Development Theory Learning the Lessons and Moving On

Development Theory:Learning the Lessons and Moving On

PETER W, PRESTON

The familiar pattem of the post-Second World War system, with itstwo great powers, a divided Europe and a marginalised Third Worldwas decisively superseded in the 1989-91 period of the collapse of thepolitical-cultural project of state-socialism in Eastern Europe and theUSSR. As the associated patterns of thought, the ideologicalapparatus of 'cold war\ dissolved, a novel global industrial-capitalist pattern became visible in a tripolar system with three keyregions: Europe, the Americas and Pacific Asia. The ways in which aseries of agent-groups understand themselves and their place in theglobal system are presently undergoing significant change. At thesame time, ongoing reflection within mainstream social theorising, inwhich self-understanding has shifted from naturalistic modelling tointerpretation and criticism, has recovered the classical Europeanconcern for complex change. In the more restricted sphere ofdevelopment theory, these intermingled changes imply that claims toauthoritative technical expertise oriented to recapitulation must beset aside in favour of a notion of dialogue between First Worldtheorists, policy-makers and political actors, and their counterpartsin the Third World, and oriented to understanding the unfoldingdynamics of industrial capitalism within the peripheral areas of theglobal system.

INTRODUCTION

This article is inteliectually located within the ititerpretive-critical tradition ofsocial theorising' and will consider the general situation of work on ThirdWorld- development theory. It is concerned with the underlying assumptions ofwork within this familiar area, and is prompted by the thought that it is 'timeto move on' to address contemporary issues.' Substantively, I will argue thatthe original impetus to development theory work in decolonisation and coldwar is now over, and that the familiar sphere of development theory work must

Peter W. Preston, Department of Political Science and International Studies, University ofBirmingham, Birmingham BI5 2TT. E-mail prestonp@css,bham,ac.uk

The European Journal of Development Research, Vol,l I. No I June 1999 pp 1-29PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS. I ONDON

2 THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH

be revised. I will argue that it is time for First World theorists who, byimplication, no longer have any direct engagement with, or responsibility for,these matters, to set down the lessons for social science which have beenlearned over the years and then to (i) move on to new concerns centred uponthe analysis of complex change, and/or (ii) reground within an intellectuallyrestricted framework any continuing concern for development.

In respect of the first alternative a new wide-ranging area of enquiry can beposited which will be concerned with the dynamics of complex change withinthe tripolar global system. Here the analysis of complex change within theinterdependent tripolar global industrial-capitalist system is a matter of thecharacterisation of patterns of structural change and the related elucidation ofthe ways in which groups read the system and order their projects. Thereafter,it is within this context, as a sub-set of the more general concern, that anycontinuing concern with the familiar agendas of development work can bepursued. The article will be organised in the form of a series of discretediscussions:' (i) a note on the broad post-Second World War career ofdevelopment theory; (ii) a reaffirmation of the intellectual and ethicalresources of the modernist project; (iii) an outline of a regrounded concern fordevelopment. Overall, the article seeks to elucidate a series of interrelatedexchanges between sweeping patterns of structural change and diversecurrents of intellectual reflection.

L THE CAREER OF DEVELOPMENT THEORY RECALLED

The material of post-Second World War development theory inherits a longtradition of concern on the part of the First World with the Third World." Thetheories of development proposed have to be understood as quite particularinterventions within the patterns of argument and action which eventuallyconstitute and drive the dynamic ofthe global system which we inhabit." In thiscontext the contributions of development theorists are both important, as theyare the people who have made the often influential arguments, and of little realaccount when set against the scope ofthe dynamics of complex change whichthey would grasp and order.^

Yet, in the real world confusion of debate and action it is important thatscholarship has a clear idea of its own potential contribution,' and to this endit is necessary to review the familiar spread of development theories. Thedescriptive material presented is not intended to serve as potted history, ratherit is a way of uncovering those ideas which are constitutive of various strandsof development discourse. It is these deep seated assumptions which areimportant as their critical review will allow the subsequent presentation of theoutline of a role for scholarship centred upon the analysis of complex change.

The descriptive material could be ordered in a number of ways. It is

DEVELOPMENT THEORY: LEARNING THE LESSONS AND MOVING ON 3

possible to record an historical sequence of widely debated formal (more orless) theories; thus one could write a history of development theory ideas. Atthe same time it is clear that theoretical departures both had key intellectual-practical commitments, as to how the world might be understood and changeeffectively secured, and secured distinctive institutional bases from which tooperate; thus one could present the material in terms of a series of discretediscourses.' In this review I will subsume the history of development ideaswithm a schema of discourses. Thus we can say that a series of formal theorieshave been produced, which have found a series of institutional bases, andthereafter a series of typical lines of action have been proposed and/or pursued.I will discuss three broad discourses, revolving around fundamentalconstitutive intellectual-practical commitments in respect of state, market andpolity.

Discourses of the StateAt the outset, looking to work centred on the role of the state, the UnitedNations based work of growth theory provided an early UK-influenced'" post-Second World War statement which subsequently found further expression inthe two disparate areas of modernisation theory and institutional theory.Modernisation theory was an influential delimited-formal ideology within thecold war period, and was embraced by the institutions of global industrial-capitalism, and can be taken as the mainstream orthodoxy of developmenttheory, whereas institutional theory, which was both intellectually moresophisticated and politically radical, found a base in the organisations of theUnited Nations. A distinctive alternative approach was produced in LatinAmerica in the form of dependency theory which found an early base withinthe UN agency ECLA and the state machines of the countries of the region.

il) Modernisation and the pursuit of effective nation statehood: Theintellectual mainstream of development theory, with its key idea ofmodernisation, derives from the post-Second World War episode of thedissolution of the global system of formal colonial territories, which had beenadministered from a series of particular metropolitan centres," within theparticular context of US economic and military power and related cold wardivision [Kolko, 1968; Walker, 1994]. It was a quite particular and distinctivemilieu. As the global system underwent extensive re-ordering, new structuralpatterns emerged along with new agents. The replacement elites of the newstates of the Third World were the addressees of a new schedule of argumentand action. In respect of discourses of development at this particular time, aseries of factors came together, including the logic of the industrial-capitalistsystem, nationalist rhetoric and available economic and social theory, whichtogether worked to impute to the replacement elites of the new nation-states of


the Third World the task of the pursuit of effective nation statehood, theplanned recapitulation of the historical development experience of the FirstWorld.''

The industrial-capitalist system requires ordered access to an extensivespread of territories, for resources and markets. As the machineries of thecolonial system collapsed, the requirement of ordered access was secured interms of the idea of nation statehood (rather than any return to the status quoante or UN trusteeship, etc.). The preference for nation statehood was a clearpreoccupation with the nationalist leaders who offered their putativepopulations/citizens the promise of material advance in exchange for politicalsupport. The mixture of ideas about nations, states and material advance werealso present within available social scientific theory which, in reaction to the1930s depression, coupled to the lessons of war mobilisation, was concernedwith the planned achievement of economic advance and social welfare.

It is clear that for the new replacement elites in the Third World a set ofdemands would coincide to include, crucially, the demands of the globalindustrial-capitalist system, those of their own people which flow from therhetoric deployed by nationalists in their pursuit of independence, and theintellectual demands of available theory. The task of the pursuit of effectivenation statehood is both irresistibly imputed to, and rhetorically embraced by,the new elite. On this view, ruling elites, having removed by various means thecolonial authorities, will face the complex task of actually building the newnation-state. The elite must secure political and social stability, because inplace of colonial arrangements there must be new patterns of authority andnew political mechanisms to absorb and resolve inter-group conflicts. Theymust rapidly engender sentiments of political and cultural coherence, ascitizens must live the experience of membership of a single nation, a singlecommunity. Finally, the new elite must pursue economic development, as thisis the base-line of claims to legitimacy. It is clear that once this objective hadbeen promulgated, the whole machinery of the development game came intoaction, and First World theorists came to lodge claims to relevant knowledge,expertise and ethic.

