Second World

With the term Second World, the socialist countries of the Soviet bloc were referred to in the Cold War.

Today the term is often used instead of the so-called emerging countries, so for a group of countries that are about to leave the status of a developing country and to become a developed country; for example, the People's Republic of China and India. The meaning of the term is, however, declined sharply since 1989, even the formerly widespread and not uncontroversial terms First World ( for industrialized countries), Third World ( for developing countries ) and Fourth World (mostly for resource- poor developing countries or the so-called Least Developed Countries ) have since been used less and less. Renewed popularity reached the term as a concept of the Indian-American political scientist Parag Khanna, the mean countries that are located in the geopolitical and geo-economic zones of influence of various empires.