The Development Mandate of International Institutions: Where Did it Come From?

What was the origin of the commitment of international institutions to promote economic development in poorer countries? A popular view in “post-development” scholarship has been that this international development project was born with Truman’s Point Four program of 1949. This article suggests instead that it emerged for the first time in a significant way out of the Bretton Woods conference of 1944, with US-Latin American relations in the early 1940s acting as a key incubator for this innovation in international governance. This historical reinterpretation leads to a different view of the initial content of the international development project and the politics that generated it. It also challenges those who have downplayed the significance of the development content of the Bretton Woods negotiations.     

The Transnational Debt Architecture and Emerging Markets: the politics of paradoxes and punishment

The Argentine default at the end of 2001 highlighted the ongoing problems plaguing the existing transnational debt architecture, namely the tensions between creditor rights and human rights. While these debates have thrown important light on what needs to be done in terms of improving the transnational debt architecture, few studies have actually attempted to evaluate critically the manner in which transnational debt has been managed since the outset of the Bretton Woods system in 1944. I argue that the postwar informal arrangement governing transnational debt architecture not only helps augment the power of credit to serve as an effective form of social discipline, but that it is also profoundly contradictory. Through an historical survey, spanning the beginning of the Bretton Woods system to the recent Argentine default, I demonstrate that the informal nature of the transnational debt architecture, coupled with the mounting power of global financial capitals over debtor states, has played a major role in bringing about increased levels of volatility and vulnerability in the international credit system.     

Neoclassical and structural analysis of poverty: winning the ‘Economic Kingdom’ for the poor in Southern Africa

In situations characterised by historical injustice in the distribution of economic resources, such as in many southern African ‘settler’ countries, there is a powerful intuitive case that ameliorative and palliative public policy is insufficient to significantly affect poverty reduction. This is because of the dulling effects on growth caused by significant structural inequality in the distribution of resources. However, the proposition that inequality is a problem for poverty reduction is contentious. This article reviews the neoclassical and structuralist literatures on the relationship between growth, inequality and poverty. It argues that the first is inconclusive and, furthermore, can only be so, while the second requires to be made more relevant to the discussions of how redistribution and inequality relate in legitimate policy and practice. The concept of property regimes can help here, within a more contextual understanding of development in practice as not necessarily involving growth and economic progress, but as being subject to periodic phases of ‘de‐development’, or well‐being retrogression. The paper concludes that state‐sponsored redistribution policy has an important role to play in changing underlying property regimes for the benefit of the poor in southern Africa. Inequality does matter, and a consideration of radical, redistributive social change is worth rehabilitating as an efficient means of reducing poverty, particularly in situations of low or fluctuating growth. This consideration, in turn, requires a political acceptance of the legitimacy of a broader role for economic public policy and state action.     

Population growth and development in the third world: The neocolonial context

Less developed countries (LDCs) that were colonies of other nations continued operating under the same social and political structures set up by the former ruling nations. The small minority of elites in the LDCs held on to the power acquired during colonial times. In order to preserve their political and financial status after independence, they maintained their close linkages to the capitalist nations and their multinational corporations (MNCs). The elites did not generally have popular support, however. These capitalist nations and their commercial interests continue to dictate most LDCs development process which supports the financial interests of the MNCs and the local elites and not those of the majority, the poor. The poor realize that they are trapped and unable to break away from the economic and political structures, therefore, to assure some form of security, they have many children which exacerbates their poverty. Yet population control policies based on Malthusian theory and those that rely on such undimensional, technical approaches as family planning alone cannot cure the multidimensional social problems of high population growth and poverty. Neither the Malthusian nor Marxist theories totally explain the situation in the LDCs or even provide workable solutions. Research on population and development in LDCs needs to address both the Malthusian concern for the problems posed by high growth rates and the Marxist critique of class struggle in development trends. To eliminate the trap of poverty and dependent economies, each country must design its own remedies based on its history, culture, and geography and alter the prevailing social, economic, and political power structures in favor of the poor. 6 propositions that must be modified to each nation's particular problems and needs are presented to guide LDCs in formulating or reformulating policies to alleviate the problems of population and poverty.     