The expectations which were held by early theorists were stronglyinfluenced by the experience of the reconstruction of Europe in the post-Second World War period. It came to be thought that the social scientificknowledge was available to characterise authoritatively system dynamics andconstruct appropriate machineries of intervention. The pursuit of the goal ofeffective nation statehood could be presented in terms of planning atinternational, national, regional and local levels. Additionally, such knowledgeand expertise were seen to be the property of First World experts, and theirlocal co-workers. An asymmetric relationship was built into the very discourseitself. Positive social scientific knowledge was Western, and the recipients in

DEVELOPMHNT THEORY: LEARNING THE LESSONS AND MOVING ON 5

the Third World were taken to be essentially passive consumers of theproffered schemes. The final element was an appropriate ethic; that the FirstWorld ought to help the Third World was taken to be an ethical injunctionwhich flowed from possession of available knowledge and relevant materialpower.''

Overall it is clear that orthodox development discourse deployed a culture-bound package of ideas centred upon the pursuit of effective nation statehood,and thereafter, the whole panoply of the international development businessgrew up. But the resultant intellectual construct looks difficult to sustain: (i)the requisite knowledge was not there (and tbis has less to do witb any failingsof research than the unreflective acceptance of essentially positivistic modelsof the nature of social science, the knowledge it can produce and the socialroles it can underpin); (ii) the expertise in respect of planning was not available(and again this is not so much a matter of specifiable errors and incompetencesas it is the affirmation of wildly overconfident expectations of tbe efficacy ofthe planning process): and (iii) the etbic was only ever dubiously relevant (andonce again it is not a problem of direct error, rather it is a matter ofunreflectively deployed ideas, where, in retrospect, it seems clear that tbe ethicaffirmed was that of the First World liberal-democratic reformism familiar inthe post-war drive for domestic metropolitan economic and social reform).

(2) The pursuit of autonomous national development: A counter-statement tothe materials of the above-noted positions is available in the work ofdependency theory. The approach was shaped by the particular historicalexperience of Latin America in the 1940s and 1950s when long establishedtrading and economic patterns were disturbed by the episode of the SecondWorld War. The period saw both a significant measure of import-substitutingindustrialisation and the emergence of a new metropolitan focus replacingBritain, in the USA.'^

The circumstances of di.sruption, advance and reorientation were theorisedby a group of economists at HCLA.'^ A central intellectual departure was therejection of economic theories of international specialisation and exchangewithin a complementary international division of labour, the familiar theory ofcomparative advantage, whicb had consigned Latin America to the role ofprimary product exporter, in favour of a disposition to model realisticallynational economies .so as to inform rationally tbe pursuit of industrialdevelopment. The work issued in a novel structuralist economics whichinsisted that the familiar neo-classical derived images of integrated self-regulating national economic systems were inappropriate to peripheraleconomies, which were more accurately described as comprising a series ofmore or less loosely related sectors, each with their own distinctive links to thewider national and global systems, and each with their own policy and political


concerns. The materials of structuralist economics were oriented to informingthe policy positions of governments concerned specifically with autonomousnational development.

The work of structuralist economics provided the intellectual base uponwhich the broader schemes of dependency theory were subsequentlyarticulated. The shift can be taken to revolve around, first, the practicalproblems experienced by Latin American governments, as early economicsuccess gave way to a series of problems (including the costs of importingtechnology, the limitations of relatively small domestic markets, problems ofrural-urban migration and the development of new patterns of internalinequalities coupled to damaging currency inflations); and, second, therealisation that the centres of economic and financial power structurescircumscribing national aspirations were located within the metropolitancentres of the industrial capitalist system. It is at this point that structuralistanalyses modulate into the work of dependency theory. Against the schemes ofanalysis and policy advice derived from the work of First Worid developmenttheorists who drew on the material of orthodox economics, the proponents ofdependency stressed: (i) the importance of considering both the historicalexperience of peripheral countries and the phases of their involvement withinwider encompassing systems; (ii) the necessity of identifying the specificpolitical-economic, social-institutional and cultural linkages of centres andperipheries; and (iii) the requirement for active state involvement in the pursuitof development.

In contrast to both the aspirations to technical neutral expertise advancedby the orthodox proponents of state-centred development theory and theeconomic preference of economic liberals for putatively technical marketmechanisms, the theorists of dependency advanced a prospective, multi-disciplinary and engaged theory oriented to the political practice of elitescommitted to the pursuit of national strategies of development. In this thetheorists of dependency recall the styles and concerns of the theorists of theclassical European tradition of social theorising. However, an early influentialEnglish-language presentation of the material of this tradition took the form ofpolemical interventions within intra-First Worid theoretical debates, and thishad the unfortunate effect of confusing the reception of the lessons ofdependency theory as those ill-disposed on political grounds were able tocharacterise the entire approach as left-wing propaganda."

As the optimism of the 1960s in respect of the prospects for Third Woriddevelopment slowly declined through the 1970s, culminating in the reaction ofthe 1980s, the dependency approach was dismissed as intellectuallymisconceived. And in retrospect, it seems clear that the political activism ofthe eariy English-language proponents of dependency theory was both naivelyover-optimistic and significantly underestimated the capacity of the


metropolitan centres, in particular the USA, to organise, finance and arm worldwide reaction.'^ However, the key claim of dependency theory was always thattbe present circumstances of the Third World were a product of those political-economic, social-institutional and cultural structures associated with thehistorical development of the global industrial-capitalist system. The structureswhicb enfold the countries of the Third World, and which circumscribe theiractions, are taken to have developed over time around tbe schedules ofinterests of the metropolitan core countries. These insights were and remaincrucial.

Discourses of the MarketIn the period following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 thepost-war Fordist based class compromise, intellectually enshrined in tbeKeynesian liberal-democratic growth and welfare package, came under severeintellectual and political pressure, and within the Atlantic sphere effectivepower was transferred from productive-capital to finance-capital."*Throughoutthe 1980s tbere was a strong political and intellectual resurgence of economicliberalism, and the central role of the marketplace was stressed.

Tbe core elements of the market model, ostensibly a satisfaction-maximising automatic asocial mechanism, involve claims in respect of afundamental naturally given situation of scarcity, the crucial role of the privateownership of the means of production and the existence of competition tosupply sovereign consumers. The New Right argued that the model capturedthe essential character of all human economic behaviour. The business ofeconomic research was to uncover the mechanisms of this given reality so asbetter to inform the practice of the rule-setting minimum state and keyeconomic agents such as firms. However, it is clear that the model of themarket system does not describe the simple givens of human existence; ratherit is an elaborate intellectual construct, originally designed to replacenineteenth-century political economy, seen by its critics as latently socialist,'"which serves to advance the liberal political-cultural project.

The liberal market model unpacks into a series of claims: (i) economically,tbe claim is that as free markets act efficiently to distribute knowledge andresources around the economic system, material welfare will be maximised;(ii) socially, the claim is that as action and responsibility for action reside withthe person of tbe individual, tbe liberal individualist social system will ensurethat moral worth is maximised; (iii) politically, the claim is tbat as liberalismoffers a balanced solution to the problems of deploying, distributing andcontrolling power, such systems maximise political freedoms; and finally, (iv)epistemologically, the whole package is buttressed by the claim to genuinepositive social scientific knowledge, thus we have a claim to maximiseknowledge and effective action.

