TOP5&6

1. Existential assumption: Development exists and functions as an organising and conceptual frame

   • organises different approaches from different sciences in one concept

   • conceptual as phenomenons of all kind can be interpreted as development or underdevelopment

2. Normative assumption: Development is a good thing, leads to a good life in the polis = “good change”, stagnation as bad

3. Practical assumption: Development can be achieved

   • In interplay with the normative assumption they build the foundation of the entire “development business”

4. Methodological assumption: Units (states) can be compared according to their development

1. Specification of the goal: Countries in the Global North, predominantly North American and European states, are “developed“, while countries of the Global South need “development“.

1. Specification of the process: Interventions, such as transfer of capital, technology and knowledge from the Global North, are essential to lay the basis for the development of the Global South

2. Legitimation of the process: Interventions are considered as legitimate because they are based on expert knowledge.

1. Eurocentric implications: European societies serve as the ideal models as they are developed countries. Less-developed countries are regarded as inferior versions

2. Depoliticising implications: The concept of development disguises inequalities and conflicts on national and international level.

   • Western nations e.g. the old colonial-powers are responsible for the “poor development” of those staes

3. Authoritarian implication

• The classical concept of development definetly is, but Post-Development as an approach to reject this.

• Normative core assumption “development is good” + Practical assumption: “Development can be achieved” are the basis to the whole western iniciated “development businnes"

  • Additional assumptions (Aram Ziai):

  • + can different between developed countries and less developed countries

  • + global North are the developed countries

  • = Western status as the ideal state and society constitution

  • = interventions follow their example

  • =transfer of their capital, knowledge and technology is needed and legitim because interventions are suggested by experts

• Concept of development involves that interventions are legitim although the affected people are concerned

• Development as a process of social change ≠ classical D definition

  • Living conditions = more broad field of what should be improved, based on social dimension

  • social constitution of the concerned unit is improveable

  • his process can be structured, so there is an example/ideal process

• Every country that is in social change is a developing country

  • As social change never really ends, every country is an developing country, what breaks-up with the strict binary between developed and everything above

• Which “boxes” are ticked by social change?

  • Economic, political, historical dimension?

• Is there an endpoint of this social change process?

  • Societies are always in social change

  • Can be interpreted positive and negative as it puts down the Global North

• What is ment by “geopolitical location”?

  • Classical or critical interpretation of geopolitics?

• Who is implementing the development/ Who sais we want development?

• What are the discourses and practices what is their point of orientation?

• GNP as policy objective in the newly independent less developed countries

  • economic growth and modernisation will reduce income inequalities reflected in social inequalities would be eliminated

• Economist tool kit contained theories as/e.g.

  • big push: economies of scale (costs decrease with the output) in basic industries and others but building up on

  • emphasise large-scale investments, strongly influenced by the relatively successful development and performance of the Soviet Union between 1928-1940

  • grwoth = development

• Selected Policies and Strategies were:

  • Industrialisation-first strategy: industrialisation = growth = development food prices at low levels, agriculture as feeding industrialisation and its workers

    • industrial sector as the productive sector

      • influenced by dual economy aaproach a la Lewis, agricultural sector marginal productivity close to 0 (vgl. Adam Smith) subsistence production, low living conditions, unemployment vs. industrial sector productive thus wage above ws, + capital input while wIND<MPIND= capital allocation in industrial sector, labour migration, increasing demand, increasinf profits, increasing motivation to reinvest)

  • Import-substitution to increase foreign trade balance: protect the development and “foster” domestic market mainly products that are in high-demand; foreign import goods replaced by own production (tariff barriers, exchange rate, higher inflation rate= higher interest rate) BUT also increased prices of daily consumer goods = increase in demand while less supply+less efficent and higher production costs in production, higher inflation rate= higher interest rate= less investment

• Beginning of south-south cooperation

  • 1955: First institutionalisation of South-South cooperation

  • colonies from Asia and Africa

  • common action of underprivileged countries, as well as economic participation

  • common interest holding te Global north accountable

Theories

• Economic dualism (Lewis): agricultural sector provides unlimited labour

• ‘balanced’ versus ‘unbalanced’ growth

  • balanced: production of a good has to be equal to its demand in all states of development, no surplus

• Effective protection: import substitutiom

Selected Objectives:

• GNP growth (Kuznets: firstly Increasing wealth= increasing inequality)

• Employment

  • second half of 60s dual economy approaches were rebuffed and agricultural sector not longer considered as passive sector rather than an equal partner with modern industry

    
    

Selected Policies and Strategies flowed from the development objectives and data systems

• Fine-tuning and appropriate prices (neo-classical, creating an appropriate price system)

• To achieve inter-sectoral balanced grwoth -> Support of the agriculture to enhance output and productivity (greater public contribution and less disriminating due to price policies)

• Foreign aid, lobbying for continous development assistance

South-South cooperation

• 61 Non-Alignment Movement established as an alternative to the Cold War powers and their blocs.

