Development Theory and Practice: Critical Perspectives [2001 ed.] 0333800702, 9780333800706

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development theory and practice critical perspectives EDITED BY UMA KOTHARI AND MARTIN MINOCUE

Development Theory and Practice

Development Theory and Practice Critical Perspectives

Edited by Uma Kothari and Martin Minogue

Selection and editorial matter and Chapters 1 and 10 © Uma Kothari and Martin Minogue 2002 Chapters 2-9 (in order) © Uma Kothari, Martin Minogue and Jocelyn DeJong; Uma Kothari; Maia Green; Paul Francis; Rosemary McGee, Martin Minogue; Philip Woodhouse; Paul Cammack 2002 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIT 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2I 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin's Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0 333 80070-2 hardback ISBN 0 333 80071-0 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Development theory and practice : critical perspectives / edited by Uma Kothari and Martin Minogue. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 333 80070 2 ISBN 0 333 80071 0 (pbk.) 1. Economic development. I. Kothari, Uma. II. Minogue, Martin. HD75 D498 2001 338.9 dc21 2001036096 10 11

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Copy-edited and typeset by Povey Edmondson Tavistock and Rochdale, England

Transferred to digital printing in 2006.

For my parents Tara and Shanti Kothari For Molly and Paddy

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Contents vm

Preface

ix

Notes on the Contributors 1

Critical Perspectives on Development: An Introduction

Uma Kothari and Martin Minogue 2

The Political Economy of Globalization

Uma Kothari, Martin Minogue and Jocelyn DeJong 3

Feminist and Postcolonial Challenges to Development

35

Uma Kothari 4

Social Development: Issues and Approaches

52

Maia Green 5

Social Capital, Civil Society and Social Exclusion

71

Paul Francis 6

Participating in Development

92

Rosemary McGee 7

16

Power to the People? Good Governance and the Reshaping of the State

117

Martin Minogue 8

Development Policies and Environmental Agendas

136

Philip Woodhouse 9

Neoliberalism, the World Bank and the New Politics of Development

157

Paul Cammack 10 Conclusion: Orthodoxy and its Alternatives in Contemporary Development

Martin Minogue and Uma Kothari

179

Bibliography

191

Index

212 Vll

Preface The contributors to this book have been engaged in teaching, researching, and advising on development issues for the past two decades or more. In that time the ‘development agenda’ has been substantially transformed by rapid political and economic changes, which in turn have radically altered the thrust and focus of teaching and research on development. It therefore seemed to us an appro¬ priate time to take stock of the development studies field, and in particular to evaluate the dominant ideas that appear to govern development practice and to consider the extent to which alternative ideas (and practices) might challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. We thank the many colleagues - not only at our own university but also in a number of other universities, countries and development agencies - who have helped to shape the ideas and interests of the contributors to this book. We also owe thanks to the truly international body of students who bring to our courses real experience and understanding of development practice, and from whom we constantly learn. We are particularly grateful to our Publisher Steven Kennedy, who always gave sympathetic encouragement to our project; and to Karen Hunt, who worked wonders to produce a respectable typescript at very short notice. Uma Kothari Martin Minogue

Notes on the Contributors Paul Cammack is Professor of Government at the University of Manchester and Director of Graduate Studies, Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester. Jocelyn DeJong is a Lecturer at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester. Her specialist area is the Middle East, and she has a particular interest in health and develop¬ ment, and global an^ social policy. Paul Francis is a social anthropologist and has worked on the institutionalization of social analysis for the World Bank, the DFID (UK) and various United Nations agencies. Currently a Senior Lecturer in Social Development at the School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, he has published on social aspects of rural development, agricultural research, forestry, primary educa¬ tion, involuntary resettlement and participatory development. Maia Green is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She is a social development consultant, specializing in Africa, and was formerly a Social Development Adviser at the DFID (UK). Uma Kothari is Senior Lecturer in Social Development at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester. She teaches on development theory and practice, and gender and development. Her research interests are migration processes, coloni¬ alism and development studies, industrialization and export-proces¬ sing zones, and agrarian change. Rosemary McGee was formerly a Research Associate at the Univer¬ sity of Manchester and is now a Fellow of the Institute of Develop¬ ment Studies at the University of Sussex, where she is a member of the Participation Group. She began her contribution to this book while serving as Policy Officer at Christian Aid. She has conducted extensive field research on poverty, gender and participation in Latin America, and the focus of her current work is the promotion of participatory policy processes in developing countries. IX

x

Notes on the Contributors

Martin Minogue is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester. From 1984 to 1996 he was Director of the University’s International Development Centre. He has published extensively in the area of comparative public policy and development, and has undertaken consultancies for the United Nations Development Programme, the Asian Development Bank, the British Council, the UK’s Department for International Development, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council. Philip Woodhouse is Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester.