8 THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OE DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH

The doctrines of the spontaneous order of the marketplace have foundwidespread affirmation within development theory. Indeed, in the hands of theNew Right the work of the neo-classical economic theorists of the self-regulating market informed a counter-revolution in Third World developmenttheory.^" The role of the marketplace was central to the approach todevelopment advocated by the New Right and an influential institutional homefor these intellectual and ideological departures was found in the Washingtonbased IMF and Worid Bank. Around the core celebration of the market a seriesof proposals were made: (i) the establishment of the minimum state and therelated freeing of market forces with privatisation, deregulation, and sharplyreduced government spending; (ii) the removal of socio-political inhibitions tomarket functions with repression of trades unions, removal of welfarelegislation, and relaxation of government controls on private firms; (iii) theencouragement of enterprise, with tax breaks for business, the affirmation of aright to manage, and the promulgation of ideas of popular capitalism; and (iv)opening up economies to the wider global system, with the removal of tariffand non-tariff barriers and the free movement of capital.-' The 1980s sawactive New Right experiments in the First and Third Worlds produceunemployment, reductions in social welfare, declining domesticmanufacturing production, and large public and private debt burdens." In the1990s the central preoccupation with deregulation has found furtherexpression in a series of damaging financial market crises in Europe, Mexico,Asia, Russia and Latin America.

In my view, the liberal package, read as social scientific description/analysisof economic activity, is an elaborate nonsense,-' and as a political goal,unsatisfactory."' Yet, in the present context the major objection to the substantiveposition of the liberal-market theorists is not that they favour markets in place ofplanning (because markets are always and everywhere social institutions, and arethus elaborately ordered and controlled); rather it is that they adopt anothersimplistic recipe-interventionism, this time in favour of markets.

Discourses of Political LifeIt is to the spheres of social movements, NGOs and scholarly researchorganisations that we have to look to discover arguments which revolve aroundthe role of the polity.'' The central concern of such exercises is with the role ofpolitical life and the public sphere in respect of the familiar spread of concernsof development work. The university world within First and Third Worlds hasover the years offered a base for many sceptical approaches to development,yet it might also be said that the key vehicle of alternative thinking and practiceis to be found in the efforts of non-mainstream development agencies such associal movements, charities and NGOs, whose institutional bases lie in thepolitical structures of local communities.


One might cite tbe following work which looks to the sphere of politics ascentral to human life:-" (i) theorists of tbe centrality of the political, both inprinciple and practice;" (ii) work detailing the expansion of the global system,the construction of an encompassing economic and political unity;-" (iii)theorists of the fluidity of the global system and its internal complexity;-' (iv)work detailing the changing cultural contexts of agent groups;'" and (v) recentpresentations of tbe necessity of dialogue across the cultural constituents of tbecomplex and diverse global system [Said, 1993; Hettne, 1990]. Tbe argumentpresented here rests on the work of tbese theorists and attempts, against thediscourses noted earlier, to draw from tbese sometimes disparate materials theoutline of an emergent alternative position, essentially an affirmation of theclassical European tradition of social theorising oriented to tbe emancipatoryinterpretive-critical analysis of the dynamics of complex change.

Against critics who might be tempted to characterise this proposedrepresentation of the classical European tradition of social theorising aseurocentric, and thus intellectually untenable from the outset, the followingpoints might be made: (i) it can be argued that formal reflexivity is a necessarycondition of any scholarship and that enquiry needs must be routinely self-critical (and the key objection carried in the cbarge of 'centrism' of any varietyis precisely that the work in question does not consider the context of theproduction of analyses and wrongly supposes that tbe materials of a localtradition can be taken to be universal); (ii) it can be argued, along with thegrain of the arguments utilised by the critics of 'centrisms' of various sorts,that all and any social scientific analysis is bound by context, whicb is to saythat we cannot step outside the resources of tbe culture whicb we inhabit, andthis being the case, the formal argument for reflexivity is reinforced and tbesubstantive requirement to detail the particular tradition whicb one inhabits issimilarly reinforced (and thus, as a matter of report, this author is a European);and (iii) it can be argued, after the fashion of theorists such as Habermas andBauman, that the classical European tradition of social theorising can bereanimated by adopting the intellectual strategy of 'reaching back' to the well-springs of tbe endeavour in the early modern period, that is, prior to tbe driftaway from engaged interpretation towards putatively authoritativelegislation.-' Finally, I would want to insist that this strategy of intensivereflection, in order to generate a clearly articulated set of premises, upon whicbsubstantive analysis, in turn the potential basis of dialogue within the world,might be based, is intellectually superior to any strategy of extensive reflectionwhich seeks to address the same group of concerns by drawing in a variety ofculturally differing contributions to a putatively universal scheme.

Hettne^' has provided a sophisticated survey of the post-Second World Warliterature which issues in tentative speculations about the future ofdevelopment theory work in a broader concern with the critical analysis of


change within the global system. Hettne's approach to his conclusions can bedescribed as extensive/inclusive: (i) the problem of Eurocentrism (theimplications of the particular historical origins of talk about development) is tobe solved via the embrace of multiple perspectives in a new universalism'articulating more diverse experiences' [Hettne, 1990: 242], and (ii) theproblem of anticipated end points (the ethics written into theorising) is to besolved via the embrace of a novel globalism acknowledging a common eliteconcern wilh 'societal problem solving ... in a global space' [ibid.: 245-6\.Unfortunately. I do not think that either of these intellectual strategies istenable, because they act. in effect, to rehearse distinctively European concernsat a higher level of generality (one masquerading as universal). We cannot stepoutside the culture which we inhabit. Against these strategies, I would insistthat the outlines of a plausible development theory can only be sketched out interms of the resources of the culture which the particular theorist inhabits andthis entails a strategy of intensive reflection, and for those working within orwith reference to the European tradition, development theory is a subspeciesof that broader concern for analysing complex change which constitutes thecore of the classical European tradition of social theorising.'-

IL RESTATING THE MODERNIST PROJECT

The modernist project offers a spread of resources relevant to the present. It isa rich and diverse tradition. Tt is also clear that strands of argument withindevelopment theory have adopted a concern for certainty, typical of legislativereason, which is intellectually misleading. The central concern of the classicaltradition of social theorising, which is lodged within the modernist project, isthe analysis of complex change, and it is this notion which offers a clue toreformulating development theorising.

The Classical European Tradition of Social TheorisingThe modernist project is the core of the received European cultural traditionand comprises a deep-seated set of assumptions about how the social worldmight be understood and rationally ordered. Tt may be viewed as a culturalproject, centrally the celebration of the cognitive mode of science, thedeployment of reason, and the demystification and rationalisation of theworld.'-^ Or, again, it may be viewed as a social scientific project which centreson the deployment of strategies of political-economic, social-institutional andculture-critical analysis oriented to the rational apprehension of patterns ofcomplex change. Or, relatedly, it may be viewed as a political project whichentails the routine affirmation of the formal and substantive democraticproject. Clearly, these three intertwine, but my concern here is with the socialscience.

DEVELOPMBNT THEORY: LEARNING THE LESSONS AND MOVING ON 11

Substantively," the classical European tradition of social theorising,inaugurated in the long period of Europe's early shift to the modern world ofindustrial-capitalism, has deployed a distinctive and shifting repertoire ofstrategies, including political-economic, social-institutional and culture-critical analysis, in order to grasp the dynamics of complex change with a viewto rationally ordering the process. It was alliances of intellectuals andcommercial groups advancing their respective causes who first broughttogether the agents, ideas and interests necessary to set the project in motion\Pollard, 1971]. This has been an engaged and practical enterprise. Thesequence of historically embedded argument bequeaths to us our familiar ideasin respect of the nature and possibilities of social science.

