial status and poverty of the peoples it comprised.

Efforts to mobilize the Third World as an autonomous political entity were undertaken. The 1955 Bandung Conference was an early meeting of Third World states in which an alternative to alignment with either the Eastern or Western Blocs was promoted. Following this, the first Non-Aligned Summit was organized in 1961. Contemporaneously, a mode of economic criticism which separated the world economy into "core" and "periphery" was developed and given expression in a project for political reform which "moved the terms 'North' and 'South' into the international political lexicon."

In 1973, the pursuit of a New International Economic Order which was to be negotiated between the North and South was initiated at the Non-Aligned Summit held in Algiers. Also in 1973, the oil embargo initiated by Arab OPEC countries as a result of the Yom Kippur War caused an increase in world oil prices, with prices continuing to rise throughout the decade. This contributed to a worldwide recession which resulted in industrialized nations increasing economically protectionist policies and contributing less aid to the less developed countries of the South. The slack was taken up by Western banks, which provided substantial loans to Third World countries. However, many of these countries were not able to pay back their debt, which led the IMF to extend further loans to them on the condition that they undertake certain liberalizing reforms. This policy, which came to be known as structural adjustment, and was institutionalized by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and Western governments, represented a break from the Keynesian approach to foreign aid which had been the norm from the end of the Second World War.

After 1987, reports on the negative social impacts that structural adjustment policies had had on affected developing nations led IFIs to supplement structural adjustment policies with targeted anti-poverty projects. Following the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the Soviet Union, some Second World countries joined the First World, and others joined the Third World. A new and simpler classification was needed. Use of the terms "North" and "South" became more widespread.

Brandt Line

The Brandt line, a definition from the 1980s dividing the world into the wealthy north and the poor south

 

Countries' average latitude and GDP per capita according to The World Factbook (2013). The Brandt Line is shown in bold.

 

Main article: Brandt Report

The Brandt Line is a visual depiction of the north–south divide, proposed by West German former Chancellor Willy Brandt in the 1980s in the report titled North-South: A Programme for Survival which was later known as the Brandt Report. This line divides the world at a latitude of approximately 30° North, passing between the United States and Mexico, north of Africa and the Middle East, climbing north over China and Mongolia, but dipping south to include Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the city-state of Singapore in the "Rich North".

Uses of the term Global South

Global South "emerged in part to aid countries in the southern hemisphere to work in collaboration on political, economic, social, environmental, cultural, and technical issues." This is called South–South cooperation (SSC), a "political and economical term that refers to the long-term goal of pursuing world economic changes that mutually benefit countries in the Global South and lead to greater solidarity among the disadvantaged in the world system." The hope is that countries within the Global South will "assist each other in social, political, and economical development, radically altering the world system to reflect their interests and not just the interests of the Global North in the process." It is guided by the principles of "respect for national sovereignty, national ownership, independence, equality, non-conditionality, non-interference in domestic affairs, and mutual benefit." Countries using this model of South–South cooperation see it as a "mutually beneficial relationship that spreads knowledge, skills, expertise and resources to address their development challenges such as high population pressure, poverty, hunger, disease, environmental deterioration, conflict and natural disasters." These countries also work together to deal with "cross border issues such as environmental protection, HIV/AIDS," and the movement of capital and labor.

Social psychiatrist Vincenzo Di Nicola has applied the Global South as a bridge between the critiques globalization and the gaps and limitations of the Global Mental Health Movement invoking Boaventura de Sousa Santos' notion of "epistemologies of the South" to create a new epistemology for social psychiatry.

Defining development

Being categorized as part of the "North" implies development as opposed to belonging to the "South", which implies a lack thereof. According to N. Oluwafemi Mimiko, the South lacks the right technology, it is politically unstable, its economies are divided, and its foreign exchange earnings depend on primary product exports to the North, along with the fluctuation of prices. The low level of control it exercises over imports and exports condemns the South to conform to the 'imperialist' system. The South's lack of development and the high level of development of the North deepen the inequality between them and leave the South a source of raw material for the developed countries. The north becomes synonymous with economic development and industrialization while the South represents the previously colonized countries which are in need of help in the form of international aid agendas. In order to understand how this divide occurs, a definition of "development" itself is needed. Northern countries are using most of the earth resources and most of them are high entropic fossil fuels. Reducing emission rates of toxic substances is central to debate on sustainable development but this can negatively affect economic growth.

