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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age
of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of
Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we
had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we
were all going direct the other way.
– Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Development Theory and Practice in a
Changing World

Taking a critical and historical view, this text explores the theory and changing practice of
international development. It provides an overview of how the field has evolved and the
concrete impacts of this on the ground on the lives of people in the Global South.
Development Theory and Practice in a Changing World covers the major theories of development,
such as modernisation and dependency, in addition to anti-development theories such as
post-modernism and decoloniality. It examines the changing nature of immanent (structural)
conditions of development in addition to the main attempts to steer them (imminent
development). The book suggests that the era of development as a hegemonic idea and
practice may be coming to an end, at the same time as it appears to have achieved its apogee
in the Sustainable Development Goals as a result of the rise of ultra-nationalism around the
world, the increasing importance of securitisation and the existential threat posed by climate
change. Whether development can or should survive as a concept is interrogated in the book.
This book offers a fresh and updated take on the past 60 years of development and is
essential reading for advanced undergraduate students in areas of development, geography,
international studies, political science, economics and sociology.

Pádraig Carmody is Associate Professor in Geography, Head of Department, Fellow and

director of the Masters in Development Practice at Trinity College Dublin and Senior
Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg. His research centres on the political
economy of globalisation and economic restructuring in Southern and Eastern Africa. He
has published in a variety of journals, such as Economic Geography, World Development and
Political Geography, amongst others. He has published seven books. The second edition of his
New Scramble for Africa has recently been published. He sits of the boards of the Journal of the
Tanzanian Geographical Society, African Geographical Review, Political Geography and Geoforum,
where he was previously editor-in-chief. He is currently an associate editor of the journal
Transnational Corporations, published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development.
Development Theory
and Practice in a
Changing World

Pádraig Carmody
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Pádraig Carmody
The right of Pádraig Carmody to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copy-
right, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-55177-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-55178-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-14776-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
 Contents

List of illustrations xi
Acknowledgements xiii
List of abbreviations xv

Introduction 1
Globalisation and development 6
Structure of the book 9
References 16

1 The idea of development and modernisation 19

The origins of development 21
Modernisation theory 23
Further reading 27
References 27

2 Early critiques: dependency, world systems and alternative

theories of development 29
Structuralist economics 29
Dependency and world systems theory 35
Neo-Marxist theory and imperialism 35
The neo-imperial imperative 38
Socialist development? 40
Case study: African socialism in Tanzania 42
Case study: “socialism” and reform in Vietnam 44
Further reading 46
References 47
Contents

3 The neoliberal revolution in development: participation, power and poverty 49

The genesis of neoliberalism 49
The theory and roll-out of neoliberalism 51
The roll-out of neoliberalism in the Global South 54
The international financial institutions 56
State power and neoliberalism 58
Further reading 63
References 63

4 Impacts of neoliberalism and the revival of modernisation? 67

Impacts of neoliberalism 69
Post-neoliberalism and the return of modernisation? 69
Celebratisation of development: normalising neoliberalism
or pragmatic power? 75
The SDGs – socialising neoliberalism or global partnership
for development? 77
Neoliberalism, gender and development 80
Further reading 82
References 82

5 The role of the state: “developmental states”, geopolitics,

industrialisation and security 87
States 87
States and development 88
Rethinking the state’s role in development: “overdeveloped” and
“neoliberal” views 89
State failure, violence and underdevelopment 90
Developmental and catalytic states 91
Globalisation: the rise or retreat of the state in development? 93
Geopolitics and developmental states 95
What makes a state developmental? 98
Developmental states in Africa? 99
The development policy challenge of industrialisation 101
Industrial systems as assemblage and the role of the state 103
Further reading 107
References 107

6 Deconstructing development: post-modernism and decoloniality 113

(Post)modernity 113
Post-development 115
Post-post-development? 120

viii
 Contents

Living post-development? Zapatismo and buen vivir 121

Post-colonialism and decoloniality 125
Further reading 128
References 128

7 Aid, development and South–South cooperation? 131

Dead aid? 131
Aid conditionality and common pooling 133
Randomised controlled trials 135
Microfinance 136
South–South cooperation 138
BRICS “cooperation” and developmental states in Africa? 140
Nature of the BRICS 140
Scale and drivers of BRICS engagement 141
Impacts of BRICS engagement 143
Building BRICS in Africa? 144
The future of Africa and the BRICS 149
Further reading 150
References 150

8 ICT4D: Information technology for development? 155

ICT4D 155
ICT connection = development? 156
Impacts of mobile phones on livelihoods: a digital provide? 158
Development and e-business 161
Case study: labour conditions in global factories 163
Mobile application (app) development 164
E-waste and Internet scamming 165
Gender and e-business 166
The virtual economy 167
The rise of the ‘sharing economy’: virtual capital 167
Transformative technologies? 169
Further reading 170
References 171

9 “The resource curse”: land, wealth and politics 175

Economic channels of the resource curse 175
Socio-political channels 178
(Geo)political channels 180
Matrix governance, ideology and the resource curse 182
Materiality, lootability and “resource conflicts” 183

ix
Contents

Transcending the resource curse? 184

Further reading 187
References 187

10 Urbanisation and development: generative cities or slumification? 191

What is a city? The urban and development 191
Planetary urbanisation 194
Neoliberalism and globalisation of cities in the Global South 195
“Planning” and prefix urbanism in the Global South:
smart, eco and other varieties 196
The new urban agenda and generative urbanism? 200
Further reading 201
References 202

11 Rural development and climate: crisis and transcendence? 205

The climate crisis 205
Reducing of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation
or carbon colonialism? 208
Water scarcity 211
Feeding and farming for the future sustainably? 213
A green revolution? 214
Other approaches to raising small-farmer income:
fair trade and land titling 215
Further reading 216
References 216

12 Getting to or after development? 221

Financing international development and the reconfiguration
of global geopolitics 222
A post-Western world after development? 223
Prospects for industrial development: escaping the matrix? 224
The future or end of development? 227
References 230

Index 233

x
 Illustrations

Figures
0.1 Life expectancy at birth 3
0.2 The “Blaster” flamethrower system 5
0.3 Street scene in Hillbrow, Johannesburg 5
2.1 Primary prices relative to manufactured exports 32
2.2 Spinning machines 33
2.3 Tanzanian and Vietnamese gross domestic product
in US dollars 45
5.1 Norton Rose Fulbright South Africa building, Sandton, Johannesburg 99
5.2 High-end housing in Accra, Ghana 100
5.3 Heuristic of elements of a successful industrial system 104
9.1 Kizomba: a floating, production, storage and
offloading platform 177
10.1 Cable car system in Medellin, Colombia 198
10.2 Shenzhen, China 201

Map
4.1 The Millennium Villages in Africa 73
 Acknowledgements

This book has been a number of years in the making. I would like to thank Tom
Perreault of Syracuse University for suggesting to Routledge that I might be a good
person to write it and Andrew Mould for commissioning it. Thanks also to the referees
and Andrew Brooks for their detailed comments on the manuscript, which substan-
tially improved it, and President Michael D. Higgins for his endorsement and encour-
agement of my work. Egle Zigaite’s help was invaluable in getting the project through
to completion, as was Kate Fornadel’s and the copy editor at Apex CoVantage. Parts
of chapters draw on previously published work on “States and Development” in The
International Encyclopaedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology, D.
Richardson, N. Castree, M. Goodchild, A. Kobayashi, W. Liu, and R. Marston (eds.)
(London, Wiley Blackwell, 2017); “Matrix Governance and Imperialism” in J. Agnew
and M. Coleman (eds.), Handbook on the Geographies of Power (London, Edward Elgar,
2018); “Assembling Effective Industrial Policy in Africa: An Agenda for Action”, Review
of African Political Economy, 44(152), 2017, 336–345; “Building BRICS in Africa?”,
Handbook of BRICS and Emerging Economies, P. B. Anand, F. Comim, S. Fennell and J.
Weiss (eds.) (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2019); and book reviews
for The Irish Times and the International Development Planning Review. A section of Chap-
ter 10 also draws on P. Carmody and F. Owusu, “Neoliberalism Urbanization and
Change in Africa: The Political Economy of Heterotopias”, Journal of African Develop-
ment, 18(1), 2016, 61–73, and I am grateful to Francis (Owusu) for letting me reuse
that here. I would like to thank the referees, John Agnew, Mat Coleman, P. B. Anand
and Jim Murphy for their comments on one or other of those and the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences of the United States for permission to reproduce the map
of the Millennium Villages. I also thank my son, Daire, for producing Figure 5.1, Ian
Yeboah for permission to use a photo (Figure 5.2) from Accra, Sean McCabe for help-
ing with some of the formatting, Howard Stein for statistical advice, the production
staff at Routledge and Fiona for her support throughout the process.
 Abbreviations

B2B business-to-business
BPO Business Process Outsourcing
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa
CIA Central Intelligence Agency (of the United States)
CIVET Colombia, Indonesia,Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey
CNN Cable News Network
DAC Development Assistance Committee (of the OECD)
DfID Department for International Development (of the United Kingdom)
DRC Democratic Republic of Congo
ECLAC Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
EPRDF Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front
ESAP Extreme Suffering of African People
EU European Union
FCCC Framework Convention on Climate Change (of the United Nations)
FDI foreign direct investment
G7 Group of Seven
G8 Group of Eight
GA General Assembly (of the United Nations)
GaWC global and world cities
GDP gross domestic product
GPN global production network
GVCs global value chains
HIV/AIDS human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
ICT information and communication technology
ICT4D information and communication technology for development
IMF International Monetary Fund
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (of the United Nations)
ISI import substitution industrialisation
MDGs Millennium Development Goals (of the United Nations)
MINT Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey
Abbreviations