The substantive tradition can be recalled as a series of intellectualdepartures which together express the project of modernity; (i) seventeenth-century natural science with Newton as the exemplar; (ii) the eighteenthcentury social and political theorists of the Enlightenment who applied themodel of science to the human sphere; (iii) the early nineteenth century socialtheorists of republican democratic industrial society who offer the firstformulations of modern social scientific work centred upon the analysis ofcomplex change; and (iv) then in the later nineteenth century the bourgeoisiedrew back from the radical implications and sought a new status quo, orderedand legitimated around the putative self-regulation of the market {Pollard1971].

Thereafter, the subsequent short twentieth century has seen the extensivedevelopment of this tradition which now finds muted dispersed expression inthe familiar spread of discipline bound professionalised enquiries whichcomprise the territory of contemporary social science. However, the pre-eminence of professionalised social science has long been contested, with arecent resurgence of such critical work dating from the late 1960s collapse ofIhe post-Second World War hegemony of American theories of the inevitablegeneral convergence upon the liberal democratic model of economic, socialand political order, and today, notwithstanding the 1980s efflorescence of neo-liberalism, with its emphatic restatement ofthe doctrines of convergence, longestablished intellectual dissent finds further encouragement in extant patternsof global complex change. It is within this new global context, with itssweeping patterns of structural change, that the analytical and ethical resourcesof the received classical European tradition of social theorising find renewedpractical relevance.

In sum, the modernist project centres on the affirmation of the cognitivepower of human reason and the proposal that reason be deployed in regard toboth the natural and the social worlds. However, the shift from abstract socialphilosophical reflections to substantive analyses and political programmes ismore problematic than is usually taken to be the case within the optimistic


work of the classical social theorists of the nineteenth-century. Ourappreciation of the nature of the analytic task undertaken, and the problematicnature of the political-economic, social-institutional and cultural processes wewould grasp, has grown throughout the twentietb-century. This scepticism inregard to the extent to whicb social theorists can authoritatively characterisethe social world, coupled to an appreciation of the culture-boundedness of themodernist project, even if it is a worid-expansive project given that it is boundup with the global industrial capitalist system, and given tbe practical focus onunpredictable and conflict-suffused social processes, entails that the modernistproject can only be affirmed in a sceptical fashion. The role of scbolarsbip, asBauman has it, centres on interpretation and not legislation [Bauman, 1987].

Certainty and Uncertainty in Development Theorising

The trio of approaches which have dominated development theory in tbe post-Second World War period bave significant differences; in particular, two showa marked preference for the pursuit of certainty in place of the messy anduncertain patterns of argument and action wbich animate the ordinary socialworld. The one looks to discourses of the intervention of experts, wberebureaucratically ordered reason secures surety in respect of tbe future, and theother to the spontaneous order of the market, where individualistic activitygenerates a structural regularity wbich offers surety in respect of the future. Inboth cases it is clear that mechanisms are invoked which are taken to ensurethat the future will be in line with present expectations and wishes.

It can be argued that botb lines of response could be taken as particularreactions to wbat critical theorists have called the fundamental insecurity of themodern world.'' The position is taken that in the wake of the decline ininfluence of revealed religion, and the parallel rise of a natural science bothdemonstrably potent in terms of results and fundamentally sceptical in stance,there are no longer any absolute guarantors in respect of our knowledge ofeither the natural or social worlds to whom citizens, or rulers, or anyone elsecan appeal. A spread of familiar strategies of dealing with this anxiety can beidentified, ranging from social movements claiming priority for their view oftbe worid, or religious groups claiming a privileged access to the truth, throughto the more subtle intellectual efforts of social theorists."

In the case of post-Second World War development theory we canspeculate that both the orthodoxy, with their concern for planned change, andthe market-liberals, with their concern for spontaneous order, were deeplyconcerned to address the insecurity of the social world and to uncover somemechanism which would offer guarantees in respect of future development. Inthe case of the orthodox the reliance on planning mechanisms is quite familiarand has been routinely criticised. It is also clear that tbe market-liberal belief


iti the spontaneous order of the market place plays a similar role for the NewRight. It has been suggested that the liberals shift from Leviathan to the Market[Jameson, I99I]. In both cases humankind submits to an external authority andis thereafter secure.'*^ However, ail such strategies fail hecause the project ofmodernity is both potent and insecure.-"

In place of the variously articulated pursuits-of-certainty, and taking noteof the positive lessons of dependency theory in regard to the context-boundspecificity of the historical experience of particular countries and the necessityof prospective engaged enquiry, it can be suggested that the classical Europeantradition of social theorising can provide the intellectual resources necessary tothe articulation of a new discourse of complex change (and thereafterdevelopment) which allowed for the vagaries of sociai life, for thecomplexities of the dynamics of structures and agents, and which both grantedthe necessity for the detailed analysis of social processes and centred upon anaffirmation of the role of the public sphere in securing patterns of order withinthe social world generally.

The Analysis of Complex ChangeGellner [J964] presents the transition to the modern world as one presentlycontinuing episode of pervasive change, where we have a rough idea of itsend-point (that is, it will be industrial rather than, say, agricultural), and whichwe must analyse from the inside using the sceptical techniques of classicalsociology (the heir to classical political philosophy). In my terms, the analysisof the historical development of the global industrial-capitalist system isessentially an interpretive-critical attempt to grasp patterns of change whichare extensive, pervasive and enfold the theorist. In brief, the analytical core ofthe received classical tradition comprises the interpretive-critical political-economic, social-institutional and culture-critical analysis of complex change.

The notion of complex change indicates inter-related, pervasive andextensive patterns of change within the social world and the work ofinternational political-economy offers a preliminary way of approaching thesematters. Strange [J988] argues that the global political-economy must bethought of as a network of structures of power within which agents (usuallystates) manoeuvre for position.^-' Strange distinguishes between structuralpower (which sets the broad agendas within which agents operate), relationalpower (which focuses on specific exchanges between agents), and bargains(which are the compromises agents make within a given situation). Thereceived structures shape the actions of agents, and in turn the actions of agentsmodify structures. Strange identifies four key structures of power in the globalsystem: the security structure (which embraces matters relating to thedeployment of force, plus attendant bilateral and multilateral regulatory

14 THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OE DEVELOPMENT RESEARGH

linkages); the productive structure (which embraces matters relating to theextent to which any country is effective in tbe production of goods andservices); tbe financial structure (which embraces matters relating to the abilityof countries or other organisations to obtain or create credit, the necessarycondition of development); and the knowledge structure (which indicateswhere new ideas and technologies are generated). Tbe first noted structuralsphere is tbe familiar realm of state-state relations, the following pair note thecrucial role of economic power, and finally the importance of the subtlersphere of culture is acknowledged. It is with reference to these four basicpower structures that agent groups manoeuvre, primarily but not exclusivelystate machines, and tbe practical out-turn of such manoeuvrings thereaftermodifies the received structures.

Tbese networks of power constitute the underlying structure of the globalsystem and whilst resources of power, production, finance and knowledge areunevenly distributed they provide the start-point for the activities of any extantstate-regime. The strategy of analysis points to the axes of structural powerwhicb necessarily constrain/enable the actions of state-regimes (as agents). Inplace of state-state relations we have a picture of many states-witbin-the-global-system enmeshed in a network of power relations. Most broadly, tbeinternational political-economy approach offers tbe model of a worid systemcomprising a variety of power structures within which agent-groups move andwhere tbe specific exchanges of agent-groups and global structures generatethe familiar pattern of extant polities.^'

The continuing development of tbe global system presents itself, in theseanalyses, as an historical process of continuing reconfiguration as agents readand react to the intrusive and insistent demands of the industrial-capitalistsystem. In the post-Second Worid War period the global system bas beendivided in a number of ways, most obviously, the cold war division between'free worid' and 'socialist block', but also, for development tbeory, into thegrouping of First, Second and Third Worids. However, in recent times, a newagenda bas emerged whicb centres not upon the three worids but ratber on theinterdependent tripolar global industrial-capitalist system.

