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This paper offers a critical evaluation of the interrelation of law and economics in the context of development. The paper describes the current promotion of law reform by international institutions like the World Bank as the product of neoliberal economic theory. The analysis examines the role of law historically as an expression of economic orthodoxy, arguing that the Washington Consensus has determined the shape of law reforms, pointing them to the definition and protection of private property rights, aiming to separate politics from economics. The relative failure of these policies in their application to countries emerging from communism led to the expansion of the reform agenda to include market-supporting institutions, among them the rule of law. The paper assesses the extent to which this expansion means that the role of the law and the relationship of regulation to market have changed sufficiently to denote a Post-Washington Consensus. It concludes that the use of law reform to impose what neoliberalism considers 'rational' solutions undermines the legitimacy of democratic institutions in developing and transitional countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines why the Singapore developmental state, unlike the other East Asian developmental states, has shown no signs of devolving but instead appears to be strengthening its position within society by embarking upon several 'post-industrial' economic programmes. By utilising a class relations perspective, the paper argues that the resilience of the Singapore developmental state results from the continued weakness of the domestic capitalist class as well as from the state's collaboration with transnational capital and government-linked corporations. At the same time the working class has continuously been 'incorporated' by the state. To illustrate these processes, the paper examines Singapore's Biomedical Sciences Initiative, and the Work Restructuring Scheme, which have reinforced the supremacy of the Singapore developmental state, particularly in the economic sphere. The paper concludes that developmental states need not necessarily devolve, if they can continue to provide economic growth as well as to carefully 'manage' class relations in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This concluding paper examines issues that are seen as important for the future of tourism by drawing on key themes from the collection making up this special issue on tourism and development in the global South. Building on these, and noting some of the contradictions apparent in attempts to use tourism as an aid to development, it goes on to focus on ethics and responsibility, and education and training. As essential elements of both research and action agendas for this rapidly emerging and changing field, these should both be a priority for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fast-moving world of development policy, buzzwords play an important part in framing solutions. Today's development orthodoxies are captured in a seductive mix of such words, among which ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘poverty reduction’ take a prominent place. This paper takes a critical look at how these three terms have come to be used in international development policy, exploring how different configurations of words frame and justify particular kinds of development interventions. It analyses their use in the context of two contemporary development policy instruments, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (prsps) and the Millennium Development Goals (mdgs). We show how words that once spoke of politics and power have come to be reconfigured in the service of today's one-size-fits-all development recipes, spun into an apoliticised form that everyone can agree with. As such, we contend, their use in development policy may offer little hope of the world free of poverty that they are used to evoke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HIV/AIDS is the major threat to development, economic growth and poverty alleviation in much of Africa. And yet the full extent of the catastrophe facing the continent is only just being recognized, and still not by all. The international development targets set by the great and the good of the global community--or at least by those members of the community who attend the international summits that set these goals--do not consider what HIV/AIDS means and are unachievable. This paper begins by setting the scene, describing the epidemic, explaining why it is so important and what makes HIV/AIDS different. It then explores how the poverty/epidemic cycle works, whereby poverty increases the spread of HIV and AIDS increases poverty. It suggests we need to look beyond monetary poverty to understand these relationships. Finally the paper assesses what can and should be done to break the HIV/AIDS poverty cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture has been central to accounts of Thailand's modernisation and the rise of the national development project between the 1940s and the 1970s. However, the role of agriculture in the waning of national development is rarely explored critically in the Thai context. This paper focuses on agriculture and the role of the state in the shift from national development to globalisation. The first part of the paper examines the beginnings of Thailand's modern agricultural sector, before turning to the state-sponsored diversification of agriculture in the 1950s. The paper locates shifting state responses to agriculture in the late 1950s and 1960s in the context of specific political and historical social forces, before exploring the emergence of agri-food exports in the 1970s and the rise of agribusiness in the 1980s and 1990s. The paper concludes by commenting on the significance of the Thai state's role in the national development project and the globalisation project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, literature on the development of the Indian it industry has proliferated. Yet, paradoxically, an understanding of the dynamics behind this process of 'industrial catch-up' has remained limited. This can in part be attributed to the ideological flavour of the majority of studies, supported by a conventional wisdom that has attempted to draw links between the 1991 liberalisation of the Indian economy and the emergence and growth of the sector. Such works have both misrepresented the state as an obstacle to growth and overlooked its interventionist, facilitating role which, contrary to neoliberal postures, has increased substantially from the 1990s. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this literature, taking as point of departure a more rounded empirical account, bringing out the integral role of the state in promoting and determining the character of the Indian it industry's development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The developmental state remains one of the chief points of reference, both analytical and political, for those who reject the current neoliberal global order. In this paper the validity of this approach is examined theoretically and historically. After a preliminary description of the developmental state, the paper investigates in turn the four terms contained in the title—neoliberalism, globality, the state and development—from a historical materialist standpoint. It is then argued that any approach that aims to provide an effective roadmap for a progressive alternative to neoliberalism needs to centre its analysis on the Marxian concept of class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the post-Washington Consensus development paradigm, questioning whether the changes it embodies are sufficient to open up the development debate. We show that the new paradigm, which might be called 'Washington Pluralism', harbours three pluralist principles. It maintains that development is 1) contingent on culture; 2) contingent on history; and 3) requiring a multidisciplinary perspective. We assess these principles on the basis of an analogy with the Malaysian Model, which embodied the same three principles. We show that, in Malaysia, the first two evolved into cultural determinism and historicism, respectively, while the third created a discourse in which institutions, politics and culture were reduced to instruments for development. Consequentially the proliferation of the idea of a Malaysian Model has been associated with increasing authoritarianism in Malaysia rather than with increased openness. On the basis of this analogy we conclude that the three pluralist principles are not sufficient to create an open development debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism, a major global economic activity, is now growing fastest in the South. Promoted as a means of development since its modern beginnings, its benefits for developing countries remain debatable at best, even with the evolution of new, eg 'pro-poor' (ppt), forms of tourism and the advent of codes of practice and a more ethical approach among some consumers. It is, however, impossible to isolate tourism from the wider systemic processes against which it takes place. This introductory paper discusses some of the themes highlighted by the papers in this collection. They include the extent to which ppt may make a positive contribution to development, issues of control over the industry, the effects of climate change and tourism's relation to structural inequalities of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU claims that its free trade agreements with regional organisations of developing countries can promote the respective regions' integration into the world economy. Taking as case studies EU negotiations with the Southern African Development Community and Mercosur, the paper argues that the EU and its partners have different conceptions of integration into the world economy. For the EU the latter simply means multilateral trade liberalisation under the wto, while, for its partners, it involves increasing industrial production and exports of manufactured products. If the latter notion is accepted, an fta with the EU should increase European foreign direct investment into the region or at least increase their trade surpluses, thus increasing the resources available for support of local firms. The paper argues that an fta with the EU will not be likely to produce these results; thus the fta will simply be an instrument to promote market access for EU firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For all the claims made about the positive and negative consequences of corporate social responsibility (csr), there is surprisingly little information about the outcomes it delivers. This is especially true in the developing country context, where the claims made about the role csr can play in social and economic development are largely unsubstantiated. This is not to say that we know nothing about csr's impact: on the contrary, we know a considerable amount about certain areas of impact, but very little about csr's consequences for the intended beneficiaries in whose name it is being conducted. It is also not to claim we are unable to assess developmental impacts, although the wealth of experience of the international development community has not been adopted by csr practitioners. This paper demonstrates the limitations of current knowledge by identifying a framework that explains the types of impact we know about and how they primarily reflect business concerns. It makes clear that we know most about csr's impact on business itself and the benefits for business, and least about how csr affects the major societal issues it was intended to tackle. The paper concludes with a discussion of the consequences of this situation, and how it might be