ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

CENTER FOR REGIONAL AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT
STUDIES

Chapter Review Summary Report:

The Development of Development Theory: Towards
Critical globalism
By:

Tadele Fayso (ID.No GSR/6476/15)

Reflection Paper Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

requirements for the Course “ principles and Advanced
Theories of Development(URLD813)”

Submitted to: Kumela Gudeta (PhD)

January, 2023

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The development of development theory: Towards critical globalism

Several new approaches to developmental thinking run parallel to general tendencies

in social theory, such as the problematization of modernity, post structuralism, and
postmodernism. These contributions extend the critique of Eurocentrism, Orientalism,
and Western cultural homogenization in postcolonial and cultural studies.
Undoubtedly, the debates about postmodernism and multiple modernisms have had a
major impact on development theory as they deal with redefining development on a
grand scale. These contributions are often limited by their preoccupation with
discourses. Although they deepen our critical insight, they offer no alternatives. After
postmodern studies of modernization, modernity is making a comeback as a theme,
but now in the plural as modernity reworked, neo modernization theory, or new
modernity.

Many discussions credit development theory with greater coherence and consistency
than it possesses. Criticized as a religion of the West (Rist 1997) or as a development
myth (Tucker 1999), developmentalism is homogenized and treated as if cut from a
piece of cloth. The notion of development itself is increasingly marginalized and the
original justification for the development argument is gradually being undermined. In
this context, structural adjustment represents a radical break with the development
tradition, less because of its neoliberal thrust than because of the implicit argument
that all societies must adapt to global economic imperatives. The implication is that
the development will either be phased out as an outdated perspective belonging to a
bygone era of economic apartheid, or it will be extended to all societies as a global
logic.

Both adopters and critics of development theory tend to ascribe to it a certain

coherence and consistency, save for one favorite split or the other. This easily leads to
a dichotomous view of development theory, as in Marxism versus neoclassical
economics, mainstream versus counterpoint, etc. Development theories promote
facades of consistency as part of their single-minded future project. Critics contribute
by following binary opposition logic. Instead, it might be fruitful to see evolutionary
theory in the plural, not as the unfolding of a grand paradigm that neatly branches into
competing models, but as a hybrid of uneven elements, borrowings and
encroachments from outside sources, and crisis-fuelled improvisations.

The theory of social development derives from the ancient metaphor of growth and
was modified to bring about the modern idea of linear progression. The social theory,
according to Nisbet, viewed change as natural, immanent or emanating from forces
within the entity, continuous, directional, necessary, according to differentiation in
society, typically as a transition from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, and
finally as emanating from uniformity.The principle of development also involves the
existence of a latent germ, an ability or possibility that aspires to self-actualization.
Nisbet's history of the idea of development as a continuous outgrowth of the Greek
growth metaphor shows not only a preoccupation with origins and continuity, but also
an essentialism of ideas. It lays claim to a great cohesion of Western thought, merging
pagan and Christian, classical and modern, into a single fabric. An exercise in high
humanism, it produces an elitist presentation of Western notions of change, with the
classics fittingly towering over subsequent thinkers as the true ancestors of Western
thought. In his essay on the Chinese attitude to time and change in comparison to
Europe, Joseph Needham combines non-Christian Greek thought with Indian thought
and the Hindu and Buddhist notions of the endless repetition of the wheel of existence.
Regarding China, he concludes: Strange as it may seem to those who still think in
terms of the timeless Orient, the culture of China as a whole was Iranian, Judeo-
Christian, rather than Indohellenic types (Needham 1981:131). This gives us a slightly
different view of the distribution of civilizational perceptions of change and a very
different map of world history than Nisbet's. The reasons for the West's singularity as
a special case, as a deviation from the general human pattern, are eliminated A re-
examination of Western notions of development reveals a far more heterogeneous and
inconsistent history, full of moments of improvisation, dissonance and discontinuity.
Nisbet's continuity argument overlooks the shifts in Western development thinking
and papers on the temporal dynamics of European views. In short, 17th- and 18th-
century views were ambivalent about Europe's place in the world, looking up to
models such as China, Turkey, Persia, and the noble savages of the Americas, the
Pacific, and Africa. Only in the social theories of the 19th century did the European
will to power assert itself; they took on a single-focused form that provided greater
consistency than before or after, especially in the second half of the century.A related
question is how far we can see the same implicit model of endogenous, organic
growth in contemporary developmental theory.

