Series 5 - Professional associations and posts

3.09 m of textual records and publications

The records in this series document Professor Helleiner’s association with and involvement in several dozen professional associations and organizations, including consulting contracts with governments and educational bodies. There are also files on many of the journals with which he was associated (he sat on the editorial boards of more than twenty at one time or another, one (World Development) for more than thirty years. Most of the latter contain his comments on papers he was asked to assess. There are also files on some conferences that he attended.

The files contain correspondence, memoranda, notes, minutes of meetings and proceedings of workshops, reports (many written by Helleiner), conference programmes and papers, the occasional interview, and selected newsletters and press clippings. The arrangement is by name of organization or event, filed alphabetically.

The most extensive files are on the following organizations, the binding thread being development economics: African Capacity Building Foundation and the African Economic Research Consortium; with officials and politicians of the Government of Canada and about the Canadian International Development Agency; the Commonwealth Secretariat, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and International Lawyers and Economists Against Poverty (ILEAP); the North South Institute, the Overseas Development Council (USA), and the North South Roundtable of the Society for International Development (UK); various activities relating to trade and investment in South Africa (including early opposition to it), and ongoing activities in Tanzania (see below); numerous bodies associated with the United Nations (especially UNICEF and UNCTAD); several universities (Dar es Salaam, Sussex, and the West Indies); the World Bank, and World Development.

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), founded in Ottawa in 1970, was mandated to support research on the reduction of global poverty and particularly research in (as well as for) developing countries.” It was initially headed by David Hopper, with whom Professor Helleiner worked on the creation of the North-South Institute in 1975-1976. He sat on the Board of the IDRC from 1985 to 1991.

ILEAP grew out of concerns Professor Helleiner raised in his Prebisch lecture at UNCTAD in December, 2000 about the lack of lawyers (and economists) “committed…to the specially defence of the rights of the poorest in the global economy’s legal system and the building of their capacity of defend themselves.” His call was taken up by Ron Daniels, dean of Law at the U of T, and others, with initial funding from the IDRC.

Professor Helleiner’s long association with Tanzania is well documented here, beginning in 1978 with the Government of Tanzania Task Force on Export Incentive Schemes, followed by the Tanzania Advisory Group (“Three Wise Men”) in 1981 and ending,
between 1994 and 2000, with the Group of Independent Advisors on Development Cooperation Issues Between Tanzania and its Aid Donors (which Helleiner chaired) and the associated Tanzania Advisory Strategy.

Additional correspondence on many of these organizations may be found filed under the names of the individual members in Series 2: Correspondence, an example being Roy Culpepper of the North-South Institute.

Of the more than twenty editorial boards on which Professor Helleiner sat, the most extensive files are for International Organization and WorldDevelopment. The files together contain primarily specially ng relating to his membership on editorial boards and/or his appraisals of papers presented to the respective journals. Some related correspondence may be found in ‘Series 2: Correspondence’ under the names of editorial board members.

Professor Helleiner’s involvement with the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-four on International Monetary Affairs (Group of 24 or G-24) is documented in Series 7 and with WIDER (World Institute for Development Economic Research) in Series 6.

In his curriculum vitae [B2010-0005/001(01) and /019(05)], Professor Helleiner provides lists of “Journal editorial boards”, “Other professional honours and posts”, and “sample selected research contracts and consultancies”. Researchers will find these lists very useful in gaining an understanding of the breadth of Professor Helleiner’s professional activities, while some indication of the depth of his involvement can be gleaned from his memoirs, Listening and learning [B2010-0005/079(02)].

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