MVP Millennium Village Project

MVs Millennium Villages
NAFC North Atlantic Financial Crisis
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NGO non-governmental organisation
NICs newly industrialised countries
NUA New Urban Agenda
ODA overseas development assistance
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
OWG open working group
PRSPs Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
RCTs randomised controlled trials
REDD Reduction of Emissions through Deforestation and Forest Degradation
RUF Revolutionary United Front
SAP structural adjustment programmes (of the World Bank and IMF)
SDGs Sustainable Development Goals (of the United Nations)
SEZ special economic zone
SOEs state-owned enterprises
STRASA Stress-Tolerant Rice for Africa and South Asia
TNCs transnational corporations
TV television
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
US United States of America
WHO World Health Organization (of the United Nations)
WTO World Trade Organization

xvi
 Introduction

A recent report by the charity Oxfam revealed that the world’s richest 42 people shared
as much combined wealth as the bottom half of humanity – some 3.7 billion people
(Elliot 2018). The 200 biggest transnational corporations (TNCs) globally control the
equivalent of nearly a third of the world economy (Weis 2007), while the top 2,000
companies produce about half of the global economic output and are also mostly con-
trolled by rich “white” men. If there is an average of ten people on the boards of each
of these, then 20,000 people in the world exercise decisive control over global wealth
creation (Harman 2008 cited in Selwyn 2014).
Of the 42 richest people in the world in 2015, 33 were of European extraction
(“white”) and only 3 were women, all of whom are also white (calculated from Forbes
2015). These (mostly) men enjoy lives of unparalleled power, prestige and privilege.
For example, it is reported that in Bill Gates’ mansion (the richest person in the world
in 2017) the lights and music are programmed to adjust depending on who is in the
room. In some cases daily movements in wealth can be eyewatering. For example, the
Forbes website now shows the largest variations in wealth for some of the world’s
wealthiest people on a day-to-day basis. On 10 October 2017 Hui Ka Yan had added
US$717 million dollars to his wealth from the previous day, whereas Mukesh Ambani
had lost US$729 million, presumably as a result of movement in stock prices. At the
same time there are hundreds of millions of people around the world who live in
extreme poverty – lacking sufficient food, adequate shelter, clean water and other basic
human rights.
While the “billionaire class”, as 2016 United States (US) presidential candidate Ber-
nie Sanders called them, have seen massive increases in their wealth in recent decades,
from 2010 to 2015 the bottom half of humanity saw a decline in their wealth of
US$1 trillion (Hardoon et al. 2016 cited in Selwyn 2017). The average income in the
world’s 20 richest countries is 37 times higher than that in the 20 poorest – a gap that
doubled in the space of four recent decades (Wainwright 2008).
The scale of global inequality is vast, repugnant and politically destabilising. For
example, the “positive” relationship or correlations between poverty and conflict has
been extensively written about (see Collier 2007). Some recent estimates suggest,
Introduction

however, that inequality between individuals around the world is decreasing, on aver-
age, with the rise of “emerging economies” such as China. However, these averages
hide often widening inequalities within countries and between emerging economies
and the least developed ones, for example. Also whether aggregate inequality is reduc-
ing is disputed by some who argue that the “Mathew effect” – “to he who has shall
be given” – prevails in the global political economy (Wade 2004), or to put it another
way, “money makes money” and consequently “the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer”.
Members of the global political and economic elite, such as former president of the
United States, Barack Obama, or Bill Gates argue, that this is the best time in history to
be born, given massive progress globally in reducing child mortality, for example, with
the number of children dying each year having fallen by more than half from 1990
to 2015, although still at a rate of 16,000 a day, mostly of easily preventable diseases.
There has indeed been progress in terms of many social indicators across world regions,
although there are disputes as to how these are measured. For example, while many
estimates show the number of malnourished people in the world decreasing in recent
decades, for those undertaking “intense” physical labour as defined by the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations “the numbers suffering from hunger
increased from around 2.25 billion in the early 1990s to approximately 2.5 billion in
2012” (Selwyn 2017, 5). There has, however, been indisputable progress in improving
life expectancy around the world, as Figure 0.1 shows, for the world as a whole and
select world regions.
As the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, chaired by Jeffrey Sachs for
the World Health Organization, argued in 2001, relatively modest social investments
in public health, for example, can have big social and economic pay-offs. However,
the discourses of the global elite and other more academic and optimistic accounts of
global development, such as Radelet (2015) and Spence (2011), don’t take into account
that in terms of lived experience there is no such thing as a “global scale”. Even if we
have to travel for work, as many economic refugees making the crossing from North
Africa to Europe need to, we live out our lives in particular places or sets of places and,
as intimated earlier, socio-economic conditions and life experiences differ vastly across
and within world regions and cities. Consider the massive differences in average life
expectancy globally – a reflection of massive global inequality. This is also reflected at
local scales.
By way of example, anyone who has travelled to Johannesburg in South Africa, the
country and region’s commercial capital, cannot but be struck by the glaring inequal-
ity in that city – the highest wealth disparity between the rich and the poor of any in
Africa – feeding into other social issues such as crime. Income inequality is measured
by something called the Gini coefficient. If the Gini coefficient is 1, one person would
own everything in the society or consume all the income. If it is at 0, then everyone in
the society has the same level of wealth or income. Sometimes the Gini coefficient is
set out of 100 instead of 1 but the principle is the same.
Social democratic states with good welfare provision tend to have relatively low Gini
coefficients. For example, in terms of income Denmark has a Gini coefficient of 0.25
(World Bank 2017). However, it is far from an equal society, as the richest 10 per cent

2
 40
45
50
55
60
65
70
75
80
85

1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
Arab World

1970
FIGURE 0.1 Life expectancy at birth

1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
East Asia & Pacific

1979
1980
1981
World 1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989

High income
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001

Latin America & Caribbean

2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010

Sub-Saharan Africa
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
Introduction

of the population have more than five times more income than the poorest 10 per cent
(The Local 2015). In Johannesburg the Gini income coefficient is 0.7, and income and
wealth are still highly racialised and largely in the hands of people of European descent,
given the history of institutionalised racial segregation in that country known as apart-
heid. In the US the three richest people (Bill Gates,Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos) own
more wealth than the bottom half of the population and in terms of asset ownership,
not income, the Gini in the US is over 0.8, a level which is historically associated with
political instability, or in the case of the US globalisation backlash, with the election of
Donald Trump as president in 2016.
On one visit to Johannesburg when I was giving a talk to a group of ambassadors,
I was told the Aston Martin dealership across the road was one of the busiest in the
world. There was also a McLaren “supercar” dealership nearby (www.johannesburg.
mclaren.com), where the cars sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This micro-
geography is also replicated in Cape Town, where McLaren and Aston Martin dealer-
ships are side by side in the exclusive Victoria and Alfred waterfront area. Quite why
anyone would want to own a luxury car which might make them a target of unwanted
attention is curious. However, they are positional goods demonstrating success. While
in South Africa I heard a story of a rich “black”1 South African who said it was his
duty to display wealth, through luxury car ownership, to show others it could be done.
President Mbeki had previously criticised the country in 2006 for pursuing “personal
enrichment at all costs, and the most theatrical and striking public display of that
wealth” (cited in Posel, 158 in Death 2016, 127).
In the late 1990s some luxury marque owners in South Africa fitted flamethrowers
under their cars to “deter” smash and grabs or carjackers (Figure 0.2). While these
devices are relatively rare and not reflective of everyday life in Johannesburg, which
functions much the same as in any other major city (Figure 0.3), they do serve as a
metaphor, which captures something about the nature of social relations under the
“free market” or neoliberalism. There are also of course important international social
relations of cooperation, but competition is a hallmark of the current international
system. As Yash Tandon (2015) notes, “trade is war”.
The exclusion of much of the world’s population from the benefits of the current
globalised capitalist economic system (those outside the car), despite the fact that much
of the wealth of those inside the car is generated by them, represents a form of silent,
every day or structural violence (Galtung 1969), which is implicated in the creation of
violent conflict, although those “inside the car” also inflict substantial direct violence in
other parts of the world – think of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the US and Britain.
We might think of those “inside the car”2 as the “golden billion” (North 2016) living
in the rich countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop-
ment, headquartered in Paris, and those in the global middle class in other parts of the
world, although how this might be defined is much disputed, even if they are meant to
be a major driver of economic growth in developing countries. The photo is deliber-
ately non-representative and could be argued to be sensationalist, as the vast majority of
social interactions in South Africa and elsewhere around the world are not, or at least
not directly, violent. However, it is only used as a metaphor to enable us to think through
relations of power, different types of violence and how they operate at different scales.

4
FIGURE 0.2 The “Blaster” flamethrower system

FIGURE 0.3 Street scene in Hillbrow, Johannesburg

Introduction

While South Africa is often cited as an example where First and Third Worlds come
into contact, the global system often spatially separates wealth from poverty, thereby
reducing direct conflict but contributing to structural violence and exclusion. While
many of the billionaires on the lists of the world’s richest people, such as those pro-
duced by Forbes (www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:static), made their money
through owning high-tech companies, often in the United States, and are physically
and socially removed from other parts of the world where there is widespread poverty,
is there a relationship or relationships between their very different living conditions
and, if so, what are these? One way to think through these issues is with the idea of
globalisation.

Globalisation and development

Globalisation has probably been the most written about phenomenon in the social
sciences over the last several decades. There are many definitions as to what consti-
tutes globalisation; however, at a basic level, the phenomenon refers to the increased
interconnectedness between places, through flows of goods, people or information,
for example. While some people argue that globalisation is smoothing out differences
between places (cf. Ohmae 1990; Friedman 2007), this is very far from being the case, as
the global political economy is characterised by combined and uneven development –
that is what happens in one place affects others, producing drastically different and
shocking outcomes (Wilber 1973). In fact, globalisation could not take place if every-
where was the same (whatever that might mean in practice), as it is differences between
places, such as labour costs, which drive the flows of globalisation, such as foreign
investment (Yeung 2002).
Very few things take place at a “global” level in the sense that they affect all places
on earth. There are some examples where this is the case, such as climate change or
the spread of market-based economies around almost the entire world, with a few
exceptions such as North Korea or, to some extent, Cuba. However, other processes
happen in particular places or sets of places that are linked up through flows of various
types. A t-shirt may link up cotton growers in West Africa with “sweatshop” workers in
China and high-income consumers in North America (see Rivoli 2009; Brooks 2015).
If the t-shirt is then donated to charity, it may move to a country in Africa, and when
sold in a second-hand market it takes on a new “life”. A simple commodity such as
a t-shirt can then link up many different places, but not everywhere, so some would
argue that this represents a form of “translocalisation” (Appadurai 1996) – linking up
specific places around the world, rather than globalisation. Although it could also be
argued it is a form of globalisation in that it links up different world regions.
Given the highly interconnected nature of the global economy, the types of processes
described earlier are also what social scientists call recursive.That is one flow can set off
another. The money that is used to pay for a t-shirt from China can be spent buying
things from other parts of the world or invested in another country. That, in turn, sets
off other countless series of flows, feeding off and generating each other. However,
these flows may also generate resistances and backlash and undercut themselves, as was

