1. International Development Flashcards
What is International Development?
“the organized intervention in collective affairs according to a standard of improvement” (Pieterse, 2010: 3).
Transnationalisation of Production and Consumption
How today creating conditions for low cost production tend to be a core element of Export-oriented industrialisation strategies of national development.
Theories of Globalisation they expect different outcomes from “international development”
Strategies (optimistic, neoliberal hyperglobalisers do not talk about “development” just “economic growth”).
Development origins
The Classical Political Economists (1800s) sought to explain and devise progress (Enlightenment)
Enlightenment and Emergence of capitalism
The Classical Political Economists sought “progress” through the liberation from Feudal society with regard to production and trade.
“Development” - Origins Karl Marx
“Progress” involved the construction of capitalist social relations, benefiting capital and at the expense of the working class.
Marx thought that capitalism was
an extraordinary process, both progressive and unsustainable.
Since mid-19th C., capitalism has indeed become internationalised
World markets have integrated and repeatedly entered into crises
In post-World War II period development came to relate to
3rd world of former colonies and its underdevelopment to point to failure of colonial economics
and advocate their independence.
The Cold War period saw “development” becoming a highly politicised notion
Western Development Economics vs. Central Planning
Liberal Modernisation Theory (1960-)
Linear understanding made of universal steps toward progress.
Dependency Theory (1960-)
dependent accumulation leads to the “development of underdevelopment”.
Human Development (1980-)
“capacitation” and choice enlargement
Neoliberalism (1980-)
Debt crisis and return to neoclassical economics
Washington Consensus
Free markets (deregulation, liberalisation and privatisation)
Structural adjustment programmes.
Global Value Chains (Gereffi 2013)
Governance of value chains and Upgrading of national economies.
Geographic consolidation and value chain consolidation
Power shift from lead firms towards growing, semi-autonomous supplier firms in semi-periphery.
Emergence of new development paradigms
What is BRICS?
Association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
Changing conditions after the Global Financial Crisis (2007-9):
End of Washington Consensus
Continued emergence of ”semi-peripheral” BRICS
Accelerated weakening of advanced ”core” economies.
Gereffi Criticisms
BRICS too positive a picture depicted by Gereffi.
Need better understanding of changing relational, interscalar and uneven dynamic of development.
How to understand impact of growing significance of financial flows and crises? Monetary hierarchies and “global wealth chains”
What is Neoliberalism?
Free-market ideological doctrine becoming prominent in early 1980s
Neoliberalism Brenner et al 2010
Extending “the structural power of transnational corporations
Resulting in dramatic acceleration of the integration of economic processes beyond national state boundaries
In Liberal Market Economies (LMEs),
“Market coordination”: “firms rely more heavily on market relations to solve coordination problems” (Hall and Soskice, 2001: 27)
Coordinated Market Economies (CMEs)
Firms reach equilibria through networks, governmental regulation, social bargaining
Two broad models of firm interest coordination able to survive competitive pressures.
Liberal Market Economies (LMEs)
Coordinated Market Economies (CMEs)
Criticisms of LME and CME
Limited range of types of firm-coordination
Unintentionally promoting neoliberal ideology:
Implicit assumption of superiority of LME over
CME
Privileging the firm at national scale, cutting it off from the international
False impressions of coherence
Removes real agency
Fails to appreciate differential impact of overlapping power hierarchies on strategies of different actors
Extreme Liberalism
Advocates the near total removal of the state from the economy.
Neoliberalism key actor
Rational, utility-maximising Individual.
Neoliberal natural playing field of actors is
“the market”
The state is only necessary to protect individuals from one another.
To create “free markets”
Extraordinarily complex regulatory frameworks and big bureaucracies are required
(e.g. the European Single Market)
which are disliked by neoliberalism.
8 Features of The Washington Consensus Programmes
- Cutting public expenditure
- Focusing economic output on direct export and resource extraction
- Devaluation of currencies
- Trade liberalisation, or lifting import and export restrictions
- Increasing the stability of investment (by supplementing FDI with the opening of domestic stock markets)
- Balancing budgets and not overspending
- Removing price controls and state subsidies
- Privatisation of all or part of state-owned firms
