Development & its limits

Development & its limits

1. Definition

   • Contested term: Scholars agree it should be good but no-one agrees on implemation
   • Eradication of poverty, economic growth, improved living standards & power and influence
   • Process & condition
     • Process: change & transformation, move from "less" to "more" desirable state
     • Condition: Achived by some societies, categorizations: 1st, 2nd & 3rd

2. History

   • Post WW: Focused on economic growth, GDP developed as measure, BUT neglected social, cultural, political aspects
   • Broadening development: Human Development Paradigm (productivity, equity, sustainability & empowerment). Changes occurred due to criticism within International Organizations & grass root movements
   • 4 Asian Tigers (NICS): Development of Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea & Taiwan. Neo-liberal & development state theory claimed it as theirs and emphasised Export Orientated Industrialization. Development state emphasised successful state intervention.

3. Approaches to Development

   • State models: Competent state bureaucracy, autonomy for state bureaucrats, "market conforming" state intervention, pilot agencies
   • Debt relief: Instigated by social movements & NGOs, The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs, Millenium Development Goals
   • Critical Argument: Used to tame 3rd World, instrument of control not of progress, James Ferguson 1994 - side effects
   • Orientalist Approach: Links development & modernity, progress in West but denies development in the non-West, no notion of non-West path to development. Neo-liberal "only game in town" (Burton, 2012)
   • Critiquing standardised development: Policies too uniform & avoid contextual variations, ask for New Economic Order through UN in 1960, economic institutions fail to help developing states, gap between North and South, neo-liberal development too focused on individuals and destroys community based projects
   • Consequences of neo-liberal development: decline of state involvment led to greater role of private sectors and NGOs, rise of "sustainable development": meet needs of present without affecting the future
   • Post Washington Consensus - WB Development Report 2005: Insufficient attention to dynamic forces behind growth process, objective economic reform did not translate into any policy set, solutions must be context specific, models were unhelpful due to rigid and inflexible rules