The Changing Global System and the Third WorldIn the wake of the end of the short twentieth century, and the related collapseof the received certainties of the cold war which bad shaped the understandingsof European and American thinkers, it has become clear that a new integratedtripolar global industrial-capitalist system is taking shape. At the present timethe global industrial-capitalist system shows a number of cross-cuttingtendencies: (i) to integration on a global scale, witb a financial system tbat isintegrated across the globe and extensive increasingly denationalised


multinational corporation operations; (ii) to regionalisation within the globalsystem, with three key areas emerging where intra-regional linkages aredeepening; and (iii) to division on a global scale, with areas of the worldapparently falhng behind the regionalised global system/- On Hobsbawm's[1994b] arguments this is an unstable system which recalls the equallyunstable global system of the latter years of the long nineteenth century.

The Second World War saw the emergence of the USA as the premierglobal economic, political, diplomatic and military power. The USA becamethe core country of an unprecedentedly prosperous open trading region.However in the period of the last third of the short twentieth century thisarrangement came under great pressure and has slowly declined.'' The upshotof the changes over the period 1971-91 has been a movement into an unstable,insecure and novel tripolar global industrial-capitalist system with three keyregions, the Americas,""* the European Union'^ and Pacific Asia/^ where thebulk of global economic activity takes place,-*' and an increasingly detachedThird World.

The situation of the Third World has seen both advance and relative failure.In Pacific Asia it is clear that many countries have experienced rapiddevelopment. Indeed, the pace of development in the region over the 1980swas so dramatic that it was spoken of as one of the three major economic areaswithin the global economy. Relatedly, it is possible to point to the economicsuccess of tbe oil-rich states of the Middle East. And in the case of LatinAmerica, where the extent of success is more problematical, the developmentof NAETA acknowledges the emergence of a USA centred sphere within theglobal capitalist system. Yet in contrast, the countries of Africa haveexperienced little progress in the period of the 1980s and 1990s. In Africa therewere problems of political corruption, incompetence and instability. The roleof the military increased. At the same time these countries experiencedextensive interference from the two great powers as they pursued a series ofovert and covert proxy wars. The African share of world production and worldtrade is shrinking and is now very slight. In the case of Africa it seems to bepossible to speak of a slow detachment from the mainstream of the globalindustrial capitalist system. Overall, the experience of the countries of theThird World in the post-colonial period has evidenced a diverse mix ofadvance, drift and stagnation.

III. RELOCATING DEVELOPMENT THEORY

The general reflections on the classical European tradition of social theory,with the core concern for complex change, point to a new way of construingdevelopment. In place of the untenable celebrations of the authoritativeinterventions of the expert in possession of technical knowledge, and in place


also of the suggestions that we can rely on the spontaneous order of tbe market,those concerned with development must draw on received intellectual traditionto illuminate in a sceptical, piecemeal, tentative and process-centred fashion,via dialogue witb locally based scholars, policy analysts and political actors,the dynamics of complex change in particular areas. The optimistic generalexpectation is of the possible role of the public sphere in regard to matters ofresponding to social change. In place of both the authoritative and thespontaneous pursuits-of-certainty, we can affirm the modernist project asoffering an outline of a dialogic strategy whereby political-economic, social-institutional and cultural processes might be understood and their directionmade subject to human will.

It is necessary to begin by denying the claims of development theorists toa novel social scientific or professional status and insist that the concernstypical of this area of reflection be returned to the mainstream of socialscience. Thereafter a set of claims can be lodged wbich sketch out thefundamental elements of a new approach, an interpretive-critical concern forthe elucidation of the dynamics of complex change within the Third World.

AssortedIn the post-Second World War period it has been thought that the business ofthe analysis of the development of the countries of the Third World offered aquite distinctive intellectual task, and moreover one which had no particularimplications for the developed countries. The analysis of the problem of tbedevelopment of tbe countries of the Third Worid was more or less unthinkinglyconsigned to a subordinate status witbin the overall sphere of Western socialscience. Tbe problem of development retained this status until the emergenceof institutional tbeory in the 1960s. The proponents of this theoretical approachdid make a determined effort to upgrade the status of development theorising.However, tbe strategy whicb they adopted was to try to constitute developmenttbeory as a separate discipline within the established spread of social sciencework. The attempt failed and development tbeory slipped back into its familiarsubordinate role. However, against this familiar intellectual positioning ofdevelopment theory, it is clear that tbe concerns of development theorists lievery close to the core concerns of the received traditions of classical Europeansocial theory. It would seem to be the case tbat development theorists do notneed to assert their status against tbe lack of recognition of the presentlyinfluential groups within the social sciences, rather tbey need simply to beclear about tbeir activities. In this context, a key claim is that developmenttheory is only distinct from the core received social scientific task of analysingcomplex change by virtue of a typical focus on dependent or peripheralindustrial capitalism in tbe Third World.


In the post-Second World War period the proponents of social science inthe developed countries were encouraged by a series of factors to adopt a veryoptimistic positive stance in respect of the nature and possibilities of socialscientific work. In the theories which spoke of the convergent logic ofindustrialism there were sets of expectations in respect of the authoritativemodelling of social processes which fed a series of exercises in developmentplan-making. A strong commitment was made to the technical expertise ofdevelopment theorists which simply overrode available doubts. However, inthe long period of subsequent action and reflection it slowly became clear thatthe optimistic positive expectations in respect of the authoritative technicalpower of social science were badly mistaken. A slow recovery of the materialsof the classical European tradition of social theorising has long been underway,and the implications of these shifts have been sharply underscored by recentchanges within the global system as the cold war bipolar system has given wayto an emergent tripolarity. In this context, it is clear that analysing instances ofdependent or peripheral industrial-capitalism will entail the dialogicdeployment of the core conceptual lexicon of the classical social scientifictradition in an interpretive-critical fashion (thus the elucidation of the realsocial processes involved in complex change rather than the export ofintellectual recipes).

A significant feature of the post-Second World War concern to make senseof the situation of the countries of the Third World was the intellectualdominance of First World scholars and policy analysts. The initial contributionof Third World thinkers tended to be restricted to the spheres of political theoryand action as the members of nationalist independence movements advancedtheir arguments in pursuit of political change within the colonial system. Thedominant position of Eirst World theorists was accompanied by an unremarkedoptimism in respect of the cognitive power of the analysis which theydeployed. The early theorists of development were not self-critical. However,in recent years it bas become clear amongst philosophers and theorists of socialscience that any exercise in social theorising will be significantly marked bythe intellectual and practical context from which it emerges. In other words, allexercises of social theorising are shaped by particular cultural contexts.

The direct implication of this view is that reflexive criticism is a necessarycondition of the production of scholarship. It has become clear that it isnecessary to review critically the great body of work which was produced inrespect of Third World development in order to identify those ideas whichwere specific to the culture of the West and which were deployed uncriticallywithin development theories. The familiar development theory concern for themodernisation of the Third World, where this entails the recapitulation of thehistorical experience of the developed West, is no longer intellectually tenable.It is only on the basis of a critical self-awareness that those ideas which might


tentatively be used can be identified and put to work within a scepticalrestatement of the classical modernist project, and these ideas in turn, aremerely the received basis of dialogic exchanges with scholars, policy analystsand activists from the Third World. In this context, it is clear that a reflexiveimplication of the reconstruction of development theory is that achieving aprocess-centred strategy of understanding and engagement will involve asignificant element of de-toxi fie ation in regard to the sets of assumptionswhich First World scholars have brought to the analysis of the Third World andfamiliar ideas about knowledge, expertise and ethics will have to be examinedand revised.