The Dictionary of Human Geography defines development as "processes of social change or [a change] to class and state projects to transform national economies". This definition entails an understanding of economic development which is imperative when trying to understand the north–south divide.

Economic Development is a measure of progress in a specific economy. It refers to advancements in technology, a transition from an economy based largely on agriculture to one based on industry and an improvement in living standards.

Other factors that are included in the conceptualization of what a developed country is include life expectancy and the levels of education, poverty and employment in that country.

Furthermore, in Regionalism Across the North-South Divide: State Strategies and Globalization, Jean Grugel states that the three factors that direct the economic development of states within the Global south is "élite behaviour within and between nation states, integration and cooperation within 'geographic' areas, and the resulting position of states and regions within the global world market and related political economic hierarchy."

Theories explaining the divide

The development disparity between the North and the South has sometimes been explained in historical terms. Dependency theory looks back on the patterns of colonial relations which persisted between the North and South and emphasizes how colonized territories tended to be impoverished by those relations. Theorists of this school maintain that the economies of ex-colonial states remain oriented towards serving external rather than internal demand, and that development regimes undertaken in this context have tended to reproduce in underdeveloped countries the pronounced class hierarchies found in industrialized countries while maintaining higher levels of poverty. Dependency theory is closely intertwined with Latin American Structuralism, the only school of development economics emerging from the Global South to be affiliated with a national research institute and to receive support from national banks and finance ministries. The Structuralists defined dependency as the inability of a nation's economy to complete the cycle of capital accumulation without reliance on an outside economy. More specifically, peripheral nations were perceived as primary resource exporters reliant on core economies for manufactured goods. This led structuralists to advocate for import-substitution industrialization policies which aimed to replace manufactured imports with domestically made products.

New Economic Geography explains development disparities in terms of the physical organization of industry, arguing that firms tend to cluster in order benefit from economies of scale and increase productivity which leads ultimately to an increase in wages. The North has more firm clustering than the South, making its industries more competitive. It is argued that only when wages in the North reach a certain height, will it become more profitable for firms to operate in the South, allowing clustering to begin.

Associated theories

The term of the Global South has many researched theories associated with it. Since many of the countries that are considered to be a part of the Global South were first colonized by Global North countries, they are at a disadvantage to become as quickly developed. Dependency theorists suggest that information has a top-down approach and first goes to the Global North before countries in the Global South receive it. Although many of these countries rely on political or economic help, this also opens up opportunity for information to develop Western bias and create an academic dependency. Meneleo Litonjua describes the reasoning behind distinctive problems of dependency theory as "the basic context of poverty and underdevelopment of Third World/Global South countries was not their traditionalism, but the dominance-dependence relationship between rich and poor, powerful and weak counties."

What brought about much of the dependency, was the push to become modernized. After World War II, the U.S. made effort to assist developing countries financially in attempt to pull them out of poverty. Modernization theory "sought to remake the Global South in the image and likeliness of the First World/Global North." In other terms, "societies can be fast-tracked to modernization by 'importing' Western technical capital, forms of organization, and science and technology to developing countries." With this ideology, as long as countries follow in Western ways, they can develop quicker.

After modernization attempts took place, theorists started to question the effects through post-development perspectives. Postdevelopment theorists try to explain that not all developing countries need to be following Western ways but instead should create their own development plans. This means that "societies at the local level should be allowed to pursue their own development path as they perceive it without the influences of global capital and other modern choices, and thus a rejection of the entire paradigm from Eurocentric model and the advocation of new ways of thinking about the non-Western societies." The goals of postdevelopment was to reject development rather than reform by choosing to embrace non-Western ways.

Challenges

The accuracy of the North–South divide has been challenged on a number of grounds. Firstly, differences in the political, economic and demographic make-up of countries tend to complicate the idea of a monolithic South. Globalization has also challenged the notion of two distinct economic spheres. Following the liberalization of post-Mao China initiated in 1978, growing regional cooperation between the national economies of Asia has led to the growing decentralization of the North as the main economic power. The economic status of the South has also been fractured. As of 2015, all but roughly the bottom 60 nations of the Global South were thought to be gaining on the North in terms of income, diversification, and participation in the world market.

