Introduction

Abstract

The oil embargo of 1973–4, more than any event since the Second World War, stimulated a great deal of interest in international raw material and commodity cartels. Two major lines of scholarly activity have reflected the diversity of this interest. The first takes the part of the developed states and attempts to assess just how vulnerable the Advanced Industrial States (AIS) are on ‘outside’ sources of strategic goods. The emphasis from this perspective is on a simple inventory of who has how much of what commodity and what the particular AIS’s foreign policy should be doing about it.¹ The second line has examined the problem of cartel formation from the producer country perspective and, where the producers are developing countries, the prospects for New International Economic Order (NIEO). The emphasis here is on where, when, and how cartel power is likely to be attained.² Indeed, the success of OPEC stimulated the formation of a series of imitator cartel attempts in bauxite, bananas, iron ore and mercury.