International Development Theories

11 Key excerpts on "International Development Theories"

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  eBook - ePub

  International Development

  Socio-Economic Theories, Legacies, and Strategies

  • Anna Lanoszka(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1

  I Conceptualizing theories

  The intellectual trajectory of development studies has been shaped by historical events and enriched by insights from multiple disciplines. This is reflected in a sometimes uneasy relationship between diverse academic approaches and practical answers to questions about what needs to be done to improve the well-being of societies. To gain appreciation of those different approaches, we have to enter the realm of theory. Theory is a logically constructed framework, describing the behavior of a certain observable phenomenon. It has to be somehow testable, which distinguishes theory from a personal belief. Theory can also be generated by applying a method of deduction and logic. Scientific theory is formed and evaluated according to a scientific method, which involves experiments and hypothesis testing. When it comes to social theory, we look for patterns that allow the explanation of the conditions under which linkages between two or more events exist. Social theorists strive to be scientific when carefully evaluating the relevant facts, often with the help of statistical methods.

  The first influential theories of development emerged in the 1950s. Since then, the growing field of development studies saw the retreat of some theories, revisions of others, and the ascendency of new ones. Different theories propose diverse ways of identifying the crucial aspects of a particular fact. Choosing which theory is the most appropriate is often determined on the assumptions we make about the nature of society and the role of the state in the economy. Theories put forward explanations of why events happened. Theories that stem from a philosophical system of positivism search for objective findings that are free from personal biases and opinions. The Oxford Dictionary of the Social Sciences

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  Latin American Society

  • Tessa Cubitt(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter

  2

  Theories of development

             

  Theory is often treated apprehensively by students as being some sort of unintelligible construct devised by academics to score points off each other. In reality this fear is misplaced because theory is devised to organise, in a coherent form, some body of information and, in so doing, offer an explanation. Good theory should make a set of apparently dissociated events intelligible to the observer, because it attempts to explain causes and relationships.

  In order to understand the numerous problems and issues of the LDCs, a vast body of theory has emerged in the post-war period. This chapter summarises the main schools of thought and the ways in which they have developed, and offers a critical appraisal, paying particular attention to recent ideas. Although in general the theory discussed explains the relationship between the Third World and the rest of the world, those points which are particularly relevant to an understanding of the development of Latin America are emphasised. Variations in theoretical frameworks applied to different regions relate to features such as the levels of urbanisation and industrialisation.

  It is understandable that social scientists, in their early attempts to explain the process of development and, correspondingly, the reasons for lack of development or uneven development, should look to the experience of the so-called developed world for ideas. Thus early development theory leaned heavily on the European experience, for which there existed a considerable body of social theory. Elements of nineteenth-century evolutionary theory, with various modifications, found their way into modernisation theory, while Marx’s ideas were taken up later with the development of radical theories.

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  Development Management

  Theory and practice

  • Justice Nyigmah Bawole, Farhad Hossain, Asad K. Ghalib, Christopher J. Rees, Aminu Mamman, Justice Nyigmah Bawole, Farhad Hossain, Asad K. Ghalib, Christopher J. Rees, Aminu Mamman(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This situation however makes development management value-laden, which is often worsened by the incorporation of politics into donors’ policies and agendas, thereby deranging the local agenda in the recipient country which is either absent or fragmented (Abouassi, 2010). As a result of this situation, development management needs to clear about which policies to engage with. Critical issues of accountability, power relations and international relations are significant in development management dialogue (Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff, 2010). In conclusion, development management generally means managing development interventions in ways that improve the existing condition of society for better humanity. Arriving at this feat requires paying attention to how tasks are specified, how data are collected and monitored, how decisions are made, and how collaboration is enacted among the broad array of both public sector and non-state actors that characterize state–society relations (Brinkerhoff and Coston, 1999). It is also about getting potential beneficiaries involved from the design of development intervention to their implementation.