addressed in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to the Millennium Development Goal challenge to halve ‘extreme’ poverty by 2015, it has been argued that we have a moral duty to ensure that economic growth benefits the world's poorest. However, this morality is only partial if absolute poverty is defined by the somewhat arbitrary $1-a-day poverty line. If this moral duty exists, then we need to develop a morally defensible poverty line. Drawing on established health literature, this paper innovates by linking an analysis of world consumption to life outcome data, all from current World Bank datasets, to derive such a poverty line, termed here the Ethical Poverty Line (epl). The epl is comparable to the $2-a-day poverty line increasingly quoted by the World Bank. At this level, the epl not only quantifies the substantial scale of socioeconomic change needed to eliminate absolute poverty but also raises challenging questions about the scale of over-consumption in the developed world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The latest fashion in a sequence of global interventions by donors, designed to make a difference to the lives of poor people, is the use of budgetary support mechanisms. These have emerged afresh at the start of the twenty-first century as the increasingly dominant mode of desired aid delivery for many donors in the African context. However, this paper argues that such an approach to 'development', particularly when combined with an understanding of poverty largely as an absolute concept that can be eliminated through economic growth, will have damaging effects on the lives of the poor and marginalised across the continent The time is ripe for a new global agenda that seeks to place as much emphasis on equity as it does on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development partnerships are frequently represented as a way of giving recipient countries 'ownership' of their development programmes, whereas critics argue that partnerships are little more than conditionality by another name. Drawing on analyses of governmentality in modern liberal societies, this article advances an alternative understanding and argues that development partnerships can be regarded as a form of advanced liberal rule that increasingly govern through the explicit commitment to the self-government and agency of recipient states. Focusing in particular on the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), it argues that as a form of advanced liberal power, partnerships work not primarily as direct domination and imposition, but through promises of incorporation and inclusion. They derive their power through simultaneously excluding and incorporating, and by using freedom as a formula of rule partnerships help produce modern, self-disciplined citizens and states by enlisting them as responsible agents in their own development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada is not a peripheral country by most standards. However, since the 1960s, Canadian cities have sought to change the somewhat provincial image they have historically had, and they have used mega-events such as Olympic Games, World Expositions and other 'second order' international sports events to try to reposition themselves on the world stage. This paper examines the place promotion agendas of the two Canadian cities that have hosted Olympic Games, and will also comment on the aspirations of Vancouver, which will host the Winter Olympics in 2010. The core of the paper will concentrate on different aspects of 're-maging' the city: image building, signalling and identity transformation. Here I argue that an important but widely overlooked aspect of increasing the stature of a city involves changing the ways that citizens of that city think about themselves. The next section will examine whether the exposure and the opportunities for civic promotion afforded by a Games actually translate into economic growth. I will argue that the evidence for this is mixed at best Finally, the paper argues that the public money spent on Olympics typically brings the greatest benefits to local and regional elites, despite popular rhetoric that such events are good for the 'community as a whole'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If globalisation is the mighty tremor shaking the landscape of the 'project of development', then, in certain regions of the world, HIV/AIDS is surely its epicentre. Nonetheless, for all the burden of the disease, Western donor policy on HIV/AIDS still remains largely silent about the provision of anti-retroviral treatment. This paper seeks explanations for this pervasive medical neglect and donor preference for prevention programmes over treatment. The postcolonial approach taken in the paper is to regard donor policy on HIV/AIDS --as illustrated by the UK's Department for International Development and the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation--as cultural and political exchanges framed by prevailing representations of Africa. The different 'logics' which skew policies towards prevention are identified. For donors and African states alike, HIV/AIDS policies--like development interventions more generally--would benefit immensely by foregrounding the human right to health, including, critically, promoting treatment within a genuine 'prevention-care-treatment' policy continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-development theorists have declared development obsolete and bankrupt and have called for 'alternatives to development'. What do they mean by such calls and what should be the African response to such calls? In this paper I will attempt to address three important questions: first, what is meant by post-development theory's call for 'alternatives to development'? Second, why consider post-development theory from an African perspective? Third, what contributions can a consideration of