The relevance of basic needs for political and economic development

This article addresses the “basic needs’ approach to development policy from the perspectives of the political and economic development literature. The central questions concern the compatibility of a basic needs approach with political and economic development and the impact of development on population welfare. Will a basic needs approach weaken or strengthn the processes of legitimation and state consolidation in developing systems? What impact will it have on participation and democracy? What will be the impact of such an approach upon attempts to industrialize and diversify production? While there are no definitive responses to these concerns the literature suggests that the approach has real potential value both for improving “human capital” and strengthening economic development, and for developing locally based political institutions.     

The hares,the hounds and the African National Congress: on joining the Third World in post-apartheid South Africa

The utility of framing questions of global inequality in relation to a ‘First World’ and a ‘Third World’, a North and a South, or developed countries and developing (or underdeveloped) countries, has been much debated since the end of the Cold War. This article addresses the issue of the perceived weaknesses and possible continued strengths of the notion of the ‘Third World’ in general terms, and then grounds such a discussion through an analysis of the way that the African National Congress (anc) government in post-apartheid South Africa has approached the question of global inequality. Since its election in 1994, and more particularly since Thabo Mbeki succeeded Nelson Mandela as president, the anc has presented itself as having an especially important leadership role on behalf of the Third World. The profound contradictions inherent in the anc's effort both to retain its Third Worldist credentials and to present itself as a reliable client to the Bretton Woods institutions and foreign investors provides insights into how to design alternative strategies for overcoming world-wide poverty, strategies which might be more effective than those chosen by the anc. Since the anc was elected to government in 1994 it has pursued a brand of deeply compromised quasi-reformism, analysed here, that serves primarily to deflect consideration away from the options presented by other, much more meaningfully radical international and South African labour organisations, environmental groups and social movements. At the present juncture a range of increasingly well-organised grassroots movements in South Africa find that they have no choice but to mobilise in active resistance to the bankrupt policies of the anc. The increasing significance of these efforts points to the possibility that they might eventually be able to push South Africa—either through a transformation of the anc itself or through the creation of some new, potentially hegemonic, political project in that country—back into the ranks of those governments and groups that seek to use innovative and appropriately revolutionary approaches to challenge the geographical, racial and class-based hierarchies of global inequality.     

The Paradox of Small Hydropower: Local Government and Environmental Governance in China

Small Hydropower is regarded by the Chinese state as a method for both poverty alleviation and environmental protection in rural areas. This paper finds that local government officials develop an ‘environmentally bundled economic interests’ approach that simultaneously fulfills the central state’s new political mission and local economic development demand. The small hydropower plants however have paradoxically become the destroyer of the environment as local government at different levels develop the plants in an un-coordinated manner. We use the growth of small hydropower in Yunnan province as an exemplar to show the new tendency and problems of China’s environmental governance.     

How stalled global reform is fueling regionalism: China’s engagement with the G20

In the Chinese view, the architecture of contemporary global governance – especially that of the Bretton Woods institutions – is flawed and in need of reform. Developing nations (like China), the argument runs, need to be given a role proportionate to their global economic influence. Since the Group of Twenty (G20) became a leaders’ summit in 2008, China has used the forum to push for such reform. But today, despite some supposed progress, reform has stalled. Recognising this fact, China is increasingly emphasising regional integration in its strategy for overcoming the middle-income trap. Global reform has not been abandoned, but – given its infeasibility – is no longer a short-term priority.     

Multidimensional Poverty in Crisis: Lessons from Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe experienced an acute social, political, and economic crisis from 2001 to 2008 and is now on a recovery path. This paper explores changes in poverty between 2001, 2007, and 2011–2012 using an Alkire–Foster multidimensional poverty index. Results indicate a large increase in poverty across multiple dimensions of household wellbeing between 2001 and 2007 (the start of the crisis peak), followed by a decrease in poverty between 2007 and 2011–2012, during the recovery period. Decomposition of the index shows significantly different trends in poverty dimensions over time with implications for short- and long-term social assistance policies.     