Globalization has largely displaced the North–South divide as the theoretical underpinning of the development efforts of international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and various United Nations affiliated agencies, though these groups differ in their perceptions of the relationship between globalization and inequality. Yet some remain critical of the accuracy of globalization as a model of the world economy, emphasizing the enduring centrality of nation-states in world politics and the prominence of regional trade relations.

The divide between the North and South challenges international environmental cooperation. The economic differences between North and South have created dispute over the scientific evidence and data regarding global warming and what needs to be done about it. As the South don't trust Northern data and cannot afford the technology to be able to produce their own. In addition to these disputes, there are serious divisions over responsibility, who pays, and the possibility for the South to catch up. This is becoming an ever-growing issue with the emergence of rising powers, imploding these three divisions just listed and making them progressively blurry. Multiplicity of actors, such as governments, businesses, and NGO's all influence any positive activity that can be taken into preventing further global warming problems with the Global North and Global South divide contributing to the severity of said actors. Disputes between Northern countries governments and Southern countries governments has led to a break down in international discussions with governments from either side disagreeing with each other. Addressing most environmental problems requires international cooperation, and the North and South contribute to the stagnation concerning any form of implementation and enforcement, which remains a key issue.

Debates over the term

With its development, many scholars preferred using the Global South over its predecessors, such as "developing countries" and "Third World". Leigh Anne Duck, co-editor of Global South, argued that the term is better suited at resisting "hegemonic forces that threaten the autonomy and development of these countries." Alvaro Mendez, co-founder of the London School of Economics and Political Science's Global South Unit, have applauded the empowering aspects of the term. In an article, Discussion on Global South, Mendez discusses emerging economies in nations like China, India and Brazil. It is predicted that by 2030, 80% of the world's middle-class population will be living in developing countries. The popularity of the term "marks a shift from a central focus on development and cultural difference" and recognizes the importance of geopolitical relations.

Critics of this usage often argue that it is a vague blanket term". Others have argued that the term, its usage, and its subsequent consequences mainly benefit those from the upper classes of countries within the Global South; who stand "to profit from the political and economic reality [of] expanding south-south relations."

According to scholar Anne Garland Mahler, this nation-based understanding of the Global South is regarded as an appropriation of a concept that has deeper roots in Cold War radical political thought. In this political usage, the Global South is employed in a more geographically fluid way, referring to "spaces and peoples negatively impacted by contemporary capitalist globalization." In other words, "there are economic Souths in the geographic North and Norths in the geographic South." Through this geographically fluid definition, another meaning is attributed to the Global South where it refers to a global political community that is formed when the world's "Souths" recognize one another and view their conditions as shared.

The geographical boundaries of the Global South remain a source of debate. Some scholars agree that the term is not a "static concept". Others have argued against "grouping together a large variety of countries and regions into one category [because it] tends to obscure specific (historical) relationships between different countries and/or regions" and the power imbalances within these relationships. This "may obscure wealth differences within countries – and, therefore, similarities between the wealthy in the Global South and Global North, as well as the dire situation the poor may face all around the world."

Future development

Some economists have argued that international free trade and unhindered capital flows across countries could lead to a contraction in the North–South divide. In this case more equal trade and flow of capital would allow the possibility for developing countries to further develop economically.

As some countries in the South experience rapid development, there is evidence that those states are developing high levels of South–South aid. Brazil, in particular, has been noted for its high levels of aid ($1 billion annually—ahead of many traditional donors) and the ability to use its own experiences to provide high levels of expertise and knowledge transfer. This has been described as a "global model in waiting".

The United Nations has also established its role in diminishing the divide between North and South through the Millennium Development Goals, all of which were to be achieved by 2015. These goals seek to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve global universal education and healthcare, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development. There were replaced in 2015 by 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs, set in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and intended to be achieved by 2030, are part of a UN Resolution called "The 2030 Agenda".