The mainstream within post-war development theorising assumed that theiranalyses had a broad range of application across a similarly broad range ofcultures. The work referred back to the universalising assumptions of Westernscience. At the same time, the proponents of the spontaneous order of themarketplace made similar claims in respect of the unrestrictedly universalcharacter of marketplace rationality and its centrality within human life. Theoptimistic positive celebration of the model of the West and its social sciencereached an apogee in the modernisation theory of tbe 1960s when the futuredevelopment of the planet was assimilated to the model of the contemporaryUSA. One consequence of this intellectual stance was the more or lessautomatic disregard which was shown to the cultural patterns of those peoplewho did not inhabit the industrial-capitalist countries of the West.

It was assumed that as the logic of industrialism drove the development ofthe countries of the world through the grand process of modernisation, thepatterns of thought of the peoples undergoing these changes would convergeupon the cognitive models present in the West. The orthodox theorists foundno occasion to attend to the detail of the forms-of-life of non-western peoples.However, it has subsequently become clear that processes of developmentcannot be understood in terms of the Third World's recapitulation of thehistorical experience of the West but must be dealt with in terms of the subtledynamics of structural constraint/opportunity and agent group response. Theforms-of-life of local peoples carry cultural resources which will be the basisupon which they read and react to global structural change. In this context, asthe intellectual task of analysing patterns of complex change within peripheralindustrial-capitalist societies is pursued in terms of structural change and agentresponse, it is clear that ethnographic work will assume a significant role. Inthis case it is clear that analysis can only proceed via dialogue with localscholars, policy analysts and activists.

The post-Second World War mainstream within development theory madethe routine assumption of the cognitive priority of their formulations. It is clearthat the intellectual and real world circumstances which they inhabiteddisposed them to make this judgement. However, it has become clear over the

DEVELOPMHNT THEORY: LEARNING THE LESSONS AND MOVING ON 19

subsequent period that the elaim to cognitive priority which was integral toFirst World theorising is untenable. As the objective of development theorisingshifts from modelling the process of modernisation towards the task ofelucidating the dynamics of complex change, then the plausibility andrelevance of the asymmetry built into the position declines. It no longer makessense to prioritise the model of the West and it no longer makes sense toprioritise the intellectual contribution of the social scientists of the West. Aconcern with elucidating the dynamics of complex change within theinterdependent tripolar global industrial-capitalist system in dialogic exchangewith scholars, policy analysts and activists from many parts of the worldimplies an equality of contribution. In this context, it is clear that theasymmetry in respect of claims to knowledge of social processes which is buihinto the orthodox position is denied in favour of an equality of contributions toscholarship.

The development theory mainstream tended to affirm a narrow idea of thenature of social scientific enquiry. It was supposed that the procedures of thenatural sciences could be replicated within the sphere of the social sciences.The type of knowledge produced and the use to which it could be put weretaken to mirror in essentials the knowledge available within the naturalsciences. It is characteristic of the simpler explanations of the nature of naturalscience that tbe objective to which research is oriented is taken to be theproduction of a general model of the natural system in question. And on thebasis of the general model predictions about future states of affairs, and thenecessary conditions of securing those states, can be made. The knowledgeproduced by the natural sciences is technical, precise and underpins thefamiliar role of the expert.

This argument has definite consequences for the self-understanding andaspirations of the social sciences which were encouraged to aspire to asimilarly technical expertise in respect of those spheres of the social worldwith which they concerned themselves. However, recent work within thephilosophy of social science has made it clear that the simple argument byanalogy from the nature of the natural sciences to an appropriate strategy forthe social sciences is misleading. The social sciences have their own logics andtheir own practical application in the broad concern with elucidation of thedynamics of complex change. There is no general theory of the social systemavailable. It is also the case that there is no general theory of developmentavailable to those wbo would aspire to an authoritative planning strategy ofsecuring development. In respect of the cherished core assumptions of theorthodox, the pursuit of a scientific-general model of development for use inthe Third World, it is clear that such an authoritative-interventionist scheme isnot available.

The influential work of the development mainstream and the recently


fashionable work of the theorists of spontaneous market order can now becontextualised, in terms of the political and intellectual occasions of theproduction of formal theories over the post-war period, and superseded. Asceptical restatement of the modernist project can be affirmed. A newapproach to complex change and development will draw on the classicalEuropean tradition of social theory in order to elucidate the dynamics ofcomplex change within the global industrial-capitalist system. These analyseswill concern themselves with a series of analyses: (i) the political-economicanalysis of global power structures; (ii) the related social-institutional analysesof the ways in which particular regions or countries are embedded withinglobal structures; and (iii) the culture-critical elucidation of the ways in whichgroups of agents understand their position within these structures and therebyorganise their actions. In this context, any continuing concern for developmentwill move from both authoritatively characterised recapitulation and marketfocused recipes towards the interpretive-critical elucidation of complexpatterns of accommodation to the expansion of the industrial-capitalist global

system.The theories of development produced within the First World have in

common that they assumed that they could specify the goals of Third Worlddevelopment projects. In the case of the mainstream the theorists imputed tothe replacement elites of the new nations of Third World the task of the pursuitof effective nation statehood. In the case of the free market orthodoxy thetheorists imputed to the elites of the Third World a desire to assimilate rapidlytheir economies within the global economy so as to maximise the levels ofmaterial consumer satisfactions amongst their populations. It is clear that FirstWorld theorists presented general analyses which affirmed sets of ideasparticular to the metropolitan countries and neglected the detail of processes ofchange within the Third World. The intellectual, ethical and practical politicalresources of the countries of the Third World were read-out of the analyses.However, it is clear that the resources of the peripheral countries must beacknowledged as they are likely to be the basis upon which action at the locallevel is initiated. In this context, it is clear that what is to count as developmentwill be locally determined.

Sketching in the New PositionThe original impetus to development work in the episode of decolonisation hasnow exhausted itself. A change in the expectations of tbe proper objects oftheorising might be expected. In simple terms, new circumstances generatenew problems and new formulations in respect of the matter of development.We can grasp the broad context of new enquiry and action by recalling keydiscourses of development. At the outset, the discourse of the intervention of


experts expresses certain key elements within received political theoreticaltraditions, and what is characteristic of this strategy of constituting an objectsphere and appropriate lines of action is that the social world is taken to beamenable to authoritative characterisation by experts in possession of certainbodies of technical knowledge.

An asymmetry is built into this discourse with on the one hand those whoknow, and on the other those subject to expert interventions. Thereafter, thediscourse of spontaneous order refers back to the political project of liberalismwith its characterisation of the social world as comprising discrete self-movingindividuals plus their contractual arrangements. All the claims revolve aroundthe notion of markets {as a natural given amenable to positive scientificanalysis). In regard to theorising development the discourse of spontaneousorder has been cashed in quite particular political terms. The adherents of thefree market have pressed for deregulation, privatisation and welfare reductionm the expectation that the market wouJd spontaneously maximise humanbenefits.