  Theories of development

  From the agrarian society to the industrial society and the current global technological world, society has been developing and progressing as the goals of society keep changing based on its needs and aspirations. From the assumptions of efficient management of resources, exportation of raw materials to the industrialized world, and the building of infrastructure, the direction of development policy has changed to industrialization and the importation of ideas from the developed world to the underdeveloped one as the theory of development. Therefore, the emphasis on development in the past was on the transmission of social, economic and political structures to the less developed countries to reflect Western ideals (Zafarullah and Huque, 2012). Later this assumption was considered as fallacious as economic progress led to unanticipated social consequences.

  The challenges of development and the causes of underdevelopment were later attributed to the role of the Western world in manipulating the less developed countries. Thus, dependency theory argued that the causes of underdevelopment are to be found outside the arena of third-world countries. Similarly, geographical explanations have been used to explain the causes of underdevelopment in poor countries. Many other theories and approaches have been used to explain the conditions and the reasons for the underdevelopment of poor countries. Whereas a number of theories have been discussed in relation to development over the years, this section will mainly concentrate on a few development theories: modernization theory, dependency theory, economic theories of development, geographical explanations and institutional theories. Second, this section is not seeking to give a broad history of the theories of development but rather a brief summary to establish their relevance in understanding modern development thinking and approaches. It important to note that the extant literature gives an indication of how the theoretical foundations of development interventions continue to change over the years as the term becomes well understood and what are believed to be the causes of underdevelopment as well as which types and kinds of intervention are deemed to be appropriate.

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  Social Development

  The Developmental Perspective in Social Welfare

  • James Midgley(Author)
  • 1995(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  3

  Theoretical Debates

  The last chapter showed that social development has been influenced by different historical events. The expansion of government social welfare in the nineteenth century, the creation of the welfare state, the adoption of economic planning and the efforts of colonial welfare administrators and officials at the United Nations in the 1950s and 1960s to link social policies with economic development all contributed to the emergence of the social development approach.

  However, social development has also been significantly affected by theoretical ideas. Explanations of the nature and causes of social change, ideas about ways of intervening to guide the process of change, and beliefs about what comprises an ideal society have all influenced thinking about social development. These ideas form the basis of social development theory. Social development not only is a practical affair, involving the design and implementation of social programmes, but also invokes complex theoretical ideas and beliefs.

  For this reason, a proper account of social development must pay attention to theoretical aspects and examine the way theory has influenced the field. Unfortunately, social development is not theoretically well developed. Social development has no easily recognizable ‘grand theories’ or models which can be analysed and debated. On the other hand, it cannot be claimed that social development is totally devoid of theory. Scholars who have written about social development have made extensive use of theoretical concepts and, by borrowing from other disciplines, they have infused the subject with conceptual terminologies, ideas and insights. Their efforts form a basis for promoting a theoretical foundation for social development which can provide useful insights into key questions.

  This chapter examines different aspects of social development with reference to theoretical ideas. It begins by discussing the role of theory in social development, paying particular attention to the different types of theory used in the field. It then offers a simple, representational model of social development as a process. Using this model, the chapter then reviews a variety of theoretical debates in social development. As will be shown, social development theory is characterized by sharp differences of opinion on many important questions. By examining these controversies and contrasting different points of view, theoretical problems in the field can be better understood.

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  Anthropology for Development

  From Theory to Practice

  • Robyn Eversole(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 1 Anthropology of development in theory Development can be defined broadly as the process of social and economic change. Change may be planned or unplanned. Development professionals, however, are specifically interested in change that can be imagined, planned for and created. For development professionals ‘development’ is a planned change process that increases prosperity or well-being or social equity – depending on what kind of change they feel is most needed. The Brundtland Commission’s definition of development from the 1980s puts the emphasis on sustainable change: development meets human needs in the present without compromising future generations’ ability to meet their needs. 1 In 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development identified three key pillars of development as ‘people, planet and prosperity’ with a focus on poverty eradication. 2 Every definition of development has a slightly different focus and emphasises different desired outcomes. But each refers to a process of social and economic change that is aiming to make the world better than it is now. This chapter will explore some of the many ways that development, as planned social and economic change, is understood, practised and experienced around the world. To do this, it draws on the work of anthropologists who study development. This chapter does not attempt to canvass the entire range and richness of anthropology theory. Rather, it focuses in on some key insights from the anthropology of development which are relevant to development professionals, and which can directly inform development practice. Development in context Theories are sets of ideas about how the world works. Our ideas about how the world works – our theories – are important, because they guide our actions and ultimately inform what we can achieve. In development practice, our theories about social and economic change guide how we go about pursuing change

