RETHINKING DEVELOPMENT: PERSPECTIVES IN DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND PRACTICE

1. INTRODUCTION

Part One of this volume provides perspectives in development theory and practices with special emphasis on developing countries. It considers the new concept of development which broadens the previous narrow view of development to include the peculiar problems of developing countries and other concerns. It also discusses the classic theories and practices of development which are shown to require a good deal of modification in order to fit the complex and varied institutional and structural realities of developing countries. Efforts made by many International Organizations and bilateral aid agencies from the late 1960's in search of alternative development concepts and practices are discussed. The Washington Consensus on the role of the state in development and the New Washington Consensus which addresses inequality and recognizes a broad eclectic role in development for government have been covered. These efforts followed the widespread disenchantment with the dominant development theories which treated economic growth as synonymous with development. It concludes with a discussion of the contribution of the author's award-winning Root-based model for sustainable community development which pioneers an alternative development approach in response to contemporary global development challenges.

SUMMARIES OF SECTIONS

The New Concept of Development

Up to the Second World War, development was mainly considered as synonymous with economic growth. However, the limitations of this narrow view of development especially for developing countries, coupled with other major concerns, led to a search for a new concept of development which has a much broader scope and addresses the peculiar problems of developing countries. This culminated in the new concept of development discussed in section 2 which, in addition to the usual concerns of efficient allocation of existing scarce productive resources with their sustained growth over time, also deals with the economic, social, political and institutional mechanisms, both public and private, necessary to provide accelerated and large-scale improvement in levels of living.

Thus, to enhance its scope, the new concept of development goes well beyond the accumulation of wealth and growth of gross national income and other income related variables to embrace a much more inclusive concept of increasing the welfare of societies.

The new concept of development has been influenced by the powerful messages of Gaulet(1971), Sen(1983, 1999) and others leading to a strong re-conceptualization in terms of components of human development encompassing human well-being beyond income and the process through which people are empowered to shape their own development priorities and to be better enabled to exercise their human rights. The new concept of development is, in essence, a multi-dimensional process involving major changes in social structures, popular attitudes, national and indigenous institutions as well as acceleration of economic growth, the reduction of inequality and the eradication of poverty. The section further describes the construction of a composite index of human development by the UNDP which draws heavily on the work of Gaulet, Sen and others and takes into account economic as well as social variables.

Classic Theories and Practices of Development

Section 3 examines the classic theories and practices of development. It chronicles the earliest capitalist strategies of economic development from Adam Smith in 1776 to Alfred Marshall in the 1890's whose huge influence largely shaped mainstream economic and development thought for the ensuing fifty years. These theories stressed the efficacy of global free trade and, in a broad sense, gave rise to the earliest capitalist strategies of economic development which envisioned little or no government restrictions on the operation of the economy. In the late 1930's John Maynard Keynes, an outstanding student of Marshall, argued that government should play a major role in economic management since; in his view, economically and socially successful economies have significant contribution from both government and private sector. The ideas of Keynes formed the basis of Keynesian economics which dominates much of present day development theory and practice. These ideas also marked a break with the laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith which held that economies function best when markets are left free of state intervention.

Section 3.2 considers the four major competing theories and approaches which have dominated the post-World War II development literature: the linear-stages-of-growth model, theories and patterns of structural change, the international dependence revolution and the neo-classical free-market counter revolution. The linear-stages-of-growth model, sometimes referred to as International Keynesianism on account of its extensive intellectual roots from Keynesian economics, includes Waltz Rostow's stages-of-growth theory and the Harrod-Domar model. This growth model envisions development as a process of capital formation which, in turn, is largely determined by levels of savings and investment especially in high growth sectors such as manufacturing industries. Growth is regarded as a uni-linear process which will endure once momentum is gained while no conceptual space is given in the model for possibilities of subsequent decline or underdevelopment.

Structural change models, which dominated much of the...