In the discourses of intervention and spontaneous order external-modelsare deployed which look to secure surety for the theorists and their clients. Butthe social world is radically contingent and the materials of the social sciencesare restricted in their reach. Yet these familiar strategies of analysis act toexhaust the available intellectual/institutional space thereby squeezing out themore plausible strategy of affirming the modernist project. Thus, finally, thediscourse of the public sphere expresses the optimistic modernist project,occasioned by the ongoing shift to the modern world, of the celebration ofhuman reason in the broad sense of the possibility of comprehending andordering the natural and the social worlds. Thereafter the familiar story is oneof the drift of optimistic reason into machineries of control, theorised in termsof positive science, all of which issues in the requirement to recover thisoptimistic core tradition. The discourse of the public sphere affirms themodernist project, an historical task as yet uncompleted, and institutionally theposition finds expression in marginal centres: universities, research centres,NGOs and the critically-minded media.

In the sphere of the social sciences the modernist project can be cashed interms of the deployment of the resources of the classical European tradition ofsocial theorising centred upon the political-economic, social-institutional andculture-critical analyses of the expansion and intensification of globalindustrial-capitalism. In the public sphere work revolves around theconstruction and criticism of competing delimited-formal ideologies, eachoffering particular schemes of the appropriate route to the future, the familiarrealm of political debate. The mode of engagement of scholarship is that of themterpretive-critical elucidation of the processes of complex change AfterHabermas [19891 we argue on behalf of humankind in pursuit of a


reconstructed public sphere. The intimate relationship of the modernist projectwith the political project of formal and substantive democracy is therebyrevealed. The political project rejects both the further advance of bureaucraticrationalisation and the disingenuous calls for a return to the neutralmechanisms of the market, in favour of an extension of the sphere of publicsocietal decision-making. And in regard to the Third World the discourse of thepublic sphere affirms the notion of dialogue. In place of knowledgeableexperts and spontaneous markets, it is proposed to substitute the piecemealdialogue of equals oriented to the advance of the modernist project.

(1) The formal commitments of the discourse of the public sphere: In thediscourse of the public sphere, social theorising is taken to be the genericbusiness of making sense of the social world. It comprises a variety ofstrategies including social scientific material. In the context of the intellectualand cultural tradition which Europeans inhabit the core strategies of socialscience express the modernist project. The celebration of human reason, andthe expectation of material and moral progress. The historical location of theformulation of the modernist project may be placed in the period of the rise ofindustrial-capitalism. Within the broad modernist project is lodged a particularrole for scholarship. Broadly this role entails the interpretive-criticalelucidation of patterns of complex change. It is thus closely related to, butseparate from, the core of the modernist tradition, with its focus on the sphereof political argument. Following Habermas this location and role may beunderstood as the presentation of arguments on behalf of humankind in pursuitof a reconstructed public {a reanimation via democratisation of the classicalmodernist project).

The concerns of the metropolitan scholar will be with the business of theprocesses of the extension and deepening of the world capitalist system inexchanges with other groupings (having/inhabiting their own culturaltraditions). In regard to the analysis of complex change in peripheralcapitalisms the lexicon of the modernist project may be drawn upon in apiecemeal dialogic fashion. A general statement might be constructed in termsof structures and agents, and thereafter smaller scale enquiries might be made.However, these could be cast in external/non-dialogic terms but it would be arestricted engagement with the material and further work centred on the detailof processes would involve dialogic exercises. There is a double line ofargument in favour of the notion of dialogue: (i) the first flows from the logicof the discourse of the public sphere, which uses ideas of critique; and (u) thesecond flows from the thought that the elucidation of processesunderlying/constituting patterns of complex change via political-economic,social-institutional and culture-critical analysis entails amongst other thingscapturing the understanding of the agents involved: how they read and act


within the structures which enfold them. It is not possible to conceive thiswork as external-descriptive; rather it is ethnographic and centres on dialogue.

In sum, the main points argued for within the discourse of the public sphere,are these: (i) that social theorising comprises a diversity of loosely relatedstrategies of making sense; (ii) that the core strategy of sense-making for thesocial sciences is the modernist project (within which a particular role forscholarship is lodged); (iii) that in regard to the analysis of complex change inmetropolitan capitalism the core analytical strategies are political-economic,social-institutional and culture-critical analysis oriented to the production ofdelimited-fonnal ideologies, the realm of political discourse (with scholarshippursuing related interpretive-critical work on behalf of humankind); and (iv) thatin regard to the analysis of complex change in peripheral capitalism these coreanalytical strategies are to be drawn on in a piecemeal dialogic fashion in orderto illuminate the ongoing processes of structural change and agent response.

(2) The substantive commitments implied in the discourse of the public sphere:The substantive focus implied by the discourse of the public sphere is the taskof elucidating the dynamics of complex change within the interdependenttripolar global system at the global, the regional and the local (national andsub-national) levels.

Linklater [1990], looking at the global level, proposes that a criticalinternational relations theory will look to the development of the notion of aglobal community, hence: (i) the critical characterisation of the record andpossibilities of global trans-state organisations, for example the UnitedNations, where Gott^ ^ recently commented that the end of the Cold War meantthat the institutional and ideological stasis of the last twenty odd years was nolonger sustainable, once again real debate would have to be undertaken; (ii)similarly, the critical characterisation of the record and possibilities of keyglobal trans-state organisations, for example the Worid Bank and IMF, whose1980s affirmation of a simplistic market-ism will have to be rethought;'" and(iii) in terms of the structure of the global capitalist political-economy a similarcritical characterisation of the record and possibilities of the development-policy stances of G7 nation states, and multi-national companies would seemto be a central concern.-'

The regional level of the global system has become a key area of debate.^-There are a wide spread of social scientific theories endeavouring to grasp thenature of regionalisation, economic, political and cultural, but the positionwhich looks to analyse regions in historical-structural terms, as a series ofunfolding ways in which local and nationally based groups have ordered theiractivities at regional levels,^ ^ seems to offer a way of grasping the entire spreadof aspects addressed by discipline bound approaches. In general, however, aseries oJ critical issues present themselves and these include: (i) the issue of


elucidating the fundamental economic logics of discrete regions;^' (ii) thepatterns of inter-regional trade, finance, production and consumption; (iii) theinstitutional vehicles whereby such economic activity was ordered with formaltrans-national organisation, bi-lateral linkages and the spread of privateeconomic links; (iv); then finally, there would be the issue of the extent towhich the peoples of the region self-consciously constituted themselves as acommunity [Preston, 1997].

At the national level the key agent is likely to be a state-regime affirming aparticular political-cultural project, a way of reading and reacting to theconstraint and opportunity afforded by global and regional structures. Thelocal elites would promulgate an ideology so as to order the population of therelevant territorial unit and legitimate their rule. At the state-level the political-economic, social-institutional and cultural strategies of state-regimes in theThird World will come into question as established track records, establishedeconomic dynamics and likely futures are evaluated. Thereafter, in regard tothe huge spread of local level NGO work, the position is in principle clear asthis is one area where dialogue and empowerment has long been the order ofthe day. One implication of this is that any argument to a general responsibilitytowards the Third World is rejected.

CONCLUSIONS

The familiar pattern of the post-Second World War system, with its two greatpowers, a divided Europe and a marginalised Third World was superseded inthe 1989-91 period of the collapse of the political-cultural project of state-socialism in Eastern Europe and the USSR. As the associated patterns ofthought dissolved away a new global industrial-capitalist pattern becamevisible. The 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of a tri-polar global systemwith three key regions: the Europe, the Americas and Pacific Asia. It is nowclear that the ways in which a series of agent-groups understand themselvesand their place in the global system is presently undergoing significant change.

At the same time that these patterns of change within the global systemwere running their course a long established train of reflection was underwaywithin mainstream social theorising. This is a complex matter but, in brief, itcan be said that the self understanding of mainstream social theorising hasshifted over recent years away from naturalistic modelling towards notions ofinterpretation and criticism oriented to the elucidation of the dynamics ofcomplex change. And in the more restricted sphere of development theory theimplications of these intellectual changes are that any claims to authoritativetechnical expertise must be set aside in favour of a notion of dialogue betweenFirst World theorists, policy makers and political actors, and their counterpartswithin the Third World.


