Development theory in a post-socialist era: competing capitalisms and emancipatory alternatives

✍ Scribed by E. A. Brett

• Book ID: 101354678
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 87 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/1099-1328(200008)12:6<789::aid-jid715>3.0.co;2-s

✦ Synopsis

Development theory was formerly dominated by claims that poor countries could only modernize by _nding a non!capitalist route to development\ or by subjecting private _rms and markets to rigorous controls[ It is now widely seen as the process of building liberal capitalist institutions*pluralist democracy\ competitive markets and open and egalitarian civil society institutions[ This appears to rule out the need for a distinct body of development theory\ thus questioning its whole rationale[ The article challenges this view by showing that a general commitment to liberal capitalist insti! tutional arrangements does not preclude the need for a distinct body of theory which deals with the problems of transition to fully developed capitalism[ It does so by examining three criticisms commonly advanced against claims that modernization depends on the adoption of Western capitalist institutions[ These are that a commitment to liberal capitalist development means that all LDCs must follow a single devel! opmental trajectory\ that its commitment to Western values and models must mar! ginalize local cultures and institutions\ and that the many developmental failures in the third world imply that a rapid transition to modernity is objectively impossible in most LDCs[ Copyright Þ 1999 John Wiley + Sons\ Ltd[

0 TO THE IMPASSE AND BEYOND

I read the work of Paul Baran "0846# and Arthur Lewis "0844#\ my _rst texts in development theory\ as an undergraduate in 0846[ These authors distinguished their concerns from those of orthodox economic theory by their subject matter[ Whereas neo!classical economics was concerned with the structures and processes through which mature economies could be managed\ Baran and Lewis were concerned with the policies that should be adopted to allow LDCs to {catch up|[ They o}ered