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  Political Development Theory

  The Contemporary Debate

  • Richard Higgott(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Theory-building really does have to pay serious attention to the problems of generalising about the conditions and prospects of states as diverse as Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan or Nigeria on the one hand, and states such as Bangladesh or the Sahelian states of West Africa, such as Mali, Upper Volta or Chad on the other. In the past, theory-building based on polar opposites—be it Weberian ideal types or radical attempts to provide explanations of underdevelopment by generalising from André Gunder Frank’s early and near ubiquitous metropolis-satellite polarisation—has meant that little or no account has been taken until recently of regional, spatial or temporal disparities. The danger of such polar analysis is that reality tends to become subordinate to theory. On the other hand, it can be argued, as Scarrow (1969: 33) does, that ‘generalisations are the hallmark of all scientific endeavour’ and that generalisations must therefore be made. The brief of this book—to provide an overview of the recent intellectual history of development theory—must permit such a generalising approach.

  We accept that macro-sociological concepts can hide much of the socio-economic reality of the Third World, just as the aggregation of statistics and data can hide the failure of development theory actually to improve the lot of people in the Third World; and just as focusing at the level of the nation, or even the region, ignores much of the political, social and economic activity which takes place at the level of the smaller unit.

  Several other initial methodological problems that have beset the study of underdevelopment by social scientists need to be raised at this stage. First, the tendency towards specialisation. While the academic heritages of the sociologist and the social anthropologist are important, neither is entirely sufficient in its own right; the same can be, and is of course, said about the specialised material of the economist and the political scientist, Even given the realities of academic differentiation and, at a less savoury level, the rivalries of academic professionalism, a multi disciplinary approach should not be entirely beyond our means. The major problem is in dealing with a situation in which solutions cannot be presumed to emerge simply from aggregating the various disciplines of the social sciences:

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  Social Development

  Theory and Practice

  • James Midgley(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  PART II THE THEORY OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT Passage contains an image 3 THEORETICAL DEBATES AND THE SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

  Because social development is largely a practical affair, theory has not been given much prominence. However, social development practice is invariably informed by theory, and although seldom recognised, practitioners often draw on theoretical ideas to formulate proposals and implement projects and programmes. They also have recourse to theory when assessing the effectiveness of different practice approaches. For these reasons, some scholars have sought to emphasise the role of theory and some have drawn on interdisciplinary social science knowledge to conceptualise and analyse social development practice and articulate its normative assumptions.

  Theoretical analyses have focused primarily on the notion of process, stressing three key components of the social development process: first, the original condition that social development seeks to change; second, the goals it hopes to achieve; and third, the interventions that can bring this about. Simply put, theoretical interpretations have sought to analyse and explain the ‘from what to what and how’ steps in the process. Although many social development writers agree on the key features of the process, widely accepted assumptions have been vigorously disputed. Theoretical principles governing the social development process, such as its progressivism, reliance on human agency, pragmatism, universalism and emphasis on social investments, have been questioned and this has fostered a critical examination of issues that were previously taken for granted. Although these debates are helpful since they have clarified assumptions and fostered greater theoretical sophistication, more analyses and discussion is needed if the field is to have a solid intellectual foundation.

  This chapter discusses a number of theoretical issues relating to the social development process. These are grouped around the three components of the process mentioned earlier: first, theoretical ideas about the original condition are explored and, second, different views on social development’s goals are examined. Theoretical debates around the social development process itself, such as its progressive nature, the importance of human agency and the link with economic development, are then discussed. The chapter concludes by examining the role of major normative perspectives in social development. These perspectives are rooted in ideologies and associated with the different theories and ‘schools’ of social development mentioned earlier in this book. As will be shown, they offer very different interpretations of the social development process and how its goals can be achieved. They have also informed different social development practice strategies.

