Theories of Development

Question 1

Define ‘development’

Answer 1

the economic growth, industrialisation and living standards of a country

Question 2

What is the difference between developing and underdeveloped?

Answer 2

underdeveloped = less developed than countries with the same resources

Question 3

How can development be measured?

Answer 3

1. GDP (gross domestic product = total economic value of goods and services produced by a country in a year)
2. HDI (human dev index)
3. doctors per person
4. life expectancy
5. IMR

Question 4

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using GDP to measure development?

Answer 4

+ shows how economically dev they are (favoured by capitalists)
- doesn’t show how wealth is distributed e.g if a rich person moved into your village, the GDP per capita of the village would go up

Question 5

Why is the HDI good for measuring dev?

Answer 5

takes into account living standards e.g education, life expectancy as well as GDP per capita

Question 6

What is the marxist theory of development?

Answer 6

capitalism exploits underdev countries to make maximum profit e.g raw materials AKA dev theory

Question 7

What is modernisation theory?

Answer 7

all countries should move towards capitalism to be more productive, consuming and wealthy

Question 8

What are the 5 stages of Rostow’s model of dev?

Answer 8

1. basic agricultural society
2. transition (preparing for take off) - farmers make a surplus from selling cash crops so small towns dev
3. industrialisation (take off) - growth of manufacturing, people move to urban areas
4. drive to maturity - investments and large developing cities
5. mass consumption (developed) - wealth spreads, more consumption, service sector grows

Question 9

How do neoliberals believe countries should develop?

Answer 9

Friedman - believe in using free trade to dev

Question 10

Why do the world bank and IMF favour neoliberalism?

Answer 10

they say that removing tariffs and encouraging free trade leads to development - they use china as an example as they dev rapidly after 60s

Question 11

What are the criticisms of the neoliberal and modernisation theories?

Answer 11

1. they’re ethnocentric as they think modernising and free trade are the only ways to dev
2. assume that western dev methods are easy to copy for every country

Question 12

What is dependency theory?

Answer 12

Frank - MEDCs exploited LEDCs during colonial times and prevented them from developing

even though nowadays they have their own political power, they still rely on MEDCs finacially

Question 13

What do environmentalists argue about dev?

Answer 13

• it harms the environment as industrialisation causes pollution from industry and pesticides from modern farming

Question 14

What do post-dev theorists argue about dev?

Answer 14

• suggests that the term ‘developed’ undermines different cultures
• Escobar - MEDCs helping LEDCs is just another method of colonialism and societies should evolve in their own way

Question 15

What is world systems theory?

Answer 15

Wallerstein - treats the world as one big economy, divides world into core(rich), semi-periphery(developing) and periphery(underdev)

• core countries exploit the semi-periphery, and the semi-periphery exploit the periphery
• so there’s no unity to change the system
• says in order for the core to stay at the top, the periphery have to stay on the bottom

Question 16

What are the criticisms of WST?

Answer 16

• it’s deterministic - doesn’t allow for individual countries characteristics