African difference and diversity make towards debate on 'alternatives to development'? I conclude by arguing that increased consideration of the African experience would be valuable for all who are seeking alternative ways of dealing with the problems that development purports to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic and political crises that have engulfed Southeast Asia over recent years should not have come as such a surprise. A consideration of the region's historical position and economic development demonstrates just what formidable obstacles still constrain the nations of Southeast Asia as they attempt to restore growth and stability. This paper places the Southeast Asian experience in historical context, outlines the political and economic obstacles that continue to impede development, and considers some of the initiatives that have been undertaken at a regional level in the attempt to maintain a degree of stability and independence. Despite the novelty and potential importance of initiatives like the Asean +3 grouping, this paper argues that the continuing economic and strategic vulnerability of the Southeast Asian states will continue to profoundly shape their politics and limit their options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the dominant 'colour-blind' stance of development, arguing that the silence on race is a determining silence, which both masks and marks its centrality to the development project. The aim of the paper is to set out a basic framework for exploring this further. Noting many continuities with colonial formations, it identifies three critical dimensions of development which need to be interrogated: its material outcomes; its techniques of transformation; and its modes of knowing. Its analysis of race emphasises the diversity of understandings and the fluidity between them which underlie both their potential for transformation and their resilience. Following Omi and Winant's work on the USA, development is suggested to comprise a process of racial formation, made up of a vast range of diverse and contradictory racial projects which link the meaning of ethnic, racial and national identities to material entitlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1987 and 1996 Chinese exports increased by an average of 14% each year. During this decade, export growth became a crucial determinant of overall economic growth. However, as a consequence of the East Asian financial crises, Chinese export growth slowed, threatening the successful implementation of plans to restructure the domestic Chinese economy. This paper traces the reasons for the rapid growth and subsequent slowing of Chinese exports, and asks whether the strategy provides a solid basis for the long term development of the Chinese economy. In particular, the paper focuses on the role and significance of the processing trade in boosting Chinese exports. The high proportion of imported components in processed exports questions whether China is really benefiting as much from export growth as aggregate trade figures seem to suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the second part of the 1980s, and with the negotiation and implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico's growth-and industry-orientated policies have shifted from the realm of public policy to a market-driven domain. This paper suggests that economic openness and the empowerment of market actors is provoking a new regionalisation of Mexico's core economic activities that will play a crucial role in the coming century. For Mexico, the core of NAFTA, so to speak, encompasses a cross-border territoriality covering two key southern American states: Texas and California, and key Mexican states located from the border to the Central plateau of the country. I also argue in this paper that Mexico's changing economic territoriality, triggered by the dominance of the outward-looking economic model, is exacerbating regional inequalities that prevailed in the country even before the outset of economic reforms. This is mainly the case of Mexico's southern region, still very agriculture-orientated, and with a deficit of those export-orientated industries currently fuelling economic growth. This region is the least endowed with mobile assets-such as technology, capital, knowledge-in order to exploit the opportunities of market-orientated policies. Consequently, social cohesion is at stake, not necessarily provoked by the market, but exacerbated by it, and the market mechanism cannot by itself address this problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business managers name Africa's political instability as a key obstacle to economic development, but many companies continue to invest in Africa. The article explains this apparent contradiction by looking at the case of Shell in Nigeria. Nigeria experiences serious political instability, yet Shell is expanding its investment in the country. This article deals with sources of firm-specific political instability that have affected Shell in Nigeria in the past and attempts to explain why a specific corporation such as Shell may want to make investments in the country despite political instability. The examination of three different angles of Shell's activity, which forms the core of this paper, reveals that political instability does not hinder Shell from operating in Nigeria. Firstly, the international perspective illuminates in what way Nigeria may be more attractive to Shell than other countries. Profits in Nigeria appear to be higher than elsewhere, while Shell occupies a dominant market position unrivalled in most other countries. Secondly, the structural perspective illuminates the interconnectedness of Shell with state structures in Nigeria that may tie the company to Nigeria. Shell established a first mover advantage in the 1950s, since Nigeria was a British colony until 1960 and British oil companies