Economic Development Subsidies and the Funding of Private Prisons

For-profit prison corporations have sold prison privatization as a tool for economic development. The idea of prisons became more appealing once for-profit prison corporation demonstrated that they could finance, build, design, and construct prisons with private capital from private investment companies. Many private prisons throughout the United States are provided local, state, and federal economic development subsidies — which may include tax advantaged financing, property tax abatements, infrastructure improvements, and personnel training and development resources. Most research on prison privatization has examined costs and quality comparisons of private run prisons to government run correctional facilities. This article examines the factors that predict economic development subsidies to private prisons, which include: economic, social control, geographic, and political factors. Logistic regression results indicate the per capita gross state product, political ideology, black male disenfranchisement, and mandatory sentencing laws predict economic development subsidies to private prison corporations.     

Civil war and the coalition government of democratic Kampuchea

This article explores the relationship between the politics of international development and the reproduction of global inequality. I argue that contemporary discourses about— and the practices of—‘development for developing countries’ represent an attempt to reconstitute the political utility of the ‘Third World’. In an era of globalisation the deployment of the notion of a Third World of ‘developing countries’ which require immediate, systemic attention through the discourse and practice of international development continues to provide a way of both disciplining and displacing the global dimension of social and political struggle. I refer to this dynamic in terms of the political utility of the Third World, which, I argue, has been conducive to the organisation of global capitalism and the management of social and political contradictions of inequality and poverty. I develop this argument by drawing on the historical implications and legacy of ‘international development’ as practised in and on the Third World and through a critical analysis of the methodological premises that constitute international development. I illustrate this by drawing on a key strategy aimed ostensibly at development: the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (prsp) approach, promulgated by the World Bank and the imf, which I discuss in relation to the ‘development agenda’ inaugurated during the 1999 wto meeting in Doha (Qatar). I argue that the ideology and practice of the global politics of international development reinforce the conditions of global inequality, and must be transcended as both an analytical framework and an organising principle of world politics. While the prsp and related approaches are currently presented as key elements in the building of the ‘architecture for (international) development’, what is emerging is a form of governance that attempts to foreclose social and political alternatives.     

Does Financial Development Contribute to Poverty Reduction?

The article examines the contribution of financial development to poverty reduction in developing countries. Building on earlier research which has established links between financial development and economic growth, and between economic growth and poverty reduction, the article tests for a causal process linking financial sector growth and poverty reduction. The empirical results indicate that, up to a threshold level of economic development, financial sector growth contributes to poverty reduction through the growth-enhancing effect. The impact of financial development on poverty reduction will be affected, however, by any change in income inequality resulting from financial development.     

Aid as an encounter at the interface: the complexity of the global fight against poverty

International development discourse has recently shifted its focus from top‐down economic adjustment to participative anti‐poverty policy. This shift hints at an acknowledgement of the local complexities within the poverty process and at a need to listen to and develop actions with the ‘poor’. But, whereas the mainstream argument remains couched in a technical framework, we argue that the fight against poverty is inevitably political. Conceptualising the aid industry as a set of global–local interfaces, it follows that a closer look at ‘participation’ in anti‐poverty interventions is needed to come to grips with the political issues involved. Four issues are discussed: the complexity of local ‘participation’, given the ‘polycephalous’ character of third world societies; the power biases in the aid chain; the potential problem of ‘false consciousness’; and the ambiguities of the role of local development brokers. We conclude that anti‐poverty policy is in need of ‘interface experts’, who, through ‘provocation’ can beget ‘participation’.     

Changing development models in small economies: The case of Jamaica from the 1950s to the 1990s

By examining in detail the successes and failures of different development models in one developing country over a four-decade period, this article sketches a development model for small economies in the 1990s as an alternative to the neoliberal model pushed by the International Monetary Fund. It reviews the experience of Jamaica with various development models from the 1950s to the 1990s, with special attention focused on the experience of the Seaga government of the 1980s. It also draws lessons from the successful development experience of small European countries and of the East Asian Newly Industrialized countries. In normative terms, the alternative development model attempts to combine growth with equity and democracy. In analytical terms, it takes account of the constellation of domestic forces and appropriate political strategies, as well as of international economic and political conditions. The main features are a strong role for the state in economic interactions with transnational corporations, in identification of export markets and promotion of export production, in selective protection of domestic industry with an export potential, in promotion of agriculture linked to industrial development, in improvement of human resources and promotion of regional economic integration. Within these parameters, a crucial role is assigned to the domestic private sector and a complementary one to foreign investment. Distribution is to be addressed primarily through distribution of productive assets and access to health care and education. Evelyne Huber is professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a coauthor ofDemocratic Socialism in Jamaica andCapitalist Development and Democracy. She is currently involved in research on the changing role of the state in Latin America and on comparative social policy. John D. Stephens is professor of political science and sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is a coauthor ofDemocratic Socialism in Jamaica andCapitalist Development and Democracy. His current research focuses on options for social democracy and comparative social policy.     