Recruitment

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recruitment 

Recruitment poster for the UK army

Recruitment is the overall process of identifying, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, and interviewing candidates for jobs (either permanent or temporary) within an organization. Recruitment also is the processes involved in choosing individuals for unpaid roles. Managers, human resource generalists and recruitment specialists may be tasked with carrying out recruitment, but in some cases public-sector employment, commercial recruitment agencies, or specialist search consultancies are used to undertake parts of the process. Internet-based technologies which support all aspects of recruitment have become widespread, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

Process

• Job analysis for new jobs or substantially changed jobs. It might be undertaken to document the knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAOs) required or sought for the job. From these, the relevant information is captured in a person specification.
• Sourcing — attracting or identifying candidates
• Screening and selection - picking, interviewing and hiring the right candidate.

A job fair in Athens, Greece

Sourcing

Sourcing is the use of one or more strategies to attract and identify candidates to fill job vacancies. It may involve internal and/or external recruitment advertising, using appropriate media such as job portals, local or national newspapers, social media, business media, specialist recruitment media, professional publications, window advertisements, job centers, career fairs, or in a variety of ways via the internet.

Alternatively, employers may use recruitment consultancies or agencies to find otherwise scarce candidates—who, in many cases, may be content in their current positions and are not actively looking to move. This initial research for candidates—also called name generation—produces contact information for potential candidates, whom the recruiter can then discreetly contact and screen.

Referral recruitment programs

Referral recruitment programs allow both outsiders and employees to refer candidates for filling job openings. Online, they can be implemented by leveraging social networks.

Employee referral

An employee referral is a candidate recommended by an existing employee. This is sometimes referred to as referral recruitment. Encouraging existing employees to select and recruit suitable candidates results in:

• Improved candidate quality ('fit'). Employee referrals allow existing employees to screen, select and refer candidates, lowers staff attrition rate; candidates hired through referrals tend to stay up to 3 times longer than candidates hired through job boards and other sources. The one-to-one direct relationship between the candidate and the referring employee and the exchange of knowledge that takes place allows the candidate to develop a strong understanding of the company, its business and the application and recruitment process. The candidate is thereby enabled to assess their own suitability and likelihood of success, including "fitting in."
• Reduces the considerable cost of third-party service providers who would have previously conducted the screening and selection process. An op-ed in Crain's in April 2013 recommended that companies look to employee referral to speed the recruitment process for purple squirrels, which are rare candidates considered to be "perfect" fits for open positions.
• The employee typically receives a referral bonus, and is widely acknowledged as being cost-effective. The Global Employee Referral Index 2013 Survey found that 92% of participants reported employee referrals as one of the top recruiting sources.
• As candidate quality improves and interview-to-job-offer conversion rates increase, the amount of time spent interviewing decreases, which means the company's employee headcount can be streamlined and be used more efficiently. Marketing and advertising expenditures decrease as existing employees source potential candidates from existing personal networks of friends, family, and associates. By contrast, recruiting through third-party recruitment agencies incurs a 20–25% agency finder's fee – which can top $25K for an employee with $100K annual salary.

There is, however, a risk of less corporate creativity: An overly homogeneous workforce is at risk for "fails to produce novel ideas or innovations."

Social network referral

Initially, responses to mass-emailing of job announcements to those within employees' social network slowed the screening process.

Two ways in which this improved are:

• Making available screen tools for employees to use, although this interferes with the "work routines of already time-starved employees"
• "When employees put their reputation on the line for the person they are recommending"

Screening and selection

Various psychological tests can assess a variety of KSAOs, including literacy. Assessments are also available to measure physical ability. Recruiters and agencies may use applicant tracking systems to filter candidates, along with software tools for psychometric testing and performance-based assessment. In many countries, employers are legally mandated to ensure their screening and selection processes meet equal opportunity and ethical standards.

Employers are likely to recognize the value of candidates who encompass soft skills, such as interpersonal or team leadership, and the level of drive needed to stay engaged—but most employers are still using degree requirements to screen out the 70+ million workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) who already possess many of those skills. In fact, many companies, including multinational organizations and those that recruit from a range of nationalities, are also often concerned about whether candidate fits the prevailing company culture and organization as a whole. Companies and recruitment agencies are now turning to video screening as a way to notice these skills without the need to invite the candidates in person.

