This chapter examines the political economy of development. Despite the many accomplishments since the end of the Second World War, the problems of development in the contemporary global political economy are still of arresting proportions, and the various incarnations of a ‘global development agenda’ to deal with these problems have had a very mixed record. In fact, there is still little consensus on what development actually is, let alone how it might be achieved, in either academic debates or public discourse. One of the most disputed questions in this context relates to the relationship between globalization and development, and how people should understand the impact of globalization on development across the world. The chapter explores these debates. It starts by reviewing the different ways of thinking about development that have emerged since the end of the Second World War, and demonstrating how particular understandings of development have given rise to particular kinds of development strategies, at both the national and global levels. The chapter then considers the impacts and consequences of these strategies for development, and shows on this basis that many of the problems and failures of development have not only persisted but also worsened in the contemporary period.
Chapter
13. The Political Economy of Development
Nicola Phillips
Chapter
17. Democratisation, Governance, and Development
David Potter, Alan Thomas, and María del Pilar López-Uribe
This chapter investigates the concepts of liberal democracy, democratization, and governance and how they relate to development. There are several critiques of liberal democracy, which mostly correspond to well-known problems for any political regime. They include the 'tyranny of the majority', élite capture, clientelism, and the threat of populist capture. Alternative models claimed by their proponents to be democratic include illiberal democracy, direct democracy, and democratic centralism. Especially for proponents of market economy, liberal democracy and economic development are seen as complementary aspects of modern society. However, it is not clear that democratization leads to development. Successful development requires a supportive institutional environment. This may occur in a liberal democracy but it is not democracy itself that matters but 'something else' — which may be called 'quality of governance', including impartiality and effectiveness.
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3. Meanings and Views of Development
Alan Thomas
This chapter investigates the different senses in which the term 'development' is used. 'Development' is used in three main senses: a vision or measure of a desirable society; a historical process of social change; and deliberate efforts at improvement by development agencies. The variety of competing overall views on development can be organized into three groups according to how they see development relating to capitalism: through, against, or in the context of capitalism. The first two of these groups of views are labelled Market economics and Structuralism. A third group of views, pragmatic rather than theoretical, is termed Interventionism and concentrates on how to achieve development. Finally, there are those who reject all these views as versions of 'mainstream' development. They seek alternatives, either an alternative form of development or rejecting the development concept entirely.
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13. Aid diplomacy
David Williams
This chapter examines the role and significance of foreign aid in the foreign policies of both aid donors and aid recipients. The chapter starts by discussing what is meant by ‘aid’, and it goes on to look at the varied motivations for the provision of foreign aid before exploring some of the dilemmas and issues that arise within aid diplomacy, for both aid donors and aid recipients.
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12. Human Rights and Politics in Development
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr
This chapter discusses the importance of politics to the relationship between human rights and development. It describes the two major ways in which human rights struggles have focused on development processes in the last two decades: the right to development, the struggles of poor countries for a better deal in the global economic system; and the human rights-based approach to development, the struggles of poor people for development to realize their rights. The chapter first considers the links between human rights, politics, and development before analysing the concepts and debates surrounding the right to development and the human rights-based approach to development. It then presents a case study on the Millennium Development Goals and the successor, Sustainable Development Goals, to illustrate how human rights principles are raised in contemporary debates on development priorities.
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12. Securing development; developing security?
Maria Stern
This chapter addresses the politics of development and its relation to security. It highlights how the mobilization of security via development may aim to address forms of political violence but can also (re)produce them. The chapter specifically poses the questions: ‘Security for whom and from what?’ and ‘Security when and where?’ By posing these questions, it draws attention to how security is mobilized in the crafting and enactment of development policies, or security-development/peacebuilding initiatives, and the security logics that underpin them. This helps render visible the hierarchies these logics reproduce, the forms of violence they enable, and the forms of knowledge that they privilege.
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15. The Era of Development—A Short History
Tom Hewitt
This chapter is organized around the idea of development: what it has meant to whom and why. The colonial period at its end was the beginning of what has been termed the era of development and was the beginning of an unprecedented internationalization and the emergence of a global economy. By the end of the 1990s, there were few parts of the world left untouched by the process of globalization which occurred since World War II. The first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed splintering and fragmentation and what some would argue to be signs of the end of the development era. Meanwhile, 'intentional development' at global level has broadened to include goals to deal with almost all aspects of what some call 'global crisis'. Analysts of development have moved to examining politics, power, and institutions in order to understand the growing complexity of development.