6
 Introduction

demonstrated during the North Atlantic Financial Crisis (NAFC) of the late 2000s,
generating periods of deglobalisation, after which global trade contracted. Some argue
that in order to reverse the environmentally and socially destructive effects of transna-
tional capitalism, we need to move towards more purposive, planned and wide-scale
deglobalisation (Bello 2013).
Writing in the 1970s Waldo Tobler developed his first law of geography, which
stated that “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related
than distant things” (Tobler 1970, 88). However, globalisation has complicated this. For
example, there may be more interactions between New York City and other “global”
cities, such as London, than with economically depressed parts of upstate New York,
for example (Sassen 1991). The “fabulous” wealth of internet billionaires, such as Jack
Ma, who founded the Chinese online retailer Alibaba, is partly built on, and facilitated
by, electronic devices which contain the mineral coltan, much of which has been
extracted in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) under highly exploitative
labour conditions (Nest et al. 2006). Thus, the “commodity chains” through which
much global wealth is produced often impose binding constraints on those who pro-
duce value in them, but allow for wealth and freedom for those who plan and control
them (Hartwick 1998). The idea behind a commodity chain is that there are different
nodes or links in the chain. So, for example, cocoa grown in a locality in Ghana might
be one node. Then it is transported to a factory where it is processed, and perhaps made
into chocolate, before finally ending up in a shop. So there are different nodes in the
chain linked together through transport and logistics.
Despite the inequalities which this globalised system of production produces, it
continues to function and further embed and deepen through what the well-known
geographer David Harvey (1999) calls “spatial fixes”, which disproportionately displace
socio-economic and environmental problems to world regions, often in the Global
South, with the least power and which had the least role in producing them. For
example, Africa is likely to be the continent most adversely affected by global climate
change as such a high proportion of the continent’s population is dependent on rain-
fed agriculture, yet is has produced, in relative terms, very little of the greenhouse gas
emissions which are driving this (Toulmin 2009).
Karl Marx famously critiqued what he called commodity fetishism – that is the idea
that money establishes equivalences between different types of products or seeming
relations between them, obscuring the way in which they are socially produced. The
wealth of Europe or the United States is partly built on the importation of cheap prod-
ucts, such as coffee, produced in other world regions with low wages.The reasons these
developed parts of the world are wealthy also relate to histories of slavery, colonialism
and dispossession. If those of us who live in Europe or North America had to pay more
for our coffee or mobile phones, we would be less well off. However, consumers in
rich countries don’t see these globalised exploitative labour and exchange relations,
unless they seek to educate themselves on them, but often only think about the quality
and price of the coffee they are buying or how they could spend their money differ-
ently (what economists describe as the opportunity cost of consumption – buying
something may preclude you from buying something else). Marx marvelled at the way
in which capitalism allowed commodities from around the world to be transported

7
Introduction

and consumed in distant places, but there are also risks associated with this, even for
high-income consumers: think of the intensifying impacts of climate change.
With increased globalisation even “societies” far away from where we live are inter-
connected with our lives through a variety of flows – in that sense we increasingly live
in a globalised market society. Increased interdependence was evident in 2017 when
UK supermarkets had to ration vegetables in response to the impacts of storms and
floods on harvesting in the Mediterranean (Dean 2017), perhaps partly the result of
global climate change. “With the UK never more than a few days away from a signif-
icant food shortage, UK consumers should also be encouraged over time to reduce
how often they eat meat” (Malcolm Bruce, Chair of UKs International Development
Committee quoted in Fullfact.org 2013), as its production is more resource and climate
intensive than growing crops.Thus, vulnerability not only affects peasant farmers in the
developing world, for example, although often with greater impact. Imports of beef or
soya from Brazil are implicated in deforestation and dispossession in the Amazon, which
also drives climate change in another example of the recursive flows noted earlier.
Whether people are rich or poor, subject to calamitous effects of climate change
or relatively insulated from them, depends on social relations, often of globalisation
(Buxton and Hayes 2015). As noted earlier, while globalisation is a recursive process, it
is also a contradictory one: that is, it tends to create counter-tendencies and what social
scientists call counter-movements. The great economic historian Karl Polanyi (1944)
talked of double movements towards marketisation and then a backlash against them –
such as the global climate justice movement, although this is very heterogeneous in
terms of ideological composition (Bond 2012), or the 2016 vote by the United King-
dom to exit the European Union. Sometimes these social movements which seek to
resist corporate globalisation, or what is sometimes called globalisation from above, are
peaceful and progressive. Think of the Occupy Movement around the world which
arose on the heels of the NAFC, sometimes mistakenly called the “global financial
crisis” of 2007–2008 even though some economies such as China continued to grow
strongly (Routledge 2017). This movement sought greater fairness in the distribution
of the world’s wealth, away from the so-called 1 per cent, who control most of it, as
it has become increasingly concentrated as profits tend to grow faster than economic
growth (Piketty 2014). In other cases, these social movements can be violent, nation-
alistic or exclusionary. Think of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq or the election of
Donald Trump in the United States, despite his anti-Muslim rhetoric and action in the
form of a travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries, for example. The rise
of Trump in the United States can, in part, be related to the impacts of the financial
crisis on the lives and livelihoods of American voters, in addition to other processes of
globalisation associated with the offshoring of manufacturing jobs by TNCs to China
and mechanisation and robotisation. Despite being the head of a major corporation,
Trump’s election rhetoric was anti-corporate in the sense that he critiqued offshoring
of production from the US as a practice. However, as president he sought to achieve
a new class compromise and reinvigorate the American economy through dramatic
reductions in the corporate tax rate. Trump is therefore not anti-corporate, but only
against some of their practices (at least rhetorically), even though his daughter Ivanka’s
clothing line is largely manufactured in Asia.

8
 Introduction

The world is undergoing major shifts and transformations as a result of the NAFC,
the growing role of technology in driving “economic development” and the impacts of
climate change. For example, it is estimated that nearly half of all jobs in the US could
be subject to automation in the next 20 years (Benedikt Frey and Osborne 2013), with
major implications for the rest of the world in terms of patterns of demand, for clothes,
for example, mostly produced now in Asia, with China alone producing over half of the
world’s total (Leonard 2008), although the European Union (EU) is still a significant
exporter. The global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015 by the
United Nations, are meant to provide a roadmap for humanity to navigate the global
challenges of the present and future, but will they survive the rise of populism, which
may be either left or right wing and draws its legitimacy through reference to “the
people”, in North America and Europe? What will the impacts of this conjuncture be
on the peoples of the Global South,3 and how can they have more influence in shaping
their destinies?

Structure of the book

Taking a critical and historical view, this book explores the theory and changing prac-
tice of international development. It provides an overview of how the field has evolved
and the concrete impacts of this on the lives of people in the Global South. It engages
the major theories of development, such as modernisation and dependency, in addition
to anti-development theories such as post-modernism and decoloniality. It also exam-
ines the changing nature of immanent (structural conditions) development, in addition
to the main attempts to steer them; what some call imminent development (Cowen
and Shenton 1996).
Some argue the era of development as a hegemonic or dominant idea and practice
may be coming to an end, at the same time as it appears to have achieved its apogee or
height in the SDGs. It may be coming to an end as a result of the rise of ultra-nationalism
around the world from India to the US; the increasing importance of securitisation,
where powerful actors try to militarise and insulate their lifestyles against those who
are excluded; and the existential threat posed by climate change.Whether development
will, can or should survive as a concept is also addressed in the conclusion.
Chapter 1 traces the origins of the idea of development in the late colonial period
and its emergence as a – if not the – defining ideology of international relations in the
post–World War II period. It adopts a historical, but distinctive, approach by exam-
ining the nature of the ideology of development, with a particular focus on mod-
ernisation theory, and situating it as a theory of international relations, as opposed to
a depoliticised, economistic and supposedly value-neutral concept. Part of its utility
was its seemingly innocuous nature. Who could be against development and mod-
ernisation? Even though the theory of modernisation has been largely discredited
theoretically, its underlying premises continue to inform mainstream development
practice. It consequently represents a form of “ghost geopolitics” and economics dat-
ing from another era but continuing to influence current policies, views, education
and other spheres.

9
Introduction

The “failure”4 of much of the “developing world” to modernise and “catch up” with
industrial countries in the post-war period led to a variety of alternative approaches
to global development. These included the Prebisch-Singer thesis around the generally
declining prices for primary commodities and raw materials, Latin American structur-
alist economics and dependency and Neo-Marxist approaches. Structuralist economics
differs from conventional economics, sometimes called monoeconomics, which holds
that the same economic laws operate globally. Rather, structuralist economics asserts
that it is important to examine the nature of the global economy and the particular
structures of the economy being examined, such as whether or not it is dependent
on primary commodity exports or not, in designing appropriate policies. Chapter 2
reviews the nature, content and origins of these theories, in addition to interrogating
the practice of alternative development based on them through brief case studies of the
formerly “socialist” countries of Tanzania and Vietnam and their subsequent reforms.
The coming to power of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ron-
ald Reagan in the United States fundamentally changed the context of international
development. Their neoliberal, or free market, ideology coincided with a period of
global economic crisis associated with falling rates of profit in the core countries, the
second oil shock and the Third World debt crisis. Chapters 3 and 4 explore the theory
behind, and implementation of, neoliberalism as it relates to international development.
Paradoxically in the same way as under the reign of Queen Victoria in Britain women
in the colonies in Africa and elsewhere experienced systematic disempowerment, the
neoliberal revolution, led by Thatcher, arguably had a similar impact across much of
the developing world. However, at the same time a new school of gender and develop-
ment was also emergent within the field, which examined the ways in which gender is
socially constructed, with important developmental impacts. The relationship between
gender and neoliberalism is also explored in these chapters.
Neoliberalism, much like modernisation theory, has been largely discredited in
much of the world, partly as a result of the NAFC. The economic theory behind it
makes a host of unrealistic and unworkable assumptions, such as that all economic
actors have full (perfect) information – that is, that they are all knowing, in the way that
a God might be – and that there is no unemployment (Sheppard 2016). However, it has
successfully, at least in terms of its own perpetuation, reinvented itself in the developing
world through the adoption and co-optation of theories of community participation
(Cooke and Kothari 2001), or what has sometimes been called “participatory poverty”.
Legitimating austerity and programmes of sometimes extreme economic restructuring
through recourse to the idea of community has been quite successful in disarming
resistance to neoliberalism.
The reproduction of neoliberalism has also been aided by the deepening importance
of global value chains (GVCs), similar to the idea of commodity chains referenced
earlier, in trade, which are now “hard-wired” into the operation of the global econ-
omy and consequently represent a substantial part of its infrastructure. However, global
climate change or restructuring, the vote by the UK to leave the European Union
(Brexit) and Trumpism may represent an inflection point in international development,
similar to the Reagan/Thatcher disjuncture, as even more economic protectionist pol-
icies are being adopted by the Trump administration in particular. In a sense this is