were given preferential treatment. After independence, Shell managed to penetrate state structures which helped to hedge political risk in the country. Thirdly, the strategic perspective explores how Shell's strategic approaches may make political instability less significant to Shell. This article concludes that Shell has adopted to political instability. The conclusion that political instability can be conducive to business is significant since one expects political instability to be inherently harmful to business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1970s a general disenchantment with development efforts in Third World countries led to a search for alternative development strategies and a growing awareness that women, like the poor, were peripheral to the development efforts of major aid donors. In 1972 the United Nations designated 1975 as International Women's Year, highlighting the need to involve women in issues of economic development. During the past 20 years the 'women in development' approach, which seeks to recognise and integrate women in aid policies and programmes, has been incorporated into the aid practice of most development agencies. This paper traces the efforts of large aid agencies over the past two decades to integrate women into their aid programmes and discusses the main limitations and weaknesses of the WID approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become a platitude in the academic marketplace that the world has recently become more democratic. Yet the world is also increasingly divided between rich and poor. Of the more than 30 countries that have seen some sort of transition away from authoritarianism since 1974, 29 had a 1976 per capita GNP under $3,000 (p 62). That is, what has been called a global democratic revolution has taken place primarily in developing countries still badly afflicted by poverty and inequality. The purpose of this paper is to explore some recent attempts to theorise about the relationship between economic underdevelopment and democracy, and how democracy can be consolidated, in the developing world. The paper divides recent writings into three types and discusses each in turn: neo-modernisation theory, economistic approaches, and analyses of civil society. It then briefly discusses the problems of consolidating democracy in north-east Brazil, the largest region of poverty in the western hemisphere, in light of the previous theoretical discussion. The conclusion offers an overall assessment of the theoretical approaches and a summary of the problem underdevelopment poses for democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provision of higher education for international students has become an important source of income for Western universities and these students have attracted research attention. Based on an evaluation of international students as tourists, by conceptualising the international student experience in relation to different tourist experiences theorised in the existing tourism literature, this paper considers the experience of international students from developing countries at one British higher education institution. It reports the results gained from an empirical survey. The research indicates a high level of student satisfaction, although there is still much scope for improvement of particular facets; for example, language concerns and the mixing of UK-domiciled students with those from overseas. The conclusion focuses on the potential and implications for British universities to use the research results to highlight positive experiences and encourage good practice, and also provides some suggestions to international students on how to study and live in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Asian Development Bank (adb) has made increasingly important contributions to Asia's (and particularly East Asia's) regionalism over recent years, and especially since Haruhiko Kuroda became the Bank's president in February 2005. This paper argues that the adb's role here has become more significant because of the strong 'developmental' characteristics of East Asia's new regionalism. This is not least because, as a regional development bank, the adb has a predilection for linking development, regionalism and capacity-building together when promoting regional co-operation and integration (rci) in Asia. We may refer to this as 'developmental regionalism', where rci activities are particularly orientated to enhancing the economic capacity and prospects of less developed countries with the view of strengthening their integration into the regional economy, and thereby bringing greater coherence to regional community building overall. This analysis is partly based on field research undertaken by the author involving a series of research interviews conducted amongst adb officials and with outside analysts of the organisation. It first examines the evolution of the Bank's stance and policies on rci, and the impact made by President Kuroda and the newly formed Office of Regional Integration (orei) in this regard. The main developments of East Asia's new regionalism are then outlined from finance and trade perspectives. Thereafter, an evaluation is made of the adb's contributions toward the emerging developmental regionalism in East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates the terms 'developmental nationalism' and 'cultural nationalism' to conclude that, because developmental nationalisms always have cultural elements and cultural nationalisms, developmental ones, the precise, and varied, meanings of 'development' and 'culture' demand careful scrutiny, as do the shifting proportions of their combinations in different ideological - political formations and in the confrontations and partial accommodations between, and across, diverse nationalist traditions. The central argument is that we might get a better purchase on the developmental/cultural