Development ideas 1 Background The debate on economic development is in one way an old one dating back to the 18th century and the so called ”enlightenment” era. It is related to different set of problems but refers to a given starting-point: How do we get rid of poverty and what is progress for societies?

Development ideas 1 From another point of view it is a fairly new debate and it became widesperead after the second world war. The reasons for this new popularity may be due to three different conditions related to new political agendas in the post-war era.

Development ideas 1 1 Post-war reconstruction After the war in Western Europe there was a question about the sustainability of capitalism. The volatile socio-economic conditions during the inter-war years were blamed for creating the pre- conditions for the war. If capitalism should survive it has to become more stable and guarantee continual progress for the population. The hope stood to keynesian macro-economic policy and various methods of planning of economic activities.

Development ideas 1 2 De-colonialization De-colonization which followed the world war raised the question concerning which way the new independant states should choose in order to develop their countries and reduce poverty. This new independancy also raised the question of relations between rich and poor countries, former colonies and former colonial powers.

Development ideas 1 3 Challenge from russian revolution The influence of the Soviet Union had increased considerably in the years between 1945 and At the time there was a growing interest for the Soviet growth model based on a planned investment-driven economy. In the coming decades there was a lot of discussion on the ”competition between the two system” and Soviet Union economy seemed to grow very fast and challenged US economic and technological leadership.

Development ideas 1 The key concept in this discussion was on economic growth. Even if everybody didn´t restrict the problem of development to economic growth, it became the focal point of discussion: economic growth was the key to economic and social development. W.W. Rostows book ”Stages of economic growth: a non-communist manifesto” was published in 1960.

Development ideas 1 Rostow was an american economist and advisor to president John F Kennedy. He argued that in a capitalist regulated economy all countries should sooner or later come to a ”take-off” for economic growth if they made the institutional and economic preparations. Every country could not ”take-off” at the same time because the world economy had not economic space for everybody att the same time. Just as at an airplane all the plane can´t take-off simultaneously.

Development ideas 1 Western economic growth and its critics Rostow definitely favoured an US-led global growth strategy. His opponents were both ”dependancy”-economists, ”structural” economists and marxists. In various ways these critics underlined the conflicting interests in the world economy. Dependancy economists favoured ”de- linking” from the rich countries and marxists stressed the exploitive relationships between imperialist firms and states on the one hand and poor countries on the other. They advocated mostly independacy and central planning.

Development ideas 1 It was not until the 1970-ties economic growth became more universally questioned as the key for economic and social development. The Rom-report ”Limits to growth” stressed the ecological costs of ongoing universal growth. Among critics the british economist F. Hirschs book ”Social limits to growth”(1977) argued that economic growth just solve a limited part of development problems and actually leads to waste of time and resources. This is because we become accustomed to standard rises and we beome occupied by a useless competition on ”positional” goods and utilities which is actuallu a zero-sum game.

Development ideas 1 Development as freedom Amartya Sens book argues in a different way. His background is that as an growth economist During the seventies his interests came to include project evaluation methods and the more general problems of poverty. He also studied moral philosophy.

Development ideas 1 The general idea of the book is included in the opening sentences ”Development can be seen … as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. Focusing on human freedoms contrasts with narrower views of development, such as identifying development with the growth of gross national product, or with the rise of personal incomes, or with industrialization, or with technological advance, or with social modernization.”

Development ideas 1 The radical break with equalising economic growth with development is to note that growth or things are just means for wellbeing. The development should rather be understood as the peoples possibilities to live the lives they esteem to live. And the focus of action is to remove the obstacles for this goal.

Development ideas 1 Key concepts: Agency Capabilities Functionings Enjoy your readings

Development ideas 1