The core idea of the article is that the end of the Cold War in the last years of the eighties should not be viewed as a single fact, but as a part of a broad process of change. From this standpoint, it searches to prove, through the points of view expressed in several books and articles, that the process which led to the end of the Cold War was already in motion almost two decades before 1989. The second part of the article argues in favor of Olson's Logic of Collective Action and the existence of a gap between the development of world regions as theoretical frameworks to comprehend the naturally unstable feature of the international order. It concludes by stating that the complex contemporary international agenda is not quite different from the one which was predominant in the last decade of the Cold War, but the manner through which issues are realized and forwarded has substantially changed.
Cold War; Globalization; Collective action; Economic development