The selection process is often claimed to be an invention of Thomas Edison.

Candidates with disabilities

The word disability carries few positive connotations for most employers. Research has shown that the employer biases tend to improve through first-hand experience and exposure with proper supports for the employee and the employer making the hiring decisions. As for most companies, money and job stability are two of the contributing factors to the productivity of a disabled employee, which in return equates to the growth and success of a business. Hiring disabled workers produces more advantages than disadvantages. There is no difference in the daily production of a disabled worker. Given their situation, they are more likely to adapt to their environmental surroundings and acquaint themselves with equipment, enabling them to solve problems and overcome adversity than other employees. The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) grants companies Disabled Access Credit when they meet eligibility criteria.

Diversity

Many major corporations recognize the need for diversity in hiring to compete successfully in a global economy. The challenge is to avoid recruiting staff who are "in the likeness of existing employees" but also to retain a more diverse workforce and work with inclusion strategies to include them in the organisation.

Safer recruitment

"Safer recruitment" refers to procedures intended to promote and exercise "a safe culture including the supervision and oversight of those who work with children and vulnerable adults". The NSPCC describes safer recruitment as

a set of practices to help make sure your staff and volunteers are suitable to work with children and young people. It's a vital part of creating a safe and positive environment and making a commitment to keep children safe from harm.

In England and Wales, statutory guidance issued by the Department for Education directs how safer recruitment must be undertaken within an educational context.

Recruitment process outsourcing

Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is a form of business process outsourcing (BPO) where a company engages a third-party provider to manage all or part of its recruitment process.

Approaches

Internal recruitment or internal mobility (not to be confused with internal recruiters) refers to the process of a candidate being selected from the existing workforce to take up a new job in the same organization, perhaps as a promotion, or to provide career development opportunity, or to meet a specific or urgent organizational need. Advantages include the organization's familiarity with the employee and their competencies insofar as they are revealed in their current job, and their willingness to trust said employee. It can be quicker and have a lower cost to hire someone internally.

Many companies will choose to recruit or promote employees internally. This means that instead of searching for candidates in the general labor market, the company will look at hiring one of their own employees for the position. Companies often choose to hire an internal candidate over an external candidate due to the costs of acquiring new employees, and also on the fact that companies have pre-existing knowledge of their own employees’ effectiveness in the workplace. Additionally, internal recruitment can encourage the development of skills and knowledge because employees anticipate longer careers at the company. However, promoting an employee can leave a gap at the promoted employee’s previous position that subsequently needs to be filled. Traditionally, internal recruitment will be done through internal job postings. Another method of recruiting internally is through employee referrals. Having existing employees in good standing recommend coworkers for a job position is often a preferred method of recruitment because these employees know the values of the organization, as well as the work ethic of their coworkers. Some managers will provide incentives to employees who provide successful referrals.

Searching for candidates externally is another option when it comes to recruitment. In this case, employers or hiring committees will search outside of their own company for potential job candidates. The advantages of hiring externally is that it often brings fresh ideas and perspectives to the company. As well, external recruitment opens up more possibilities for the applicant pool than internal recruitment does. The conditions of the economy and labor market will impact the ability for a company to find and attract viable candidates. In order to make job openings known to potential candidates, companies will usually advertise their job in a number of ways. This can include advertising in local newspapers, journals, and online. Research has argued that social media networks offer job seekers and recruiters the opportunity to connect with other professionals cheaply. In addition, professional networking websites such as LinkedIn offer the ability to go through job seekers’ biographical resumes and message them directly even if they are not actively looking for a job. Attending job fairs, especially at secondary and post-secondary schools, is another method of recruiting external candidates.

An employee referral program is a system where existing employees recommend prospective candidates for the job offered, and usually, if the suggested candidate is hired, the employee receives a cash bonus.

Niche firms tend to focus on building ongoing relationships with their candidates, as the same candidates may be placed many times throughout their careers. Online resources have developed to help find niche recruiters. Niche firms also develop knowledge on specific employment trends within their industry of focus (e.g., the energy industry) and are able to identify demographic shifts such as aging and its impact on the industry.