nationalism transition in the Indian case in juxtaposition with the problematic of poverty. Indian intellectuals turning towards self-conscious nationalism often placed the poverty of the country at the heart of their nationalism, making it basically a critique and the nation still in need of 'making' or constitution. The alternative has been to project the nation (or, with votaries of 'communal' politics - religious communities, Hindu or Muslim) as in every case an always already established glorious entity, with a resplendent history and culture, free of blemishes other than those imposed by external invasion or domination. Through four sets of case studies of these opposing traditions at four moments in the history of modern India, the focus here is on degrees of fetishisation of the nation, and their consequences in terms of the strengthening, or subversion, of hierarchies and power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines transition patterns in post-Gulf war Iraqi Kurdistan as a function of external aid, and the impact of these developments on relations between the Kurdistan region and Baghdad. It argues that, despite ethnic traditions and structural legacies, the asymmetrical and changing nature of aid has created new incentives for conflict and co-operation. Since 1991 aid has strengthened the Kurdistan region's power in relation to the state and increased leverage on the central government to accommodate Kurdish demands for autonomy. Yet it has also created an increasingly complex political - economic order and new interdependencies between the regions. The shift from relief aid to reconstruction within a neoliberal framework has helped open the Iraqi and Kurdish political economies by encouraging trade between the Kurdistan region, regional states and foreign governments. The creation of a federal Iraqi state has also led to financial and political linkages between the Kurdistan region and Baghdad and to new requirements for negotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the constraints on state policy autonomy engendered by globalisation. It evaluates the three major competing hypotheses on the decline in the state's inability to bargain with multinational corporations for the purpose of promoting economic development in light of two case studies of state - firm bargaining. The case studies are drawn from the mining sectors in Argentina and Chile in the late 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contends that some of the Millennium Development Goals do not distinguish between potential and actual achievements. In the case of education for instance, the completion of primary education by all students is not an end in itself, but rather an intermediary phase in the process of learning to read and write, and so on. Thus, meeting the stated Millennium Development Goal may in fact do little or nothing to enhance these more ultimate achievements. Using other, similar examples, we suggest that governments need to consider moving from means- to ends-based proxies, and in so doing, to reconsider whether the way that resources are allocated in any given sector is in fact the optimal one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2002 President George W Bush announced the creation of what many insiders have heralded as a revolutionary development initiative: the Millennium Challenge Account ( MCA ). The latter seeks to provide assistance to 79 of the world's poorest countries--many of which have been often equated with the term 'failed states'--so that they may reap the benefits of neoliberal-led globalisation. One of the most novel, and coercive, features of this development compact is the 'pre-emptive' method in which it will administer aid. Under the MCA , only countries that govern justly, invest in their people, and open their economies to foreign enterprise and entrepreneurship will qualify for funding. To this end the Bush administration has devised 16 eligibility criteria--ranging from civil liberties to 'days to start a business'--that each country must successfully pass before receiving aid. Despite its impact on normalising, and thus legitimating, the tendency towards the privatisation of aid and militarisation of development, there has been very little critical work on the MCA . This paper sets out to fill this gap in the literature by attempting to understand historically the MCA as a moment of American empire. In doing so, I suggest that, while the form of the MCA represents an unabashed articulation of US-led imperialism vis-à-vis the poorest regions in the South, the content of this allegedly novel strategy reflects the same goals and interests that underlie the neoliberal agenda, namely, that the path to increased growth and prosperity lies in countries' willingness and ability to adopt policies that promote economic freedom and the rule of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1997-98 Pacific Asian crises have left most established interpretations of the region's long-term growth in serious disarray. This paper begins the task of reinterpreting Pacific Asian economic growth through, in particular, an examination of the Thai experience. It is argued that, while Thailand's growth from the early 1960s was associated with the least interventionist state in Pacific Asia, by international standards there were high levels of price distortion. From the late 1970s changed circumstances reduced both the level and, more significantly, the effectiveness of the Thai developmental state. These developments, while playing a role in the sustaining of the Kingdom's rapid growth and structural change during the period 1986-96 also made the Kingdom extremely vulnerable to financial disruption. It is suggested that the Thai situation has wider application in seeking to understand Pacific Asian growth in general and the 1997-98 crisis in particular. This leads to a questioning of the IMF neoliberal-based