1 Critical Perspectives on Development: An Introduction UMA KOTHARI AND MARTIN MINOGUE /

What We Are Trying To Do in This Book Development is ridden with paradoxes. The first is that, while it appears on the face of things to be very much characterized by a set of highly practical concerns, few subjects are more bedevilled by con¬ tested theories. The second is that while development undoubtedly takes place in some places, as measured by shifts in economic growth, relative poverty and inequality have also increased. Perhaps a third paradox is that the more precisely we try to identify coherent theories and measure practical changes, the less confidence we have in the predictability of future events, particularly on a global scale. The development agenda has changed dramatically in the last few decades, as is clear from a perusal of Leeson and Minogue (1988). The latter text examines the contributions made to development analysis by the various social science disciplines (economics, politics, sociol¬ ogy, anthropology, history), and an attempt is made to examine the problems of interdisciplinarity and to suggest ways forward in the pursuit of a distinctive cross-disciplinary perspective on development thought and practice. The emphasis, though, is undeniably theoretical and draws attention to the intellectual conflicts that characterized most development studies literature in the 1980s. As the introductory chapter shows (ibid., 1988), the bulk of this literature presented two main paradigms (one neo-Marxist, the other representing neoclassical economics), between which there was a tremendous gulf, with each camp talking past the other. At the same time each camp was 1

2

Critical Perspectives on Development

characterized by significant internal differences, and these intellectual divisions divided the development literature into specific disciplines. At the time Leeson called for efforts to construct a more cohesive interdisciplinary perspective, but it is worth noting in the light of subsequent developments his prescient comment that ‘the role played by Marxism in ... development studies should not ... cause nervous colleagues to have sleepless nights’ (ibid., p. 41). Perhaps it is the World Bank and other major players in the development industry who should cause us sleepless nights now, since while they may appear to accommodate different views of what should constitute development, they give active support to a parti¬ cular, capitalist-friendly, neoliberal version. The present development agenda is very much the practical agenda set out in the programmes of major multilateral and bilateral aid donors. Few of the issues on this agenda could be said to be entirely new: economic growth, poverty reduction, the reform of trade regimes, the reduction of international debt, decentralization, democratization, social develop¬ ment and environmental issues have been standard priorities for at least three decades. More recent priorities, such as good governance, privatization and economic transition, owe more to the political collapse of socialism than to clearly thought out intellectual perspec¬ tives. Efforts to reconceptualize the field have arguably led to some shift in perspective by practitioners in relation to, for example, gender, environmental sustainability and social capital. The contem¬ porary development agenda is therefore a combination of old and new, but it might be seen as being realized within a global framework that in political terms at least has changed dramatically. The chapters in this book present the main issues on the agenda, and analyze the dominant framework within which the development agenda is articulated and implemented. They also seek to explain the persistence of old orthodoxies and the construction of new ones, while presenting the case for alternative approaches where the dominant orthodoxies (whether old, new or in combination) are open to criticism either for their partiality or their ineffectiveness.

Has Development Failed? In this book we do not assert that development has been a success, rather we argue that there has been a failure of the postwar develop¬ ment project. As Sachs (1992, p. 1) writes,

Uma Kothari and Martin Minogue

3

The idea of development stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape. Delusion and disappointment, failures and crime have been the steady companions of development and they tell a common story: it did not work. Despite some gains in social and economic development, the persis¬ tence of poverty and inequality, particularly in the midst of economic affluence, continues to be one of the most problematic issues in development today (Hanmer et ah, 1997). The balance sheet of human development (Table 1.1) highlights the fact that while progress has been made in some social development spheres for some people, for others there has been increased deprivation and inequality in the distribution of benefits. Figure 1.1 illustrates the increasing income inequalities between rich and poor countries. What the figures clearly demonstrate is that while development has occurred in terms of absolute growth, the disparities between countries and between the people within them have widened. At the very least this should cause us to question the particular notion of development with which we are working and the criteria used to assess success. Despite the optimism and confidence amongst officials in bilateral and multilateral agencies that ‘aid matters’ and can bring about successful development (see Therien and Lloyd, 2000), there have recently been challenges to this consensus, particularly in relation to the links between poverty and development. These critiques have largely been brought about by the recognition that much development planning has failed to reduce inequalities and alleviate poverty (see Thomas, 2000). Schuurman (1993) suggests that development reached an impasse in the mid 1980s because of a crisis at two levels: a crisis in the Third World in terms of increasing levels of poverty, exclusion and inequality; and a crisis in development thinking, with the dominant theories and paradigms that had dominated our under¬ standings and explanations of the world being challenged and subse¬ quently losing their hegemony (Schuurman, 1993, 2000). The critiques of these hegemonic discourses, articulated in much development theory, arose partly because of a commitment to orthodox ideas of development that were too deterministic and dogmatic. Schuurman (2000, p. 9) writes: In the 1980s development pessimism had already set in because it was realized that the gap between poor and rich countries continues to widen, that where economic growth had occurred it had

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