If we consider twentieth-century development thinking and its theoretical lineages,the

term ‘development theory’ suggests a coherence that in fact is hard to find. What we
do find is a plethora of competing and successive currents, schools, par paradigms,
models and approaches, several of which claim to exclude one another. For a start,
development theory refers to two terrains which have converged only at certain
junctures: development sociology and development economics. Development
sociology has been by and large the critical successor to the nineteenth-century
theories of social development. Development economics, on the other hand, owes its
origin to a deviation from late nineteenth century economic orthodoxy. Kurt Martin
(1991) has made the interesting argument that development economics resuscitates
and revisits the classical political economy of Smith, Ricardo and Marx, who were
development economists. Neoclassical economics came into being only after 1870 as
a theory of fully industrialized economies (FitzGerald 1991).

‘Development’ if understood as the problematic of the transition from agriculture to

industry has been revisited and reinvented several times over; it has been a question
facing several generations of late developers. Thus several modern development
theories replicate earlier findings. The formative period of ‘modern’ development
economic theory was the 1940s and 1950s. The colonial economies were the terrain of
development theory but the problematic was that of transition or, in a word,
industrialization. Thus as ‘colonial economics’ transmuted into ‘development
economics it borrowed from existing theories of transition, from classical political
economy or from other ‘late developers’. Foreign assistance, accompanied by the idea
of mutual benefit, was another feature of the original discourse. In this respect it
diverged from both neoclassical economics and Marxism.
From the outset development thinking has been marked by an uneven and
contradictory patchwork with divergent paradigms operating in different terrains and
sectors: in industrialized economies, neoclassical economics coexisted with industrial
policy; in trade, liberalism in theory coexisted with mercantilism in practice; in
finance, versions of monetarism prevailed.Each of these divergent perspectives and
policy orientations made its imprint on developing economies, simultaneously in
different sectors, although usually articulated under the umbrella of an overarching
development rhetoric.

As a concept, ‘development’ papers over the different interests involved in economic,

social and political change. ‘Development’ suggests the possibility of a package
formula in which all these interests come to some form of crystallization and
convergence. As such it displays an intrinsically positivist bias. Obviously, social and
economic change is always a field of contention among different stakeholders.

Accordingly, development thinking implicitly carries two layers of meanings: an

actual diversity of interests and perspectives, and a hegemony, that is, an inherently
unstable settlement of these differences resulting in a development posture.One line of
thinking holds that the dividing line between development successes and failures in
terms of growth doesn’t run between models or theories, but that what matters more
than the ‘model’ is how it is implemented. Thus, what matters is not whether or not a
state intervenes but what kind of state intervenes and in what political culture.A
sobering awareness is that matters are not simply decided on the basis of models.
Policy implementation is affected by factors such as political cuture, historical
itineraries, and location in the regional and international environment.

In developmental sociology, the leading paradigm is modernization. Most forms of

evolutionism view development as natural and endogenous, while modernization
theory allows for exogenous influences. Modernization theory is usually referred to as
a paradigm, but upon closer inspection it turns out to house a variety of projects, some
along the lines of endogenous change, viz. social differentiation, rationalization,
diffusion of universalism, achievement and specificity; and others involving projects
of exogenous change: the spread of market relations or capitalism, technological
diffusion and industrialization, Westernization, nation-building (nationalism as a
derivative discourse), and state-building (as in post-colonial hereditary states). Even if
this diversity is occasionally recognized within modernization, the importance of
exogenous influences is still seen as minor and secondary.