interpretations of Pacific Asian growth and the prescriptions for dealing with the crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the causal factors for the May 1997 military intervention in Sierra Leone which unleashed complex political emergencies engulfing the entire country. The paper argues that the causal factors are historical, reflecting the political economy of underdevelopment in that country. Attention is drawn to the role played by personalised rule of the APC leadership, and structural factors such as deteriorating terms of trade and the irrationality of the post-colonial development strategy. Particular attention is drawn to the role played by IMF and World Bank Structural adjustment programmes in creating a corp of socially excluded intellectuals who could not find jobs either within the state or private sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dependency theory, which has always been regarded as the foremost 'revolutionary' alternative to the hegemonic ideology of Eurocentrism best expressed by modernisation theory, is equally Eurocentric and has been so from the beginning. The postmodernist perspective, where the notion of 'development' itself is questioned and its desirability is contested, certainly poses a greater challenge. The rise and decline of dependency theory may be interpreted in terms of the rise and decline of the early post-WWII optimism about the developmental prospects of the newly established Third World. With the failure of national development and the rise of globalism, dependency theory too has declined and ceased to be persuasive. By citing the Turkish literature on development from the 1930s and the 1980s and 1990s, this paper attempts to demonstrate that the rise of the notion of 'authenticity' as a critique of Eurocentrism is as universal a phenomenon today as was the rise of 'dependency' ideas half a century earlier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the experience of Turkey in pursuing economic development. The article will also to analyze the role of the state as an architect of structural transformation and its changing position in different stages of development. The point of departure of the paper will be the emergence of the national state and the Turkish paradigm. Part three will be devoted to the 1950s, a period of rapidly expanding capitalism. Part four will analyze the planning and import substitution policies in the 1960s and 1970s. Parts five and six are devoted to the radical changes of the 1980s, during which the military regime installed by the coup d' etat of September 1980 introduced a fundamental reform programme of economic liberalization in order to shift the economy's center of gravity from the public to the private sector, giving greater freedom to the market. It will be shown that the economic and political reforms introduced in the 1980s have contributed to major economic, political and social transformations which have also led the country to greater instability and uncertainties in the 1990s.

In The Real Wealth of Nations, Eisler proposes a holistic view of the economy, which would include the caring sectors—the household, unpaid community work and the environment—as an alternative to market-oriented economic models that have proven ineffective in dealing with the problems facing our local and global communities. Her inclusion of language change as part of a strategy for economic transformation implicitly recognises the socially constitutive function of discourse, a notion put forth by critical linguists. Based on these economic and linguistic perspectives, this article reports on a study that examined the social knowledge about poverty constructed through selected discourses to determine whether they communicate a narrow or holistic view of the economy. It proposes that economic planning for poverty reduction build upon the process of language change towards a caring economy as revealed by the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section comments on articles about economic development by David Dollar and Aart Kraay. Econometrics' perceived strength emanates from economics' foundation positivistic neutrality and economics mirroring natural sciences perceived non-bias. Thus, like natural sciences, economics claims to describe what is. Almost without exception, textbooks identify economics as concerned with what is rather than what should be. From this starting point econometrics draws in particular on the philosophy of logical positivism that is associated with the 1920 to 1930s work of Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath and Hans Reichenbach, among others.

At a time of increased financial volatility, understanding 'development' requires that we trace spheres of accountability in order to detect the consequences of shifts in power structures from the public to the private sectors, especially. By focusing on the business of sovereign credit ratings, I argue that ratings have been particularly influential in this context not only because of their function as a benchmark for private investment, but because they now also enter into the calculations of policy makers in developing countries who are increasingly compelled to implement policies that reduce their countries' sovereign risk at possibly high costs for sustained economic growth. I explain that governments' eagerness to signal their potential as reliable capital recipients allows for credit ratings to become a powerful site of governance. This outcome is not justified by the quality of rating agencies' output, but by the subjective power of the notion of risk in a crisis prone environment that shifts accountability--through this disproportional influence of credit rating agencies--from the public to the private realm. The Argentine crisis of 2001 is presented here as a case study that illustrates these dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]