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  The Sociology of Modernization and Development

  • David Harrison(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  My interpretation of the sociology of modernization and development incorporates modernization theory, underdevelopment theory and other perspectives, but lacks the grandiose claims sometimes made on their behalf. No all-embracing view of the Third World, or world system, is on offer, and none is on the horizon. True, new models of development can be found in the Third World: Cuba, Tanzania, China and other socialist hopefuls no longer fire the imagination but such capitalist societies as Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea are now portrayed as examples for others to follow. They, too, should be treated with caution. Sociologists who set themselves up as prophets of some new order, and tie their sociology to a political ideology, do their discipline no service. It behoves them, instead, to examine processes of social change in the Third World, and the ways in which they are acted out, acted upon and interpreted with care, attention, and not a little scepticism. This is a substantial challenge, and the theoretical perspectives outlined in the previous pages undoubtedly provide frameworks for this continuing project. The questions will vary with the theoretical and ideological predictions of individual sociologists, and with the focus of their empirical research, but the answers will be subject to review by their peers, including those of other persuasions, according to the accepted canons of sociological inquiry. In fact, behind the rhetoric, this is very much what happens wherever social scientists gather to discuss issues of modernization and development in the Third World.

  From previous chapters of this book, some important themes emerge which are relevant in the study of modernization and development. First, there is the perpetual tension between individual actors and the social systems which they themselves have constituted. As Dawe makes clear (1979), this dichotomy has been a feature of all major sociological perspectives. People are actively involved in making their own history; they are purposeful actors. Yet the results of their actions are not necessarily of their own choosing; they are constrained within all kinds of socially produced cages. This is as true in the Third World as elsewhere, and it is inevitably reflected in the sociology of modernization and development when the ‘systemic’ elements of social life are studied at all levels, from world systems, regions, nation-states, social classes, religious and ethnic groups to such primary groups as families and households. Clearly, in all of this, the role of social anthropology is crucial and can only be separated artificially from sociology. And other disciplines will also contribute: history, geography, economics, international relations, and so on. As we have seen, sociological emphases will vary, but no one perspective has exclusive access to reality. All views are partial.

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  The Palgrave Handbook of International Development

  • Jean Grugel, Daniel Hammett, Jean Grugel, Daniel Hammett, Jean Grugel, Daniel Hammett(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Part I Theories of Development Passage contains an image

  © The Author(s) 2016

  Jean Grugel and

  Daniel Hammett (eds.)

  The Palgrave Handbook of International Development https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-42724-3_2

  Begin Abstract

  2. Classical Approaches to Development: Modernisation and Dependency

  Wil Hout

  1  

  (1) International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

   

  End Abstract

  1 Introduction

  Writing in the first half of the 1980s, Richard Higgott (1983 : vii) described modernisation and dependency approaches as ‘the two dominant perspectives on political and social change in the Third World’. Higgott was able to capture the main elements of the debate in a book of approximately 120 pages. If he were writing his book today, the proliferation of research in and theorising on development issues, both in and beyond the Global South, would surely take Higgott far beyond the classical theories of development and would require a much longer manuscript.

  A proper understanding of the classical theories is still useful for contemporary researchers on international development. This is the case not only because researchers need to know about the antecedents of the intellectual field they work in but also because the modernisation and dependency approaches have had important influences on more recent theorising, and because the classical theories ‘live on’ in contemporary studies of issues such as democratisation, identity and global production.

  Modernisation and dependency theories represent two rather different points in the spectrum of approaches to international development. Politically, the two theoretical positions have pointed at fundamentally different strategies for the improvement of the situation in developing countries. Yet, at the same time, modernisation and dependency approaches have important features in common. In the first place, and this is more important in the light of critiques of the linearity assumption in development theorising voiced in recent decades, the two approaches share the conviction that development is essentially a process that is able to bring about progress. In the second place, the approaches clearly focus on ‘macro-structures’ (Nederveen Pieterse 2010

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  Sport for Development and Peace

  A Critical Sociology

  • Simon Darnell(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Where then does such contentious history and theoretical uncertainty leave the study of sport and SDP? On the one hand, it is possible to argue that there is no firm basis for a unified theory of international development that can be lent to sport and positioned as a basis of the SDP sector. To some degree this is true given the intractable politics of development. On the other hand, there are at least four important critical insights that can be drawn out and that are useful and important to constructing a critically informed theoretical framework of development for the study of SDP.