10
 Introduction

reflective of a global power struggle for dominance with China – a “smokeless” war
for the Global North, or who will be the dominant power in the twenty-first century.
“Free trade”, where there are meant to be minimal barriers to trade in terms of
border taxes/tariffs, has arguably been more honoured in the breach by the countries
of the Global North for products coming from the Global South through policies such
as tariff escalation, where raw material imports are subject to minimal import taxes, but
these then increase quickly the more processed the goods are. Countries in the Global
North want to protect their privileged positions in the global political economy. More
protectionist policies in (parts of) the Global North which have been adopted in recent
years may speed the adoption of the technologies of the so-called fourth industrial
revolution, such as robotisation, which may preclude the need or push towards more
carbon-intensive GVCs to source cheap labour, where components and commodities
are transported around the world. More protectionist policies raise the costs of imports,
making it relatively more profitable to produce in the home market, at least temporar-
ily. However, tariffs on imported raw materials and intermediate goods, such as steel,
may decrease profits for their end users. For example, recently enacted steel tariffs in
the US make auto manufacturers there less profitable, while raising profits for domestic
steel producers. It is the balance between winners and losers which determines their
developmental impacts.
Dependency theory, which argues that the wealth of the Global North is partly built
on the exploitation of the Global South, producing poverty there, is a heterodox or
non-mainstream approach largely developed in and in relation to Latin America, and
also Africa, in the 1960s and 1970s (see for example Cardoso and Faletto 1979; Rodney
1973). However, both dependency and neoliberal approaches came under sustained
criticism from the so-called Neo-Weberian school in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Max Weber was a famous German sociologist who argued for the importance of
bureaucratic rationality in the economic rise of Western Europe, along with other,
more dubious factors such as the “Protestant work ethic”. Neo-Weberian approaches
showed how “autonomous” states in East Asia were able to escape underdevelopment
through the adoption of heterodox yet business- or capital-friendly policies. More
recent political economy work has analysed the development of the newly industri-
alised countries (NICs) in Asia from a geopolitical perspective, such as “systematic vul-
nerability theory”, which posits that states may be galvanised to diversify and develop
their economies by a security threat (Doner et al. 2005). Furthermore, the Neo-
Weberian school has come under criticism from those who emphasise the importance
of post-war American administration in Asia in the genesis of “developmental states”
(Glassman and Choi 2014). Chapter 5 interrogates the theory of the “developmental
state” and contrasts it with more geopolitically informed theories. Whether develop-
mental states exist currently in the “developing world” is explored through a case study
of Ethiopia.
Beginning in the late 1980s some scholars began to question the development enter-
prise in its entirety, viewing it as a “Trojan horse” for the assertion of Western interests
in the Third World, drawing on post-modernist theory. The term “Third World” is a
controversial one, which some people feel is politically incorrect or insulting to these
countries, as it is seen to imply a hierarchy where First World is best and Third worst.

11
Introduction

However, there a number of things to remember. First the term was initially a geopo-
litical one for those countries that were neither aligned with the capitalist First World
or socialist Second World during the Cold War. Second, the term captures something
of the massive power inequality between different parts of the world, as I was taught
while I was a graduate student in the US.
Post-modernism questions the ontological (what is real) assumptions of modernism
and rationalism that claim there is only one correct way to view the world – through
the lens of science. More recently, this has been extended through the idea of decolo-
niality. Chapter 6 explores the origins, arguments and foundations of post-development
theories and examines, through case studies of the Zapatistas in Mexico and related
ideas around buen vivir in Latin America, their application in practice. The term Latin
refers to the dominance of the Spanish and Portuguese languages in that part of the
world, but some indigenous people dispute the name America, named for the Euro-
pean Amerigo Vespucci, and instead refer to North America as Turtle Island, for exam-
ple. The book then moves on in the next section to examine practices of development
in more detail.
The year 2015 marked the adoption of the SDGs globally, with 2016 being their
first year of operation. As noted earlier there are 17 of these “Global Goals”, which aim
to both eliminate poverty and achieve worldwide sustainability. These goals and their
predecessors – the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted in 2000 by the
UN – were meant to mark the beginning of a new era of globally cooperative devel-
opment. However, 2016 was also marked by the victory of the forces of globalisation
backlash, at least in the US, with the election of Donald Trump, and in the UK, with
the Brexit vote. In his inaugural presidential address Donald Trump announced that
his focus would be “America first”. These events will mark the international develop-
ment landscape into the future through practices of overseas development assistance
(ODA), for example. In the populist framing development aid is only justified when
it brings benefits to the donor (Jakupec 2018). When Trump met the Nigerian pres-
ident, Buhari, in Washington in 2018, he was at pains to note there were barriers to
US exports there and that Nigeria “owed” it to the US to reduce these, given the aid
disbursed to that country.
Chapter 7 explores the theory and practice of ODA. It interrogates the theory of
aid and anti-aid approaches. It also examines the nature of recent theories and practices
such as “randomised controlled trials” (RCTs), originally developed in medicine, and
their application and implications for ODA. South–South theories of development
cooperation are also explored, as is the celebratisation of development, where people
such as the Irish rock singer Bono play a highly visible role, celebrated by Fortune
(2016) magazine as one of the world’s greatest leaders for his campaigning work.
Humanity is increasingly told that we live in a global “informational economy”.
Some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral development institu-
tions also extensively promote the idea of information and communication technology
(ICT) as a major contributor to, and sometimes “silver bullet” for, international devel-
opment. Chapter 8 critically interrogates the ideas of information and communication
technology for development (ICT4D). It explores the ways in which these theories
have developed and evolved and the class interests behind them. The ways in which

12
 Introduction

ICTs may play a role in structural economic diversification or transformation is also

explored.
There is a long history to the idea of “African exceptionalism” in the social sciences.
In quantitative studies many economists have found a negative effect on economic
growth of being a country in Africa.They have even developed a term to express this –
the so-called “Africa dummy” (Englebert 2000). In economics a “dummy” is a term for
the unexplained variation in data when other factors are “controlled” for or the data
is standardised based on things such as level of education of the population. Englebert
explains this dummy by reference to the “arbitrary” nature of post-colonial states in
Africa, which relates to the history of African state formation, where European powers
largely divided the continent for colonisation by drawing lines on maps at the Berlin
and subsequent Brussels conferences.This explains why roughly a third of African bor-
ders follow lines of latitude and longitude.
Probably the most influential theory in the literature in relation to the exception-
alism of African development has been the theory of resource curse. While this theory
is sometimes validated or contested through so-called large N (number) quantitative
studies of dozens of countries, it is often regionalised to Africa and often with a par-
ticular focus on the Niger Delta in Nigeria, where that country’s oil is produced, with
devastating social and environmental effects. Chapter 9 explores the theory behind and
practice of the “resource curse”. It critically interrogates it through the lens of a trans-
national rather than a methodologically nationalist ontology. What does this mean? An
example of methodological nationalism would be to say that Nigeria is poor because
it is corrupt. However, this neglects the ways in which Nigeria as an entity and state
has been historically constructed through processes such as colonialism and globalised
resource extraction: that is, the way in which local and national resource curses are con-
structed through transnational networks of actors, or what are known as assemblages
(Siakwah 2017a). The location of this chapter may seem peculiar as this section of the
book deals with development practice; however, we can think of the resource curse as
a form of development practice.
Humanity in the twenty-first century is for the first time a primarily urban species.
What are the implications of the “urban era” for international development? Chap-
ter 10 examines the urban transition currently underway across the Global South
and its implications for living standards, lifestyles and economic diversification. It also
examines older theories, such as the dual economy and parasitic versus generative
urbanism debate. It further examines new urban theories, such as those which focus
on slumification and planetary urbanisation, to explore the evolution of urbanism in
the Global South.
Some theorists have claimed that climate change will undo any development gains
which have been accomplished in recent decades and potentially put them into reverse.
This may be speeded by the administration of Donald Trump, after he announced he
was taking the US out of the United Nations’ climate change agreement signed in Paris
in 2015. His threats to dramatically cut back American ODA will also potentially affect
projects to mitigate (offset) or adapt to the effects of climate change. The election of
Trump also signals a new era of strengthened international power politics, where force
decides, and a potential reduction in the importance of development as both a discourse

13
Introduction

of international relations and as a practice, although there are also counter-tendencies as

will be discussed. There are numerous other theories and ideologies circulating which
serve as counterpoints to these developments, such as ideas around green growth, or
the “Beijing Consensus” (Ramo 2004; Halper 2010), which envisages a more active
role for the state in guiding the development project and process. This idea plays off
of, and serves as counter-point to, the idea of the “Washington Consensus” of free-
market economic reforms developed by the economist John Williamson. Some, how-
ever, dispute the idea that a Beijing Consensus exists in anything like the same way,
as the Chinese government is not overtly prescriptive about the economic policies
of its partner countries, and its own economic policies have been pragmatic rather
than ideological. Nonetheless, some have argued that as the United States adopts a
more internationally isolationist stance, this has opened up space for China to become
the de facto leading state in the world. China has also successfully transitioned from
being a predominantly agrarian society 40 years ago, to a largely urban-industrial one
now. Chapter 11 examines the prospects for rural development in the changed global
geopolitical and environmental contexts, which are still influenced by the mega- or
meta-trends of financialisation and informationalisation. This is then followed by a
short concluding chapter.
This book necessarily reflects my own training and background. In a field or dis-
cursive space as vast as international development, it is only possible to cover a small
fraction of the available theory and materials. In a book such as this it is not possible to
cover all of the potentially important topics in the depth they deserve. For example, the
HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome)
pandemic in parts of Eastern and Southern Africa has not been dealt with, even though
this has led to the death of millions of people. This has had very serious human and
development consequences in the most severely affected countries and for particular
social groups. Multiple books have been written just about this; however, space con-
straints prohibit an investigation of its impacts here. In fact, the whole area of health
and development is a massive one but will only be touched on in a few different places
during the course of the book. Likewise, there are many other issues that might be
worthy of separate chapters, such as gender or education. Gender is dealt with in a
number of chapters as a cross-cutting theme, but other topics such as education have
been largely omitted, again for reasons of space. Rather, the goal here has been to
engage selectively with some/many of the key issues in international development
and think about prospects for the future. However, I hope the book provides a useful
introduction to some of the main concepts and debates.
My own training is as a critical political economist, with a regional specialisation
in Africa, and this is also reflected in the content and approach of the book, although
I do also draw on examples from other world regions where appropriate. While most
people living in poverty in the world live in Asia, there is a more analytical reason for
the focus on Africa.The continent is the poorest in the world, and as the Irish president
Michael D. Higgins (2018) notes, it is the crucible where many of the world’s greatest
challenges, such as climate change and diminishing natural resources, will be played out
in the coming century. According to the noted Africa scholar Achille Mbembe (2016)
global capitalism is being shaped by events taking place in Africa currently.