Foreign capital in Korea’s economic development, 1960–1985

The relationship between foreign capital and state autonomy is investigated in the rapidly developing South Korean economy. The changing composition and the sectoral distribution of the different types of foreign capital, the role of the Korean state in the acquisition and distribution of foreign capital, and the implications of foreign capital on the autonomy and capacity of the state are studied. The findings show that public loans and state-guaranteed commercial loans in the 1960s and 1970s have supported and strengthened state autonomy, while direct foreign investment (DFI) and commercial loans in the 1980s could potentially undermine it. Significant changes in the 1980s—rapid increase of Japanese DFI in hotels, commerical loans behaving more like DFI, and changing industrial orientation of the Korean economy toward more high-technology sectors—suggest that the types of foreign capital which are more independent of state control and more keen on market signals will increase in the future. This has importnat implications for future Korean economic development. Eun Mee Kim is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California. Kim has been conducting research on various topics of economic development and political development in South Korea and East Asia, and has published inPacific Focus, andThe Journal of Developing Societies. Kim’s current research includes the industrial organization and growth of the “chaebol” (business conglomerates) in Korea; the political economy of MNC investment by U.S. and Japanese corporations; and economic liberalization and political democratization in Korea and Taiwan.     

Indicators of political development

Development implies goals and the positing of goals requires values. Economists have generally agreed that the increase of wealth (or perhaps welfare) is the proper object of economic development. Political scientists, probably happily, have no similar agreement in regard to the appropriate goal for political development. Moreover, it is doubtful that the various aspects of political change are located along a single continuum. This is an empirical question but investigation ought to begin at least with provision for an n‐dimensional space. Finally, political scientists should concentrate on political change that has too often been neglected in favour of economic and purely social change.     

Good governance as a foundation for sustainable human development in sub-Saharan Africa

Data indicate that good governance and human development continue to be major issues throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The findings show a significant relationship between the measures of good governance and human development. The findings suggest that policies and efforts aimed at improving government effectiveness and political stability would have the most significant impact on human development and poverty reduction efforts. The findings lend support to the adoption of integrated policy approaches that take into consideration political development along with economic development to reduce poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.     

China and America in a Post‐Hegemonic Age

A great historical transition is underway from American‐led Globalization 1.0 to Globalization 2.0—the interdependence of plural identities where no one power or alliance of powers dominates. The G‐20 is floundering as the immediate global financial crisis has receded. The United Nations and the old Bretton Woods institutions—the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO—have lost their vigor and are struggling to adjust to the global powershift with the rise of the emerging economies. While Europe is paralyzed as the historic project of integration stalls, the world's two largest economies—the United States and China—are as yet unable to figure out how to share power. The danger now is that the geopolitical vacuum will invite assertions of national self‐interest that will unravel the rules‐based order that enabled stability and prosperity over recent decades. America's leading geopolitical strategist, China's most outspoken strategic thinker and one of Asia's leading global thinkers from Singapore offer their reflections on this state of affairs.     

For A New Bipolarity: China and Russia vs. America

A great historical transition is underway from American‐led Globalization 1.0 to Globalization 2.0—the interdependence of plural identities where no one power or alliance of powers dominates. The G‐20 is floundering as the immediate global financial crisis has receded. The United Nations and the old Bretton Woods institutions—the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO—have lost their vigor and are struggling to adjust to the global powershift with the rise of the emerging economies. While Europe is paralyzed as the historic project of integration stalls, the world's two largest economies—the United States and China—are as yet unable to figure out how to share power. The danger now is that the geopolitical vacuum will invite assertions of national self‐interest that will unravel the rules‐based order that enabled stability and prosperity over recent decades. America's leading geopolitical strategist, China's most outspoken strategic thinker and one of Asia's leading global thinkers from Singapore offer their reflections on this state of affairs.