  First, the history of international development needs to be reconciled against the political specificities of the contemporary development moment, which is best characterized as: (a) absent of a genuine hegemonic state power, (b) influenced but not dominated by globalization, (c) subject to the shifting nature and importance of nation states and (d) characterized by development as an enduring problem and struggle for all (Payne 2005 ). All of these factors influence the current mobilization of SFD to the extent that SDP is constitutive of, and constituted by, the broader social and political influences that underpin international development.

  Second, then, the binary analyses of development suggested in the debates above (First World vs Third World, North vs South, developmentalism vs post-development, universalism vs relativisim, globalism vs provincialism, modernization vs dependency) do not provide effective frameworks for nuanced and critical understandings of development practices and politics (Nederveen Pieterse 2010) . Neither, in turn, is a ‘postmodern’ approach to development satisfactory, given that it tends to privilege a ‘Western’ deconstruction of the ‘Western’ construct of modernism itself (Nederveen Pieterse 2010 ). Following Nederveen Pieterse (2010) , what is called for is a historical/cultural review of the Western development project, one that combines, in a pluralist fashion, analyses of the state, the market and culture, and the relations of power that are constituted and substantiated therein. This is necessary in order to make sense of, and, where needed, to deconstruct development theory and practice, particularly in the cases where such practice is dominated by the relatively powerful, and despite the ongoing initiatives and resistance of those in relatively powerless positions. This is a stage, I suggest, at which the SDP sector currently finds itself. The securing of a unified development theory for SDP is unlikely; therefore a reasonable analysis of political structure, in this case of SDP, must investigate the social, economic and political at the same time and as they overlap (Cox and Sinclair 1996 : 137).7

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  World Bank and Urban Development

  • Edward Ramsamy(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The aim of this chapter is to develop a framework that theorizes the process by which the World Bank affects policy choices in developing nations. The chapter consists of three parts. The first part overviews major development theories and relates them to the World Bank. The second part identifies some weaknesses that render these theories inadequate for conceptualizing the Bank’s role in the policy-making process in the developing world. In the third part, I present an alternative framework that addresses the shortcomings of development theory and captures the uneven and scaled articulation between the World Bank and LDCs. Existing literature on the Bank’s relationship with developing countries tends to view the interaction in binary terms, as either positive or negative. The Bank is seen as either a catalyst for growth for developing countries or an instrument of domination that stifles national development, promotes dependency, and increases vulnerability; in fact, the relationship is more complex. Based on the premise that the world political economy both shapes and is shaped by individual states and modes of regulation, I suggest that a more nuanced reading of the Bank’s role in development is needed, one that avoids the reduction of hegemony to domination and the overdetermination of the local by the global.

  Theories of development and the World Bank

  The World Bank and the modernization paradigm

  During the 1950s and 1960s, development thinking and planning were dominated by the modernization approach. With its intellectual roots in the writings of Spencer, Weber, Parsons, and Bentham, modernization theory saw development as a gradual, evolutionary process involving various stages and transforming all societies from traditional to modern. As societies modernized, they were supposed to develop complex economies, institutions, bureaucracies, and divisions of labor that enabled them to meet their production and consumption needs. In keeping with the neo-classical economic tradition, modernization theory advocated integration into the global capitalist system, economic growth, and Western liberalism as a way of achieving development.

  Influenced by evolutionary theory, modernization theory posited that social change occurs as societies move linearly from traditional to advanced, implying that the movement represents progress, civilization, and development. Second, the evolution from a simple, primitive society to a complex, modern one is seen as a long, slow, incremental, but irreversible process. Third, the homogenization of societies caused by modernization is said to enable effective economic linkages. Cultural convergence among developing societies in the form of Westernization also homogenizes them, with the assumption that following the European and American examples might lead to levels of economic prosperity enjoyed by the West (Rostow 1964).

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