14
 Introduction

My disciplinary background is as a geographer, and this also affects the approach

taken. Geographers distinguish between what they call “site” characteristics, or the
internal features, and social relations of places and situation, which is how places are
positioned relative to or related to other places. More recent work has described what
is called “relational place making” – that is, what makes London the city it is, is largely
its relations with other parts of the world through flows of finance or people, for example.
This geographic way of thinking about the world is particularly applicable or use-
ful when thinking about international development. As will be described later, many
orthodox or common theories of development are “internalist” – that is, they ascribe
development outcomes based on internal site characteristics of places. An example
might be the claim that Africa is poor because it is corrupt or has poor governance.
However, externalist or more relational approaches would dispute such an understand-
ing by looking back at the history of European slavery and colonialism on the con-
tinent and how that has affected economies and patterns of governance and current
international relations there. Understanding how “site” characteristics have been cre-
ated by interactions with other places is an important insight when understanding
patterns of uneven development.
It is also worth making a short comment on the title of the book, which seeks to
cover both theories and practices of development. These are often seen as separate
fields, with theory being in the realm of the academic or perhaps policy think tanks
and government agencies and practice relating to the work of those “in country” or
in development organisation offices in other parts of the world. However, the division
between theory and practice is, at best, somewhat blurred, as there are intense inter-
actions and overlaps between the two. For example, theory informs practice (or what
social scientists sometimes call “praxis” – actions informed by theory) and practice also
informs theory. The developing-country debt crisis of the 1980s, discussed in more
detail later, led to major changes in which theories received traction in the interna-
tional development space in addition to changes to theories themselves. Thus, there is
no strict separation between theory and practice. For the sake of convenience, the first
part of the book is more theoretically focussed and the latter part emphasises practices
more, but the two bleed into each other for the reasons discussed earlier. This is a
deliberate choice which hopefully makes the reading more enjoyable and informative.
Given the focus on practices in the latter part of the book, the inclusion of a chapter
on the “resource curse” may seem anomalous, but it can be viewed as a practice of
development and is included here for that same reason as noted earlier.

Notes
1 Race is a largely colonial construct designating people by their skin colour.
2 This analogy has been made before by the ecologist Homer-Dixon, cited in the highly contro-
versial and sensationalist piece “The Coming Anarchy: How Scarcity, Crime, Overpopulation,
Tribalism, and Disease Are Rapidly Destroying The Social Fabric of Our Planet” (Kaplan 1994),
but does not imply acceptance of any of the arguments presented in that article.
3 The term Global South is a contentious and debated one. In broad terms it implies having a
post-colonial history, having substantial poverty rates and being “geographically South” – located

15
Introduction

in or close to the tropics and subtropics (Peter Dannenberg in conversation, July 2017). There are,
of course, exceptions, such as Singapore, which is a highly developed country, even if it does not
have any minimum wage across the economy.
4 Sometimes, however, policies succeed through failure. For example, the structural adjustment pro-
grammes foisted on many countries of the Global South by the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund were successful in opening markets for Western economies around the world,
even as they often had devastating economic and social effects in the countries in which they were
implemented (see for example Onimode 1989).

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Routledge, P. 2017. Space Invaders: Radical Geographies of Protest. Radical Geography. London, UK: Pluto Press.
Sassen, S. 1991. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton Uni-
versity Press.
Selwyn, B. 2014. The Global Development Crisis. Cambridge: Polity.
———. 2017. The Struggle for Development. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity.
Sheppard, E. 2016. Limits to Globalization: Disruptive Geographies of Capitalist Development. Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press.
Siakwah, P. 2017. “Are Natural Resource Windfalls a Blessing or a Curse in Democratic Settings?
Globalised Assemblages and the Problematic Impacts of Oil on Ghana’s Development.” Resources
Policy 52: 122–33.
Spence, M. 2011. The Next Convergence:The Future of Economic Growth in a Multi-Speed World. Crawley,
WA: UWA Publishing.
Tandon,Y. 2015. Trade Is War:The West’s War Against the World. New York and London: OR Books.
Tobler, W. 1970. “A Computer Movie Simulating Urban Growth in the Detroit Region.” Economic
Geography 46: 234–40.
Toulmin, C. 2009. Climate Change in Africa. London: Zed Books.
Wade, R. 2004. “On the Causes of Widening World Income Inequality, or Why the Matthews Effect
Prevails.” International Journal of Health Service 35 (4): 631–53.
Wainwright, J. 2008. Decolonizing Development: Colonial Power and the Maya. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Weis, A. 2007. The Global Food Economy:The Battle for the Future of Farming. London: Zed Books.
Wilber, K. (ed.) 1973. The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment. Swedish, SL: Random
House.
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SI.POV.GINI?view=map&year=2005.
Yeung, H.W.C. 2002. “The Limits to Globalization Theory: A Geographic Perspective on Global Eco-
nomic Change.” Economic Geography 78 (3): 285–305.

17
 The Idea of development and modernisation

opposition to, modernity. Indeed, as will be discussed in more detail later, it could be
argued that modernisation is now being increasingly driven by emerging powers in the
Global South (Gonzalez-Vicente 2017).
Modernisation theory has been and remains influential. Indeed, as will be discussed
later, we are arguably seeing a revival of some of its core ideas in current development
policies and practices. Its proponents saw it as having a humanitarian dimension – the
upliftment of humanity through technological, infrastructural and political development,
for example. In practice, however, modernisation theory as implemented through devel-
opment policy was infused with dramatically unequal power relations and a strong geo-
political impetus. This was to feed into later critiques, some of which I now turn to.

Further reading

Books
Apter, D. 1965. The Politics of Modernization. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Rostow, W.W. 1960. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.

Articles
Abumere, S.I. 1981. “The Geography of Modernisation: Some Unresolved Issues.” GeoJournal 5 (1):
67–76.
Huntingdon, S. 1971. “The Change to Change: Modernization, Development, Politics.” Comparative
Politics 3 (3): 283–322.
Klinghoffer, A. 1973. “Modernisation and Political Development in Africa.” The Journal of Modern
African Studies 11 (1): 1–19.

References
Amsden, A. 1989. Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Anyangwe, E. 2017. “Brand New Macron, Same Old Colonialism.” The Guardian. www.theguardian.
com/commentisfree/2017/jul/11/slur-africans-macron-radical-pretence-over.
Ba, D. 2007. Africans Still Seething Over Sarkozy Speech. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-africa-
sarkozy/africans-still-seething-over-sarkozy-speech-idUKL0513034620070905.
Chakrabarty, D. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ
and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Chang, H. 2008. Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat to Global Prosperity.
London: Random House Business.
Chipungu, S. 1992. “Accumulation from Within:The Boma Class and the Native Treasury in Colonial
Zambia.” In Guardians in Their Time: Experiences of Zambians Under Colonial Rule, 1890–1964, ed. S.
Chipungu. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cox, R.W. 1987. Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History. New York and
Guildford, Surrey: Columbia University Press.
Death, C. 2016. The Green State in Africa. New Haven and London:Yale University Press.
Derickson, K.D. 2015. “Urban Geography I: Locating Urban Theory in the ‘Urban Age’.” Progress in
Human Geography 39 (5): 647–57.

27
The Idea of development and modernisation

Drogus, C., and S. Orvis. 2012. Introducing Comparative Politics: Concepts and Cases in Context. 2nd ed.
Washington, D.C.: CQ; London: SAGE [distributor].
Engberg-Pedersen, L. 2002. “The Limitations of Political Space in Burkina Faso: Local Organizations,
Decentralization and Poverty Reduction.” In In the Name of the Poor: Contesting Political Space for
Poverty Reduction, eds. N. Webster and L. Engberg-Pedersen. London and New York: Zed Books;
New York: Distributed by Palgrave Macmillan.
Gonzalez-Vicente, R. 2017. “South – South Relations Under World Market Capitalism:The State and
the Elusive Promise of National Development in the China – Ecuador Resource-development
Nexus.” Review of International Political Economy 24 (5): 881–903.
Hall, D. 2013. Land. Cambridge: Polity.
Hobsbawm, E., and T. Ranger, (eds.) 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge and New York: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Huntingdon, S. 1971. “The Change to Change: Modernization, Development, Politics.” Comparative
Politics 3 (3): 283–322.
Khoo, S. 2013. “Sustainable Development of What: Contesting Global Development Concepts and
Measures.” In Methods of Sustainability Research in the Social Sciences, eds. F. Fahy and H. Rau. Thou-
sand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Korten, D. 1999. The Post-Corporate World: Life after Capitalism. San Francisco, CA [United Kingdom]:
Berrett-Koehler.
Lee, M. 2014. Africa’s World Trade: Informal Economies and Globalization from Below. London: Zed Books.
Lynch, G. 2011. I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press; Bristol: University Presses Marketing [distributor].
Mamdani, M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton,
NJ and Chichester: Princeton University Press.
Meredith, M. 2005. The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence. London: Free Press.
Myers, G. 2011. African Cities: Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice. London: Zed Books.
Myers, G. 2018. “The Africa Problem in Global Urban Theory: Reconceptualising Planetary Urban-
ization.” International Development Planning Review 10: 231–253.
Nally, D. 2011. Human Encumbrances: Political Violence and the Great Irish Famine. Notre Dame, IN: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press.
Pempel, T.J. 1999. “The Developmental Regime in a Changing World.” In The Developmental State:
Ithaca, ed. M. Woo-Cummings. New York: Cornell University Press.
Pennington, B. 2005. Was Hinduism Invented: Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion.
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pierce, J., D.G. Martin, and J.T. Murphy. 2011. “Relational Place-Making: The Networked Politics of
Place.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36 (1): 54–70.
Radlet, S. 2015. The Great Surge:The Ascent of the Developing World. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Ranger,T. 1994. “The Tribalisation of Africa and the Retribalisation of Europe.” In St Antony’s Seminar
Series:Tribe, State, Nation. Oxford.
Rostow, W.W. 1960. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Selwyn, B. 2014. The Global Development Crisis. Cambridge: Polity.
Shubin,V. 2008. The Hot ‘Cold War’:The USSR in Southern Africa. London: Pluto.
Stuenkel, O. 2016. Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers Are Remaking Global Order. Cambridge:
Polity.
Truman, H. 1949. Inaugural Address. https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/50yr_archive/inagu-
ral20jan1949.htm
Williams, E. 1994. Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Wright, D. 2010. The World and a Very Small Place in Africa: A History of Globalization in Niumi, the Gam-
bia. 3rd edition. Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe.