  • development through alignment of the “inferior” countries

• 64: G77, unity between developing countries, high of cooperation

• Important Player in the UN system

Major Development Problems

• Recognised that economic growth is not equal to “development” and in the mid 70s GNP as a dominant objective had been widely (but not universally) dethroned

• Un- and underdeployment, unequal income distribution within countries, Poverty, Rural-urban migration, Foreign Debt

  • failure of a GNP-oriented developement led to an overthinking and readjustment of the objectives

Selected Objectives and strategies

• GNP as necessary but not sufficient with the preferance to increase the incomes in the buttom deciles to reduce inequality

• Income distribution

  • “Redistribution with growth” distribution of the existing assets and factory and requiring increaing investment transfers in projects (mostly public perhaps even private) and TA

  • ILO “basic needs strategy” fulfilling basic needs

• Employment

  • promoted by ILO

  • to raise the living standards of the poor

  • especially with regarding to the informal sector

• Poverty alleviation

  • theory of integrated rural and agricultural development to facilitate a structural transformation “bottom-up”(no dual-economy as in th 50s- mid 60s)

    • lending and technical activities benefiting directly the traditional sector

  • Interdependencies between population growth and economic growth “the malthusian tragedy”(jäger-sammler-beziehung)

    • educational and birth control policies

• Neo-Marxist: call for massive redistribution of assets to the state and the elimination of most forms of private property

• Socio-economics criterias (employment, income distribution) were included in investment decisions

Theories

• Appearance of neo-marxist theory

  • a periphery is intrinsic in a world trading and power system

  • periphery are raw-material producers and centre modern-industrialy producers = periphery supplier and demand at the same time

  • based on VGR the income of the one is always the expenses of the other EX=LB-IM

Major Challenges

• “Lost development decade”

• Extremely heavy foreign debt manifesting in increasing balance of payments and budget deficits

• Higher interest rates and recession in creditor countries changed the development and aid environment

• Financial crisis in Mexico and other parts of the Third World

=> achievement macroeconomic stability in the form of external equilibrium and internal equilibrium to reduce their balance-of-payment as overarching objectives secure economic growth and poverty alleviation

=> Basis of controversial Structural Adjustment Programmes of IMF and World Bank

Strategies:

• structural adjustment: devaluation, removal of artifical proce disortion, trade liberalisation and institutional changes at the sector level

• Encouraged/forced by West to Pro-market and minimise governmental activities (according to the ideological changes in the Western World = 70s raise of the neoliberal paradigm as answer to the oil crisis and breakdown of Bretton Woods)

BUT: minimalist state was not able to implement adjustment policies to support education and the development of human capital what newly in the 80s developed theories have suggested

Important theories:

• gute Regierungsführung (Good Governance)

• Handeln von Regierungen +

  • Prozesse, nach denen Regierungen gewählt, überwacht und ersetzt werden

  • Fähigkeit effektive Politiken zu formulieren und umzusetzen

  • Respekt der Bürger und der staatlichen Behörden VOR den Instituionen, welche wirtschaftliches Handen und soziale Transaktionen regeln

• Indikatoren

  • effektiver Einfluss der Bürger auf das Handeln von Regierungen und deren Rechenschaftspflichtigkeit

  • politische Stabilität

  • Fehlen innerstaatlicher Gewalt

• with the worldpolitical change 89/90 instituions climed on the agenda of development politic

• Several crisis and steps back in socio-economic development: Asian financial crisis, deteriorated socio-economic conditions in Soviet Republics, Japanese Credit bubble, saving and loans crisis, Maxican tequila crisis

• Recognition that fostering a more marketfriendly politic is not enough to reach the targets (employment, poverty allevation)

• + human capital and productivity couldn’t explain differencies in the economic growth rates as a whole

• Stressed the meaning of Good Governance and refering institutions and it became clear that a fundamental deep-rooted institutional change is needed to transform social economies into market economies