The traditional sector stands for endogenous growth and the modern sector for
interaction with external forces in infrastructure, production techniques, trade, values
and aid. There is a gap between development theory as a national project and as an
international or global dynamic. From the beginning, the main theories of
development, both economic and sociological, were a national, or more precisely, a
state project. Neo-mercantilism, socialism in one country, Keynesianism, self-reliance,
they all represent state projects. This can give us a clue to the impasses of
evolutionary theories.
The major turns in development have been shaped by supranational dynamics that are
wholly or largely outside the scope of standard development theory. However, the
unity of development is not a given or constant. The boundaries between inside and
outside are by no means fixed. The development policy discourse and its implicit
assumption of country, society, economy as a developing entity rework this question
and assume much greater national cohesion and state control than is realistic. The
classic argument of world-systems theory states that society is not the developing unit,
but the world-system (i.e., the unit of goods necessary for social reproduction
integrated through the international division of labor). Unconstrained markets increase
inequality, and in the age of information economies that place a high value on human
resource development, inequality is an economic burden. These arguments go far
beyond the ideological dispute between state and market; the real problem is the
nature of the role that the state is supposed to play. Political options remain narrow in
most countries: internationalization or globalization means liberalization; state-
controlled internationalization with restrictions and regional cooperation; and
alternative or different development.

The argument of this chapter is that an essentialist notion of development, of good,

natural, endogenous development, plagues development thinking. Development
policy, from the earliest late developers to the most recent, has been largely
government policy. The endogenous development inherent in the evolving entity is by
definition state controllable. The weakness of the endogenous perspective on
development is its single and narrow focus. Accordingly, it is necessary to rethink
development as a regional, transnational, global project, so that the international
domain is not left to the strong actors and their power alone is right; in a word, to
theorize world development.

Market-oriented globalism (neoliberalism, monetarism, structural adjustment,

transnational capitalist class, export-oriented growth) collides with state-oriented
endogenism or indigenization (decoupling, import substitution) and leaves social
forces (grassroots, NGOs, informal sector) in no man's land. Critical globalism means
theorizing the entire field of forces in a way that takes into account not only market
forces but also interstate relations, international organizations and civil society in their
national and transnational manifestations. This is an argument for interdisciplinarity
in development research and for a critical examination of globalization while avoiding
clichés of the world language and anti-globalism.

Globalization is then no more than a fashionable term for advanced capitalism or

neoliberalism masquerading as global momentum. Globalization is not a new
dynamic; he would be so only and typically from the standpoint of endogenous
reading of history. Globalization today is much more than just increased economic
internationalization because it is associated with and interwoven with the growth of
the information economy and the emergence of flexible production systems (e.g.
Castells 1993). Obviously, not all developing countries are able to catch up with the
new global economic dynamics. Castells observes the emergence (or consolidation) of
a fourth world: in the context of the new information economy, a significant part of
the world's population shifts from a structural position of exploitation to a structural
position of insignificance. This is hardly a new topic. Decades ago, there was similar
talk about multinational corporations' lack of interest in investing in peripheral
countries; but due to structural changes in the global economy, it has taken on a new
heaviness and a new, rough edge. Globalism means either promoting or tackling
globalization. Critical globalism describes the critical examination of globalization
processes without blocking or celebrating them. As a global agenda, critical globalism
means posing the central question of global inequality in its new manifestations.

One way to read the current dispensation is that the gap between the most advanced
semi-peripheral countries and the core countries is narrowing, while the gap between
these and the peripheral countries is widening. Paul Collier (2007) speaks of the
bottom billion. Trotsky's law of combined and uneven development takes on a new
meaning. The level of economic innovation combined with the operation of the law of
the dragging lead (or the dialectic of progress) puts new investors in technology,
infrastructure and human resource development in a similar position to the
conventionally industrialized countries in several respects. In the sign of globalization,
the conceptualization of the unity of development, which was politically and
economically relevant in the preceding period, is changing. Unity is no longer merely
national (insofar as this endogenous political fiction was relevant at all), but
increasingly regional, local. Under these circumstances, the concept of world
development takes on different meanings. One window is the growing awareness of
global risks, which include ecological dangers but also phenomena such as currency
instability so that accelerated globalization increases the need for global governance.