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Human Rights and the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Inga T. Winkler and Matheus de Carvalho Hernandez
This chapter
covers the relationship between human rights and the UN Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs). It starts with the history and development of the SDGs, which
included the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The concept of sustainable
development is based on the pillars of economic, environmental, and social
development, which allowed the integration of human rights, climate change, and
many other issues. The key challenges of SGDs revolve around the lack of
ensuring accountability and addressing inequality, which made its significant
potential to contribute to the realization of human rights. Finally, the chapter
provides a case study of SDG's commitment to reducing
inequalities.
Chapter
30. India’s Development Partnerships in the Twenty-First Century
Emma Mawdsley
This chapter examines the main trends and issues of South–South development cooperation, using India as a case study. Over the last few decades, India has been both a recipient of foreign aid and a provider of concessional loans, grants, technical assistance, peacekeeping forces, humanitarian assistance, debt relief, and so on. The chapter explores how and why India, a country that still has more absolutely poor people than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, gives development assistance to countries in Asia, Africa, and beyond. It first considers the issue of the ‘(re-)emerging’ development actors before discussing India’s development cooperation. It then shows how India and other developing countries are becoming bigger players in the international foreign aid regime. It also analyses India’s South–South relations and suggests that the benefits of India’s development cooperation are shared unevenly, both domestically and abroad.
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19. Engineering for Development
Peter Robbins, David Wield, and Gordon Wilson
This chapter focuses on the concept of engineering for development (E4D), which falls within the idea of development as deliberate intervention. Some such interventions may contain large-scale infrastructure engineering to meet human needs and/or facilitate economic development, while others are at small scale to meet primarily everyday human needs. Public finance and/or aid usually plays a large part in these interventions, although implementation is likely to include NGOs or the private sector. By following and analysing what engineers do, it becomes clear how E4D is socially produced beyond its strictly technical dimensions. Case studies of E4D suggest that the key concepts for analysing its social production are: ecological modernization, networks, bricolage, and reflexivity. Key issues for infrastructure development are access and effective coordination of implementation networks through cooperative partnerships and/or contracts.
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20. New Directions and Challenges for Health and Development
Cristin Fergus, Tim Allen, and Melissa Parker
This chapter addresses the connections between health and development, in both terms of development indicators and policies. Development processes that lead to improving livelihoods are linked to new kinds of health problems, including a rising prevalence of certain diseases, such as cancer and diabetes. Challenges in providing health services to populations will increasingly involve responding to the double burden of disease. In other words, infectious diseases associated with poverty will need to be addressed at the same time as non communicable diseases. Specific issues that need to be dealt with urgently include the rise in antimicrobial resistance, which has emerged as a consequence of the protracted, incorrect use of medications. Serious concerns have been highlighted about new disease epidemics, such as Ebola and COVID-19, which are recognized as a threat to public health internationally, in part due to air travel and population movements. This, in turn, has been associated with a more overt linking of security with disease control, and the possibilities for militarized enforcement procedures.
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22. Digital Technologies and the Future of Poverty and Development
Tony Roberts, Kevin Hernandez, and Becky Faith
This chapter assesses the use of digital technologies in international development. Digital technologies are transforming economic and social life and are used in almost every sector of development. However, positive benefits in the form of digital dividends are limited by continued digital divides in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) access. Use of digital technologies tends to reflect, reproduce, and amplify existing patterns of inequality. Thus, digital development initiatives need to design for equity, include non-digital communication, and pay attention to potential risks. The chapter then provides examples of contemporary digital development projects applying Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), and looks at 'frontier technologies' that may shape the future of international development.
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21. The United Nations
Devon E. A. Curtis and Paul Taylor
This chapter examines the development of the United Nations and the changes and challenges that it has faced since it was founded in 1945. It opens with three framing questions: Does the UN succeed in reconciling traditions of great power politics and traditions of universalism? Why has the UN become more involved in matters within states and what are the limits to this involvement? What are the UN's biggest successes and challenges in its efforts to prevent and resolve conflict and to promote sustainable development? The chapter proceeds by providing a brief history of the UN and its principal organs. It also considers the UN's role in the maintenance of international peace and security, and how the UN addresses issues relating to economic and social development. Two case studies are presented: the first is about the role of the UN in dealing with conflict in Syria and the second is about UN peacekeeping in the Congo.
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16. Development
Tony Addison
This chapter examines development policy objectives and their explicit focus on poverty reduction. It first considers different definitions of development policy objectives before discussing the roles that the market mechanism and the state should play in allocating society’s productive resources. In particular, it looks at the economic role of the state as one of the central issues dividing opinion on development strategy and explains how rising inequality led to a backlash against economic liberalization. The chapter proceeds by exploring the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction, along with the political difficulties that arise from economic reform. It also analyses the importance of transforming the structure of economies and the new global development landscape, including changes in development finance.