28
Early critiques

How did such a dramatic divergence come about? According to Henley

(2015, 12) it was “state-led rural and agricultural development leading to higher
incomes for peasant farmers, has been central to South-East Asia’s success, and
I infer that its absence has been crucial to sub-Saharan Africa’s failure”. While
liberalisation of agricultural markets was important in Vietnam’s economic take-
off, it has also had an active industrial policy, including Five Year Plans (Alten-
burg 2011).
Despite widespread poverty and low wages in Africa, what are called “real product
wages” are often lower in parts of Asia, meaning that foreign investors often prefer to
locate there. Real product wage refers to the wage needed to produce one t-shirt, for
example. Higher levels of development mean workers are more skilled and use better
or more efficient technologies, keeping the real product wage down. Also, things like
poor infrastructure across much of Africa or power cuts affect this too.
Despite the NAFC, Vietnam’s garment exports grew at an annual average of
26 per cent between 2005 and 2010 (Newman et al. 2016). One of the ironies of
the recent Vietnamese development is that despite the country notionally being
socialist, as in China, authoritarian single-party regimes can repress or ban trade
unions and thereby keep wages low to attract foreign investors. Thus, “socialist”
states may actually offer the most conducive environment for private investors or
capitalists. That said, the scale and pace of economic development in Vietnam and
China has been rapid, although with substantial environmental and social costs.
More than 80 per cent of Vietnamese think life in their country is better than it was
40 years ago. In these cases, “socialism” laid the groundwork and framework for
rapid capitalist development – the reverse of what Marx envisaged.
Dependency theory inspired a variety of socialist development strategies around
the world, most of which failed to achieve their goals or collapsed under the weight
of their own dysfunctions and contradictions. However, has a shift towards the mar-
ket provided the answer to the problem or problematic of development? This is the
question we turn to in the next chapter.

Further reading

Books
Evans, P. 1979. Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil.
Princeton, NJ and Guildford: Princeton University Press.
Gray, H. 2018. Turbulence and Order in Economic Development: Institutions and Economic Transformation in
Tanzania and Vietnam. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Henley, D. 2015. Asia-Africa Development Divergence: A Question of Intent. London: Zed Books.
Rodney, W. 1973. How Europe Under-Developed Africa. Paris: Bogle-L’Ouverture.
Wilber, K. (ed.) 1973. The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment. Swedish, SL: Random
House.

46
 Early critiques

Articles
Cardoso, F.H. 1977. “The Consumption of Dependency Theory in the United States.” Latin American
Research Review 12 (3): 7–24.
Kiely, R. 2006.“US Hegemony and Globalisation:What Role for Theories of Imperialism?” Cambridge
Review of International Affairs 19 (2): 205–21.

Website
Velasco, A. 2002. “Dependency Theory.” Foreign Policy 133: 44–5, 48. https://search.proquest.com/
docview/822409171?pq-origsite=gscholar.

References
Abrahamsen, R. 2000. Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa. Lon-
don: Zed Books.
Aglietta, M., and D. Fernbach. 1979. A Theory of Capitalist Regulation:The US Experience. London: NLB.
Altenburg, T. 2011. “Industrial Policy in Developing Countries: Overview and Lessons from Seven
Country Cases.” http://edoc.vifapol.de/opus/volltexte/2011/3341/pdf/DP_4.2011.pdf.
Amin, A. (ed.) 1994. Post-Fordism: A Reader. London: Wiley.
Amin, S. 2016. Keynote Address at Political Economy: International Trends and National Differences. Inter-
national Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy, School of Economics & Management,
University of Lisbon, September.
———. 2006. “The Millennium Development Goals: A Critique from the South.” Monthly Review-an
Independent Socialist Magazine 57 (10): 1–15.
Amsden, A. 1989. Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Belli, P. 1991. “Globalizing the Rest of the World.” Harvard Business Review 69 (4): 50–5.
Chen, J., J. Jing, Y. Man, and Z. Yang. 2013. “Public Housing in Mainland China: History, Ongoing
Trends, and Future Perspectives.” In The Future of Public Housing: Ongoing Trends in the East and the
West, eds. J. Chen et al. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.
Chossudovsky, M. 1997. The Globalization of Poverty. London: Zed.
De Janvry, A. 1981. The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America. Baltimore, MD and London:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Evans, P. 1979. Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil.
Princeton, NJ and Guildford: Princeton University Press.
Frank, A. 1967. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil.
New York and London: Monthly Review Press.
Fukuyama, F. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press.
Global Footprint Network. 2015. “Only Eight Countries Meet Two Key Conditions for Sustainable
Development as United Nations Adopts Sustainable Development Goals.” www.footprintnetwork.
org/2015/09/23/eight-countries-meet-two-key-conditions-sustainable-development-united-
nations-adopts-sustainable-development-goals/.
Guardian, The. 2016. “European Parliament Slams G7 Food Project in Africa.” www.theguardian.
com/global-development/2016/jun/08/european-parliament-slams-g7-food-project-in-africa.
Harvey, D. 2003. The New Imperialism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Henley, D. 2015. Asia-Africa Development Divergence: A Question of Intent. London: Zed Books.
Jackson, R. 1992. “Juridicial Statehood in Africa.” Journal of International Affairs 46 (1): 1–16.
Jessop, B. 2002. The Future of the Capitalist State. Cambridge: Polity.

47
Early critiques

Kaplinsky, R., and C. Cooper. 1989. Technology and Development in the Third Industrial Revolution. Lon-
don: Cass.
Kemp, T. 1972. “The Marxist Theory of Imperialism.” In Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, eds. R.
Owen and B. Sutcliffe. London: Longman, pp. 15–34.
Kiely, R. 2010. Rethinking Imperialism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kornai, J. 1992. The Socialist System:The Political Economy of Communism. Oxford: Clarendon.
Lenin,V. 1917 [2010]. Imperialism:The Highest Stage of Capitalism. London: Penguin Books.
Lipton, M. 1977. Why Poor People Stay Poor: A Study of Urban Bias in World Development. London:
Temple Smith.
Mamdani, M. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton,
NJ and Chichester: Princeton University Press.
Mandel, M. 2004. How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against
Humanity. London: Pluto.
Marx, K. 2011. Das Kapital:Volume 3. Creative Independent Publishing Platform.
Newman, C., J. Page, J. Rand, A. Shimeles, M. Soderbom, and F. Tarp. 2016. Made in Africa: Learning to
Compete in Industry. Washington, DC: Brookings.
Ouma, S. 2017. Africapitalism: A Critical Commentary. Mimeo.
Pakenham, T. 1992. The Scramble for Africa. London: Abacus.
Peet, R., and E.R. Hartwick. 2009. Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments, Alternatives. 2nd
edition. New York and London: Guilford.
Pew Research Centre. 2014. “Most Americans Think the U.S. Is Great, but Fewer Say it’s the Greatest.”
www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/02/most-americans-think-the-u-s-is-great-but-fewer-
say-its-the-greatest/.
Riddell, R. 1990. Manufacturing Africa: Performance and Prospects of Seven Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
London: James Currey.
Schraeder, P. 2000. African Politics and Society: A Mosaic in Transformation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Mac-
millan.
Sender, J., and S. Smith. 1986. The Development of Capitalism in Africa. London: Methuen.
Shaw, M. 2003. “The State of Globalization: Towards a Theory of State Transformation.” In State/
Space: A Reader, eds. N. Brenner, M. Jones and G. MacLeod. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Wiley-
Blackwell.
Siakwah, P. 2017. “Are Natural Resource Windfalls a Blessing or a Curse in Democratic Settings?
Globalised Assemblages and the Problematic Impacts of Oil on Ghana’s Development.” Resources
Policy 52: 122–33.
Smith, J. 2018. “David Harvey Denies Imperialism.” http://roape.net/2018/01/10/david-harvey-
denies-imperialism/.
Sullivan, M.P. 2001. Theories of International Relations: Transition vs: Persistence. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Thomas, C. 1974. Dependence and Transformation: The Economics of the Transition to Socialism. New York
and London: Monthly Review Press.
Wallerstein, I. 1975. The Capitalist World Economy. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Warren, B. 1980. Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism. London:Verso.
Woodley, D. 2015. Globalization and Capitalist Geopolitics: Sovereignty and State Power in a Multipolar
World. Oxford and New York: Routledge.

48
 The neoliberal revolution in development

Notes
1 And also oligopolies, where there are only a few producers who collude to set or rig prices, did
not emerge. However, the recent LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) scandal revealed the
extent of market concentration and power in financial services, as major banks colluded to falsify
interest rates for their own benefit.
2 Interestingly, this is a partially private institution, as commercial banks hold stock in and can elect
some of the board of governors of “The Fed”.
3 In Western countries governments in fact try to keep a certain level of unemployment in the
economy to prevent wage increases which might stoke inflation. The rate of unemployment
where this is thought not to accelerate inflation is known as the NAIRU (non-accelerating in-
flation rate of unemployment). This represents a formalisation of what Marx talked about as the
need to maintain a reserve army of labour for capital.