Social recruiting is the use of social media for recruiting. As more and more people are using the internet, social networking sites, or SNS, have become an increasingly popular tool used by companies to recruit and attract applicants. A study conducted by researchers found that 73.5% of Cypriot companies had an account on a SNS, the most common being Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. There are many benefits associated with using SNS in recruitment, such as reducing the time required to hire someone, reduced costs, attracting more “computer literate, educated young individuals”, and positively impacting the company’s brand image. However, some disadvantages include increased costs for training HR specialists and installing related software for social recruiting. There are also legal issues associated with this practice, such as the privacy of applicants, discrimination based on information from SNS, and inaccurate or outdated information on applicant SNS.

Mobile recruiting is a recruitment strategy that uses mobile technology to attract, engage, and convert candidates.

Some recruiters work by accepting payments from job seekers, and in return help them to find a job. This is illegal in some countries, such as in the United Kingdom, in which recruiters must not charge candidates for their services (although websites such as LinkedIn may charge for ancillary job-search-related services). Such recruiters often refer to themselves as "personal marketers" and "job application services" rather than as recruiters.

Using multiple-criteria decision analysis tools such as analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and combining it with conventional recruitment methods provides an added advantage by helping the recruiters to make decisions when there are several diverse criteria to be considered or when the applicants lack past experience; for instance, recruitment of fresh university graduates.

Employers may re-recruit prior rejected candidates or recruit from retired employees as a way to increase the chances for attractive qualified applicants.

Multi-tier recruitment model

In some companies where the recruitment volume is high, it is common to see a multi-tier recruitment model where the different sub-functions are grouped together to achieve efficiency.

An example of a three-tier recruitment model:

• Tier 1 - Contact/help desk - This tier acts as the first point of contact where recruitment requests are being raised. If the requests are simple to fulfil or are queries in nature, resolution may take place at this tier.
• Tier 2 - Administration - This tier manages mainly the administration processes
• Tier 3 - Process - This tier manages the process and how the requests get fulfilled

General

Organizations define their own recruiting strategies to identify who they will recruit, as well as when, where, and how that recruitment should take place. Common recruiting strategies answer the following questions:

• What type of individuals should be targeted?
• What recruitment message should be communicated?
• How can the targeted individuals best be reached?
• When should the recruitment campaign begin?
• What should be the nature of a site visit?

Practices

Organizations develop recruitment objectives, and the recruitment strategy follows these objectives. Typically, organizations develop pre- and post-hire objectives and incorporate these objectives into a holistic recruitment strategy. Once an organization deploys a recruitment strategy it conducts recruitment activities. This typically starts by advertising a vacant position.

Professional associations

There are numerous professional associations for human resources professionals. Such associations typically offer benefits such as member directories, publications, discussion groups, awards, local chapters, vendor relations, government lobbying, and job boards.

Professional associations also offer a recruitment resource for human resources professionals.

Corrupt practices in recruitment

In the United States, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has established guidelines for prohibited employment policies/practices. These regulations serve to discourage discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, etc. However, recruitment ethics is an area of business that is prone to many other unethical and corrupt practices. According to Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC), business ethics are a vital component to recruitment; hiring unqualified friends or family, allowing problematic employees to be recycled through a company, and failing to properly validate the background of candidates can be detrimental to a business.

When hiring for positions that involve ethical and safety concerns it is often the individual employees who make decisions which can lead to devastating consequences to the whole company. Likewise, executive positions are often tasked with making difficult decisions when company emergencies occur such as public relation nightmares, natural disasters, pandemics, or a slowing economy. Businesses that have made headlines for undesirable cultures may also have a difficult time recruiting new hires. Companies should aim to minimize corruption using tools such as the recruitment processes, pre-employment screening, personality tests, induction, training, and establishing a code of conduct.

In Germany, universities, though public employers, are generally not required to advertise most vacancies especially of academic positions (teaching and/or research) other than tenured full professors (verbeamtete Hochschullehrer). At the same time, anti-discrimination measures and equal opportunities (although required within the framework of the European Union) only apply to advertised jobs and to the wording of the job advert.