Chapter
21. The United Nations
Devon E. A. Curtis and Paul Taylor
This chapter examines the development of the United Nations and the changes and challenges that it has faced since it was founded in 1945. It opens with three framing questions: Does the UN succeed in reconciling traditions of great power politics and traditions of universalism? Why has the UN become more involved in matters within states and what are the limits to this involvement? What are the UN's biggest successes and challenges in its efforts to prevent and resolve conflict and to promote sustainable development? The chapter proceeds by providing a brief history of the UN and its principal organs. It also considers the UN's role in the maintenance of international peace and security, and how the UN addresses issues relating to economic and social development. Two case studies are presented: the first is about UN peacekeeping in the Congo and the second is about the 2003 intervention in Iraq.
Chapter
1. Why Poverty and Development?
Alan Thomas and Tim Allen
This chapter discusses some of the ways in which the two concepts of poverty and development are related by considering a number of dimensions in which they appear to be opposed. It looks at the 'era of development', describing how the emphasis has shifted from theoretical debate between alternative models of development to acceptance of globalized liberal capitalism. The fusion of liberal democracy and industrial capitalism came to represent the only viable basis for modern human society — an approach that was commonly linked to the concept of globalization. The chapter then assesses the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and how they have been succeeded by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), both of which frameworks exemplify development seen in terms of policy interventions to ameliorate poverty and other global problems — including climate change. Finally, it identifies some major dilemmas for development as the twenty-first century progresses.
Chapter
7. Greener Growth
Sustainable Development
Sustainable development became the dominant discourse in global environmental affairs in the 1980s, spurred by the landmark Brundtland report to the United Nations, and remains widely popular, embodied for example in the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by an assembly of all the world’s countries in 2015. Sustainable development combines ecological protection, economic growth, social justice, and intergenerational equity, which can be sought globally and in perpetuity. “Green growth” becomes possible, while ecological limits and boundaries fade into the background. However, it is necessary for a collective effort that involves governments, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations, and citizens to make this happen. Sustainable development is an integrating discourse that covers local and global environmental issues and a host of economic and development concerns. Beyond this shared discourse, different actors (such as corporations and environmentalists) ascribe different means to the idea. Despite its popularity as a discourse, sustainable development has not actually been achieved anywhere.
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18. Rethinking Gender Matters in Development
Charlotte Brown and Ruth Pearson
This chapter evaluates how gender analysis can be applied to development, in both understanding the context in which it takes place and assessing development policies. The twenty-first century marked the rhetorical acceptance and embrace of gender analysis with a continued emphasis on women's rights and practical interests. However, it is important not to see efforts to meet practical gendered interests in opposition to efforts to challenge existing gender roles. A twin-track effort is necessary to meet the challenges of gendered experiences of poverty while also ensuring broader application of gender analysis addressing strategic gender interests and analysing the causes of gender inequality in order to address the uneven nature of progress towards gender equality. Recent years have highlighted a number of new areas of foci for political activism: gender inequality and abuse within organizations and across development practices; resurgence of conservative views on gender roles; and fluid gender roles.
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21. Migration, Security, and Development
Helen Hintjens, Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits, and Ali Bilgic
This chapter situates human mobility at the intersection of security and development. Capitalism prompted much of the population of Europe to move out of rural areas into cities, and from there imperialism led to huge forced and voluntary migration towards settler colonies. By tying development funding and humanitarian aid to cooperation of developing states in migration control, 'the West' uses development aid to criminalize whole categories of migrants, well beyond its borders. Myths around migration perpetuate containment and control that keeps around 90 per cent of forced migrants and refugees in or near their home regions. More humane migration and asylum policies could benefit host and home countries alike, in the long run. Migrants can be viewed as economic assets, a demographic boon, and a source of cultural enrichment.
Chapter
4. Agencies of Development
Duncan Green and Tom Kirk
This chapter evaluates agencies of development, which can be split into three broad categories: state, societal, and international actors and organizations. These categories should be understood to be overlapping and fluid. Indeed, few actors or organizations can be said to be purely international, of the state or society. Instead, most belong to and operate across multiple spheres of activity. Moreover, this boundary crossing is increasingly a requirement to get things done. Accordingly, the chapter pays attention to how different agencies interact with one another, legitimizing and delegitimizing different understandings of development in the process. It also shows how development is often driven by broad coalitions of actors and organizations working together, however contentiously, towards collective goals. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of emerging ways of understanding and doing development that acknowledge and incorporate this approach.