Further reading

Books
Bhagwati, J. 2007. In Defense of Globalisation. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Toye, J. 1993. Dilemmas of Development: Reflections on the Counter-Revolution in Development Economics.
London: Wiley-Blackwell.

Articles
Bhagwati, J. 1982. “Directly Unproductive, Profit-Seeking (DUP) Activities.” Journal of Political Econ-
omy 90 (5): 988–1002.
Das, R. 2015. “Critical Observations on Neo-Liberalism and India’s New Economic Policy.” Journal of
Contemporary Asia 45 (4): 715–26.

Websites
The Mont Perlin Society, www.montpelerin.org
The World Economic Forum, www.weforum.org
The World Trade Organization, www.wto.org

References
Abugre, C. 2003. “Still Sapping the Poor: A Critique of IMF Poverty Reduction Strategies.” http://
chora.virtualave.net/sapping-thepoor.htm.
Amsden, A. 1989. Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Bello, W., S. Cunningham, and B. Rau. 1994. Dark Victory: The United States, Structural Adjustment, and
Global Poverty. Pluto Press with Food First and Transnational Institute.
Brooks, A. 2017. The End of Development: A Global History of Poverty and Prosperity. London: Zed
Books.
Carmody, P. 1998. “Neoclassical Practice and the Collapse of Industry in Zimbabwe: The Cases of
Textiles, Clothing, and Footwear.” Economic Geography 74 (4): 319–43.

63
The neoliberal revolution in development

Chang, H.-J. 2002. Kicking Away the Ladder? Development Strategy in Historical Perspective. London:
Anthem.
———. 2018. Address to the College Historical Society, March 5th. Dublin: Trinity College.
Coote, B., and C. LeQuesne. 1996. The Trade Trap: Poverty and the Global Commodity Markets. New edi-
tion with additional material by Caroline LeQuesne. edition. Oxford: Oxfam.
Cowen, D. 2014. The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping the Violence of Global Trade. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press.
Dunkley, G. 2004. Free Trade: Myth, Reality and Alternatives. London: Zed Books.
Economist, The. 2018. “Kinshasa’s Traffic Police Make 80% of Their Income Informally.”
September 8th. www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/09/08/kinshasas-traffic-
police-make-80-of-their-income-informally.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2009. The State of Agricultural Commodity
Markets 2009, High Food Prices and the Food Crisis. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations.
Friedman, M. 1970. “Counter-Revolution in Monetary Theory.”Wincott Memorial Lecture, Institute
of Economic Affairs, Occasional paper 33.
———. 2008. “The Methodology of Positive Economics.” In Philosophy of Economics: An Anthology,
ed. D. Hausman. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 3rd edition, pp. 145–78.
Hanahoe,T. 2003. America Rules: US Foreign Policy, Globalization and Corporate USA. Dingle, CO: Kerry
Brandon.
Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hayek, F. 1978. “Letter to.” Times of London.
Juma, C. 2015. How the EU Starves Africa into Submission. https://capx.co/how-the-eu-starves-africa-
into-submission/.
Keynes, J.M. 1936. The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Klein, N. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs:The Climate. London: Allen Lane.
Korner, P. 1985. The IMF and the Debt Crisis: A Guide to the Third World’s Dilemma. London: Zed Books.
Korten, D. 2001. When Corporations Rule the World. 2nd edition. San Francisco, CA [Great Britain]:
Berrett-Koehler.
Lawson, R.A., and J.R. Clark. 2010. “Examining the Hayek-Friedman Hypothesis on Economic and
Political Freedom.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 74 (3): 230–9.
Mann, L. 2016. Presentation at Connectivity at the Bottom of the Pyramid: ICT4D and Informal Economic
Inclusion in Africa, Rockefellar Centre, Bellagio, Italy, September.
Ostry, J., P. Loungani, and D. Furceri. 2016. “Neoliberalism: Oversold?” Finance and Development 53 (2).
www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/ostry.htm.
Patel, R. 2009. The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy. NewYork: Picador.
Payer, C. 1975. Debt Trap: International Monetary Fund and the Third World. New York: Monthly Review
Press.
Peet, R., and E.R. Hartwick. 2009. Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments, Alternatives. 2nd
edition. New York and London: Guilford.
Polanyi, K. 1944. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Bea-
con Books.
Samatar, A.I. 1999. An African Miracle: State and Class Leadership and Colonial Legacy in Botswana Devel-
opment. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Sassen, S. 2014. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap
and Harvard University Press.
Selwyn, B. 2014. The Global Development Crisis. Cambridge: Polity.
———. 2017. The Struggle for Development. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity.
Spence, M. 2011. The Next Convergence:The Future of Economic Growth in a Multi-Speed World. Crawley,
WA: UWA Publishing.
Statista. 2018. Global Operating Systems Market Share for Desktop PCs, from January 2013 to July 2018.
www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-share-of-windows-7/.

64
 The neoliberal revolution in development

Stein, H., S. Cunningham, and P. Carmody. 2018. The Rise and Risks of the Random: The World Bank,
Experimentation, and the African Development Agenda. Mimeo.
Tandon,Y. 2015. Trade Is War:The West’s War Against the World. New York and London: OR Books.
World Bank. 1981. Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action. Washington, DC:
World Bank.
———. 2016. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development Subscriptions and Voting Power of
Member Countries. https://finances.worldbank.org/Shareholder-Equity/IBRD-Subscriptions-
and-Voting-Power-of-Member-Coun/rcx4-r7xj.
———. 2017a. Gross Domestic Product. http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf.
———. 2017b. The World Bank in United States. http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/unitedstates.

65
Impacts of neoliberalism

Notes
1 According to Professor Sachs, the word “malaria” comes from the Italian words for bad air (malaria),
as they were convinced that it was spread through the air.The fact that Italy and Florida were able
to eliminate the spread of malaria through investments and public health interventions shows that
malarious regions are not condemned to permanently suffer from the disease, but that it is both
an outcome and cause of poverty.
2 Reportedly the origin of the country’s name was that when the Portuguese came they asked the
name of the territory and were told it was called “Ngola”, which was actually the term for king.

Further reading

Books
Bishop, M., and M. Green. 2008. Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World and Why We
Should Let Them. London: A&C Black.
Glennie, J. 2008. The Trouble with Aid:Why Less Could Mean More for Africa. London: Zed Books.
McGoey, L. 2016. No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy. Lon-
don:Verso.
Onimode, B. 1989. The IMF, the World Bank and African Debt. London: Zed Books.

Articles
Denning, G., P. Kabambe, P. Sanchez, A. Malik, R. Flor, R. Harawa, P. Nkhoma, C. Zamba, C. Banda,
C. Magombo, M. Keating, J. Wangila, and J. Sachs. 2009. “Input Subsidies to Improve Smallholder
Maize Productivity in Malawi: Toward an African Green Revolution.” Plos Biology 7 (1): 2–10.
Wilson, J. 2016. “The Village that Turned to Gold: A Parable of Philanthrocapitalism.” Development and
Change 47 (1): 3–28.

Websites
The African Forum and Network on Debt and Development, www.afrodad.org
Ethics Matter: A Conversation with Jeffrey D. Sachs, Carnegie Council, www.youtube.com/watch?
v=sQGsJAPjLL0
Millennium Promise, www.millenniumpromise.org/en/about-us
Millennium Villages, http://millenniumvillages.org/
Sustainable Development Solutions Network, http://unsdsn.org/

References
Andrews, M, L. Pritchett, and M.Woolcock. 2013.“Escaping Capability Traps Through Problem-Driven
Iterative Adaptation in Development.” World Development 51: 234–44.
Amin, S. 2006. “The Millennium Development Goals: A Critique from the South.” Monthly Review-an
Independent Socialist Magazine 57 (10): 1–15.
Brooks, A. 2017. The End of Development: A Global History of Poverty and Prosperity. London: Zed Books.
Browne, H. 2013. The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power). London:Verso.
Bryan, A. 2012. “Band-Aid Pedagogy, Celebrity Humanitarianism, and Cosmopolitan Provincialism:
A Critical Analysis of Global Citizenship Education.” In Ethical Models and Applications to Global-

82
 Impacts of neoliberalism

ization: Cultural, Socio-Political and Economic Perspectives, eds. C. Wankel and S. Malleck. Hershey, PA:
Business Science Reference.
Burgis,T. 2015. The Looting Machine:Warlords,Tycoons, Smugglers, and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth.
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When development is initially successful, this may turn into a recursive feedback
loop as the realisation of profit through exchange feeds directly back to state power
and capabilities development. Profits from production augment state power through
the taxes levied on labour and companies during the production and circulation pro-
cesses and through processes of learning-by-doing industrial policy.Thus, what is often
seen to be a form of globalisation disconnected from the state – namely, the global sale
of commodities – in fact represents a fused form of “commodity power” which may
benefit not only corporations but also the states in which they are headquartered or
where production takes place.Whether states prioritise development, however, depends
on the nature of their social bases and issues such as whether or not they face a security
threat which encourages prioritisation of national economic development.
The political opportunity structure facing states plays a critical role in determining
whether or not they adopt a “nurture capitalism” or anti-developmental, neopatrimo-
nial, regime maintenance stance (Van de Walle 2001). As noted earlier, according to
the World Bank African states need to match capabilities and roles – providing basic
infrastructure and macro-economic stability, for example, while otherwise allowing the
“free” operation of the market. However, as some have noted, markets must be created
before they can be freed.
Typically in World Bank studies the African state is viewed as a constraint on enter-
prise development to be removed, rather than conceptualised as an institution which
can actively guide and promote economic transformation. However, as described ear-
lier, it is the nature of the state, the political settlement and the types of assemblages
which are constructed and the way in which the political economy is articulated to
global regimes or not, such as that of the WTO, which determine whether or not
industrial policy will be successful in terms of raising peoples’ standards of living gen-
erally. However, others argue that “from the twin crises of global urbanization and
industrialization signified by ‘surplus humanity’, to the faltering productivist behemoth
of industrial agriculture . . . there are good reasons for considering that an epochal crisis
may well be on the horizon” (Moore 2015, 27).
Most people around the world might think that industrialisation and urbanisation are
good things. However, industrialisation is resource intensive and often, in the initial stages
at least, highly exploitative of labour. Furthermore, the industrialisation of some world regions
puts competitive pressure on others, sometimes resulting in their deindustrialisation –
creating “surplus people” who do not function as effective producers for, or consumers
in, the globalised economy. Is the “development” enterprise then fundamentally flawed?
The next chapter explores a number of theories which suggests that it is.