• Beginning of 90s East Asian miracle

  • their institutions and policies as role models for the other devloping countries which can be transfered to other 3rd world countries and would enrole to the same extent

    • particular stable institutions and selective government interventions

• Lending institutions still set stabilisation as a dominant objective and understood Good Governance as a set of instituions that promotes economic development as well as socio-economic development

  • Promoting development-supportive instituions and those who combat corruption

  • World Bank credit-lending based on conditions that included improvement of governance

    • Druing their financial crisis it got under criticism, some other even spoke about a “Myth”

    • BUT requires a string state what was missing in majority of 3rd world countries especially in sub-Saharan Africa

      
      

  
  

Millenium

• Renaissance of the state

  • while in previous decades development politic hold on to the neoliberal paradigma and market focus, the 2000s made actions towards more state action

  • Especially devolped after 2008 financial crisis and the Keynesian economics again taking a more prominent role

    • demand is everything, expansiv fiscal politics

• Human Devlopment as more elaborated version of the Basic-Needs strategy (ILO) of the 70s and ultimate goal of development

  • main target poverty reduction

  • Basic-needs, defined by ILO included two main elements

    • certain minimal requirements of a family for private consumption (adequate food, shelter and clothing)

    • essential services provided by and for the community (safe drinking water, sanitary, health and educational facilities)

  • multi-dimensional as it is related to health, education, nutrition, shelter, access to information, participation, natur of regime (degree of democracy and liberty), environmental and global sustainability etc.

Post-Development

Emergence in the 1980s: Critical perspective on development, rejecting the entire paradigm, titles development as “failed project” and wants the end of “development as we know it”

• normative: rejection of the development paradigm as tending to be Eurocentric, depoliticising and authoritarian

• Analytical: deconstruction of the development-concept, emphasises on local culturle and local knowledge, appropriate focus

• prescriptive: defence and promotion of local, pluralistic grassroots movements: rejecting development aid and a strong state

Alternative paths:

• Importance of local communal solidarity

• Ambivalences of “imported” models of democracy e.g. as direct democracy & participation

• Overemphasis on growth model oriented towards GDP informal economy, subsistence economy

• Emphasises traditional knowledge and importance of traditional or informal institutions

Post-development express justified criticism of the Eurocentrism of the development discourse, it shapes power, narrows the view and threatens the existence of other way of livings (cultures)

• strongly normatively charged

• surprisingly remote from the state

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As a classical student nowdays the classical concept of development doesn’t fit to my values; eurocentric thus emphasising economic grow through industrialisation, states winners and lossers but also reproduces them, capitalistic, not aware for other way of livings, organisation etc.

• There are so many attempts to redefine development and attributes added but still many of the core-assumptions remain the same and they are controversial and misleading

  • Normative assumption= development is good + Global North is developed countries = their development path was the besst + their staus quo should be achieved

  • 3rd world is not Africa, Latin America, Asia it is a heterogenous group of country and not for every unit does economc growth, birth controle, digitalisation etc. work or is even wanted

    • What is good for us is good for them is not working!

• Also from my point of view the word “devlopment” creates same assumptions eventhough it should and is way mor than this; human rights teckeling wellbeing as well as securing of environment

• So maybe it is more the wording same with EZ und EH or change in focus because normally EZ shouldn’t be at economic growth per se it should be about crreating a world that ensure good living for everybody, so the focus is more on the social dimension

• Social change is for me personally not the best discription as it is misguiding from the wording. If one has no knowledge about the concept, it is easily misinterpreted as the need for changing the society or more precisely that the society is wrong.

All core assumptions of growth models and neoliberal policies rest on the average economic men

• ever-increasing output and material wealth is considered as the “good life”

• capitalism; capital formation and accumulation (inequalities in the income distribution)

• Assumption of a trickle-down effect; leading phrase since the capitalism was born in America - elections campagnes of the republicans with strong support from the capitalist such as rockafeller

• focus on market activities and output and no other dimensions HDI vs GDP

  • GDP=well-being

• No limits for human needs, materialism makes happy

• labour force only needs a working labour market and is happy with a wage above the euqilibirum wage

• women are not included in this paradigm as there often work in informal jobs with low wages also their care work is not understood as “productive work”

• Redefining “economc development as a process of economic and social transformation for ensuring social provisioning and the betterment of human well-being

• Including the provision of care and equally shared responsibilities

• Addressing future gernations and committing to sustainable production, consumption and allocation of goods