Transnational corporations and export-oriented primary commodities

This article presents in some detail a general conceptual framework intended to provide guidelines for the study of negotiations between governments and transnational corporations in connexion with export-oriented primary commodities. If the developing countries have greatly improved their bargaining position vis-á-vis the transnational corporations during the past few decades, this is due not only to changes in economic and political power relations at the world level but also to the pooling of increasingly detailed knowledge of all the factors which strengthen the hand of the governments in their dealings with the corporations.