Note
1 His given name was previously Joseph Mobutu, but on ascending to the presidency he assumed
his new name which had at least two translations. “The Ngbandi translation reads, ‘the warrior
who knows no defeat because of his endurance and inflexible will and is all powerful, leaving fire
in his wake as he goes from conquest to conquest’. In Tshiluba, the name translates to ‘invincible
warrior, Cock who leaves no chick intact’” (Callaghy 1979, 341 quoted in Dunn 2001, 239).
Mobutu ran the country for over 30 years, until he was eventually deposed by a rebellion.

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Further reading

Books
Amsden, A. 1989. Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press.
Wade, R. 1990. Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of the State in East Asian Industrializa-
tion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Articles
Öniş, Z. 1991. “The Logic of the Developmental State.” Comparative Politics 24 (1): 109–26.
Singh, J.N., and J.S. Ovadia. 2018. “The Theory and Practice of Building Developmental States in the
Global South.” Third World Quarterly 39 (6): 1033–55.

Websites
Heterodox Economics newsletter, www.heterodoxnews.com/HEN/home.html
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, www.uneca.org
The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean, www.cepal.org/en

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Deconstructing development

Note
1 The fact that Lesotho had average gross capital formation of 47 per cent (1995–2005) – the
highest rate in the world, also suggests this was far from just being a subsistence economy. This
was largely as a result of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. The project sells power to South
Africa and originated under apartheid in that country, with World Bank funding.The Katse Dam,
which was constructed as part of this, is on unsuitable geology, meaning that there are periodic
earthquakes.

Further reading

Books
Escobar, A. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World: With a New
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Li,T. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Durham, NC and
London: Duke University Press and Chesham: Combined Academic [distributor].

Articles
Simon, D. 1997. “Development Reconsidered: New Directions in Development Thinking.” Geografis-
ka Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 79 (4): 183–201.
Storey, A. 2000. “Post-Development Theory: Romanticism and Pontius Pilate Politics.” Development
43 (4): 40–6.

Websites
Mathews, S. 2010. “Post-Development Theory.” Oxford Research Encyclopedias. http://internationalstudies.
oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acrefore-9780190846626-e-39.
Mercardo, J. 2017. “Buen Vivir: A New Era of Great Social Change.” https://blog.pachamama.org/
buen-vivir-new-era-great-social-change.

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Aid, development and cooperation?

Note
1 Although this is now being rectified. See Taylor (2017), Stuenkel (2016), Stephen (2014), Golub
(2016).

Further reading

Books
Moyo, D. 2009. Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is Another Way for Africa. London:
Allen Lane.
Sachs, J. 2005. The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen in Our Lifetime. London: Penguin.

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Peiffer, C., and P. Englebert. 2012. “Extraversion, Vulnerability to Donors, and Political Liberalization
in Africa.” African Affairs 111 (444): 355–78.

Websites
Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, www.povertyactionlab.org
AIDDATA, www.aiddata.org

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ICT4D

“pie”. Productivity growth and the wide distribution of the fruits of that are what
create more equitable or distributed forms of development. While mobile phones do
allow some time savings for certain people – for example, not having to take days to
travel with remittances to get them to relatives in rural areas – the overall impacts of
this on the economy are somewhat limited as they don’t foster the creation of new
better or higher-quality products. While there have been and continue to be many
innovative applications of mobile phones in development, they are not the transfor-
mative technologies that some claim they are. Rather, they often reinforce existing
patterns of dependence and social inequality. For example, importing mobile phones
and associated infrastructure such as base transceiver stations into Africa represents a
drain of scarce foreign currency and has to be paid for largely by exports of raw mate-
rials. This then represents a reinscription or reinforcement of colonial economies –
importing manufactured goods and exporting raw materials in order to be able to pay
for them. Mobile phones may be socially transformative by allowing easier social inter-
action at a distance. They and other new ICTs are also economically transformative in
those world regions where they are produced, developed and designed. However, this is
not the case for those world regions which are primarily integrated into ICT GPNs as
consumers, despite the hype often associated with them.
As noted earlier, technology is resources transformed. Intuitively a high natural
resource endowment should be a developmental boon. “Gifts of nature”, such as oil or
gold deposits, should provide foreign exchange, income, jobs and other benefits to the
regions in which they are found. However, this is not always necessarily the case. Why
not? We now turn to explore this issue in the next chapter.

Note
1 The survey/interviews this quote is drawn from was conducted by Alicia Fortuin at the
­African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and funded by the University of
Johannesburg.

Further reading

Books
Heeks, R. 2018. Information and Communication for Development (ICT4D). London: Routledge.
Unwin, T., ed. 2009. ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Articles
Aker, J., and I. Mbiti. 2010. “Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa.” Journal of Economic
Perspectives 24 (3): 207–32.
Jensen, R. 2007. “The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in
the South Indian Fisheries Sector.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (3): 879–924.

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Websites
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 “The resource curse”

The resource curse arguably has its origins in the deindustrialisation wrought by
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play in development? As the majority of the world’s population is now urban, this is a
pressing question, which will be explored in the next chapter.

Further reading

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ket Books.

Articles
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Watts, M. 2004. “Antimonies of Community: Some Thoughts on Geography, Resources
and Empire.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29: 195–216.

Websites
Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, https://eiti.org/
Natural Resource Charter, https://resourcegovernance.org/approach/natural-resource-charter

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189
 Urbanisation and development

FIGURE 10.2 Shenzhen, China

country, and the government there has devised personalised poverty plans to eliminate
this by 2020 (Economist 2017).
As the planet urbanises, urban development will become increasingly synonymous
with development more broadly. Finding ways to make cities generative and sustainable
is probably the key development challenge of the future. Currently, however, most of
the world’s poor are found in rural areas, and these are being increasingly affected by
the changing climate. The next chapter examines rural development and the implica-
tions of climate change.

Note
1 Some of this section draws on ideas from Carmody and Owusu (2016).

Further reading

Books
Chant, S., and C. McIlwaine. 2016. Cities, Slums and Gender in the Global South: An Anatomy of a Fem-
inised Urban Future. London: Routledge.
Gilbert, A., and J. Gugler. 1992. Cities, Poverty and Development: Urbanisation in the Third World. Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press.

201
Urbanisation and development

Articles
Malera, J., R. Grant, M. Oteng-Ababio, and B. Ayele. 2013. “Downgrading – An Overlooked Reality
in African Cities: Reflections on an Indigenous Neighborhood in Accra.” Ghana Applied Geography
36 (1): 23–30.
Satterthwaite, D., G. McGranahan, and C. Tacoli. 2010. “Urbanization and Its Implications for Food
and Farming.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 365 (1554): 2809–20.

Websites
African Centre for Cities, www.africancentreforcities.net
C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, www.c40.org
UN-Habitat,The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, https://unhabitat.org/

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Davis, M. 2006. Planet of Slums. London:Verso.

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Urbanisation and development

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Rural development and climate

have a significant impact on poverty reduction. A key issue is how initiatives like this
should be financed.
This book has explored some of the main theories and practices of development.
By necessity, as a result of space limitations, it has had to be selective in its coverage,
but one of the issues which it has implicitly engaged with is whether the development
enterprise is a flawed endeavour or not.The concluding chapter addresses this question
more explicitly.

Further reading

Books
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London: Routledge.
Parenti, C. 2011. Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. New York: Nation
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Articles
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Global Land Grabbing: An Editorial Introduction.” Journal of Peasant Studies 38 (2): 209–16.
Lavers, T., and F. Boamah. 2016. “The Impact of Agricultural Investments on State Capacity: A Com-
parative Analysis of Ethiopia and Ghana.” Geoforum 72: 94–103.

Websites
International Fund for Agricultural Development, www.ifad.org
Land Matrix, https://landmatrix.org/en/
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, www.fao.org/home/en/

References
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Carrington, D. 2018. “Unsurvivable heatwaves could strike heart of China by end of century”. https://
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219
 Getting to or after development?

attention to the political power distribution in a society, it can promote democracy

(Dyson 2001).
According to Andrew Brooks (2017, 235),

The ‘end of development’ does not mean that an end point for capitalist develop-
ment is in sight, but rather that Western-led International Development and the
vision of modernisation promoted by Europe and America is becoming a fading
force in the Global South.

As China has assumed a leading role in the Global South, it has perhaps more actively
promoted this concept, even as the relative roles of Europe and the US decrease. Thus,
both immanent and imminent development look likely to continue into the future as
both theories and practices. Designing effective policies and promoting international
cooperation for sustainability are key challenges. The era of international development
looks set to continue with new centres of leadership, such as China, and with new or
renovated discourses around win-win cooperation. The fact that it is such a malleable
and consequently successful concept, at least in terms of its own survival, diffusion and
propogation, will be key to its continued longevity.
As Jeffrey Sachs (2018) has noted, “world capitalism will not get us on track”.
While the current system is very good at producing economic output, and this can be
expanded at the cost of “human suffering” and “rapacious exploitation of the environ­
ment”, there is a need for far greater equity and a shift towards sustainability. The idea of
sustainable development then is a useful one, if it is conceived of as encompassing these
ideals, through the SDGs, for example. However, equity and environmental protection
are not intrinsic to the system. In fact, as Professor Sachs notes, the current globalised
economic system has produced massive inequality and environmental despoliation.
This suggests the need for stronger instruments of international regulation to achieve
these goals and the development of instruments and policies to achieve these. The
vested interests in the perpetuation of the current direction of the system are strong,
and the fragmented nature of political authority across the planet makes coordination
difficult, but not impossible. Important shifts are happening in renewable energy, for
example. Building on these through education, activism, policy and transnational coor-
dination consequently assume acute urgency. The nature of global development needs
to be urgently reshaped if the promise inherent in the term is to be realised, rather than
the actuality which has so far fallen short.

Note
1 Populism is defined by an appeal to “the masses” rather than particular classes, although it may be
left wing or right wing. Examples of populists would include Donald Trump in the United States
or Juan Perón, who was president of Argentina in the 1970s. Its rise in Western countries is associ-
ated with the so-called “elephant curve”, which looks like an elephant and shows income growth
per percentile of the global population. Incomes have been declining for the lowest percentiles
and from approximately the sixtieth to the ninetieth percentile (which is composed in large part
of the Western middle classes) for the last several decades.

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Getting to or after development?

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