NOTES

1. This is not a pro-forma declaration. The widely familiar social scientific habit of casting materialin descriptive/explanatory form is eschewed, 1 am interested in identifying patterns of argumentThe sources which I have in mind, in particular, are hermeneutics and critical theory

2, As I will be drawing broad distinctions between the rich metropolitan areas of the industrialcapitalist system and a variety of relatively poorer peripheries I will use this termNotwithstanding its arguably old fashioned flavour, it remains a convenient tag

3, There are two aspects to this: (i) theoretical reflection, which suggests that the constitutiveassumptions of the familiar territory of mainstream development theory are no longer theobvious starting point for reflection upon the situation of those within the Third World" and (ii)substantive change within the global system over the years, as metropolitan industrial capitalisteconomies have grown and peripheral areas have variously reconfigured, presenting new issuestor scholars, policy analysts and political agents. The paper's concern with the underiyingassumptions of development theory is thus in part descriptive of lines of reflection which itseems to me are cunent amongst those who discuss these matters, and part prescriptive as [present my own contribution to the wider processes of reflection pre.sently in train

4, This organisation flows from the commitment to interpretive^critical analysis. Thus the businessIS one of argument-making rather than the more familiar empiricist strategy of fore^roundin"description/explanation, ^

5. As^ever in academic reflection it would be possible to look for anticipations of contemporarydebates down through the historical record. However, more relevantly, we can point to thematerta s generated over the modern period, say. the mid-eighteenth century onwards, withinFirst World countries dealing with Third Worid countries. Schematically, an early spread oftravellers tales gave way to the materials produced within the confines of empires (bothmetropolitan and peripheral sources); thereafter in the period between the Great War and theSecond World War to the critical materials surrounding early nationalist claims to independencealong with the.r counterparts in the beginnings of metropolitan acknowledgements of the ethicalpropriety of demands for independence. This long period builds a rich stock of stereotypes andexpertise, all ot which is available to the eariy generations of nationalists and First Worlddevelopment theorists,

6. It seems to me that it would be quite wrong to treat the idea of "development' as generic as justone obvious word within our contemporary vocabulary (which can embrace urban planningadmm.strative reform or even domestic gardening endeavours), I want to insist, for the purposesof this discussion, that tbe idea of development is intellectually rich and carries with it a spreadof ideas and expectations [Preston. I985\.

^' 1^'tTf'^^''^^''''^ ^^ ""P^^'^^'^ 'n ^ preliminary way with a mix of Gellner [}964] and Baumanu u? ?"'' """^^^^ ^^ '^ "^^ "'"'^ P '^'^ '^ '"'^ '^ '^nt^rpr^x tentatively the system which

we mhabit from the inside and from the other the thought that expectations and aspirations tosurety must be suppressed in an appreciation of the contingency of our social scientific knowing

8, There are two points here: (a) I distinguish modes of social theoretic engagement, there are manyof them schematically witbin tbe classical European tradition, politics, policy analysis andscholarship and they are different, and I am concerned with scholarship; and (b) I have arguedelsewhere \Preston. 1985] that reflexive self-embedding within the processes which enquirywould grasp IS a necessary condition of scholarship, thus any aspiration to scholarshipnecessitates routine criticism of the assumptions constituting enqui'ry and action

y. The following way of grasping the entirety of the post-Second World War history ofdevelopment theory ,s discussed at length in an earlier text [Preston, !994a\. In brief the notionof discourse pomts to a mix of ideas, institutions and actions in the world

10. It was the Eumpean experience of withdrawal from empire which provided the occasion fordevelopment theorising and tbe bulk of the clients, that is the leaders of newly independent state-regimes, and It was the UK's relatively early acceptance of tbe inevitability of withdrawal mcontrast to tbe ihmking of mainland neighbours which enabled the UK to shape eariy debate

I, These included the empires of the European powers, the USA and Japan1 .^ ihe detail ofthe historical arguments are presented in an earlier text l/'r .^v/rm /982] For thelogic of the arguments', see Preston 11996].


13. On the dense spread of ethical committnents made withiti development theory see Preston

14 The historical expetience and arguments are discussed in earlier texts [Preston 1982; 1996].15, I will follow the conventional line of making the work of Raul Prebisch a central point of

departure. For a fuller review of debates within Latin America see DiMarco [/9721, Kahl \I976lPreston U9H2; 79961, Kay [19891 Larrain [1989].

16, I have in mind the work of Andre Gunder Frank and those influenced by him [Preston, 19S7\.17, On this see Halliday [I989\. These matters have also been pursued at length in the work of Noam

Chomsky.18, I have taken these arguments from the 'Amsterdam regulationist school', see tn particular van

der Pijl 1/984]. . ^ .19, On this see Dasgupta [79^5| who argues that the history of economic analysis can be recovered

as a series of epochs each built around a specific question.20, The detail of the revolution, its origins, key protagonists and effects, are discussed by Toye

[1987].21 It is a complex intellectual package, see Clements \1980\.^2 The key New Right experiments tn the First World were in the USA, UK, New Zealand and

Australia where the effects were broadly as described. In the Third World the New Rightpackage was put to work via the World Bank and the IME with similar negative effects reported.At the present time one might regard the enthusiastic talk about the inevitability of globalisationas the contemporary rhetorical expression of the same liberal political-cultural project.

23 See Preston [I994a\ and the references to the ongoing debate contained therein, A short review' of the status of free market economics is offered in Ormerod [19941 The point here, clearly, is

not that the study of economies should be somehow dismissed but that neo-liberal tales aboutself-regulating systems do not help much to uncover how actually existing economies work,

24 On liberalism see Plant \I99l] who reviews at length the tradition of liberalism, arguing that the' aspiration to a neutral set of rules cannot be secured. See also Preston 11994a\ for statements in

favour of the tradition of democracy,25, For a discussion of different ways of dealing with the husiness of development, see Hettne

[}99O\26 There is a wealth of material dealing one way or another with the 'politics of development' but

the work which I want to pick up on here is that which makes political life central to humanexistence in contradistinction to preferences for either the state or the marketplace. In this senseI am picking up explicitly (if in my own idiosyncratic fashion) on the notion of critical socialscience wbich I acknowledged at the outset of this paper as the background to my work.

27 One could mention a series of names which have in common tbat they affirm the iiotion of" people as political animals. See for example. Habermas \1989]. Macpherson [797.?]. Maclntyre

28, O^n^fiag^aZVn?could mention a series of names. 1 have in mind Hobsbawm [m4h] andg

Wailerstein [I974\. , . ^.^^29 Aaainst those who would run varieties of modernisation or convergence theories, recently

restated it seems to me, in globalisation theory and postmodernism, a series of theorists may beidentified who are concerned to grasp the diversity of the patterns of life within the modemworld. On this see Lasb and Urry [/987| and Sklair [7997]. c- , ,

30. Here one could cite a range of materials often drawing insights from anthropology. See Worsley1/9841, Long |/992| and Hobbart|799J|. , u o u

31 The strategy of 'reaching back' is a familiar one, adopted, tor example, by Habermas,MacPherson and Maclntyre, and is characteristic of interpretive-critical work with its concernfor elucidatory argument, which continually returns to common themes and preoccupations inplace of the more familiar empiricist preference for description, an erroneotis stance oftenconjoined to a naive accumulative notion of knowledge getting and thus a prejudice which saysnewer description is necessarily better than older. . . j

3^ It is interesting to note, in the context of tbe arguments of this paper, that Hettne has subtitled the second edition of bis excellent book "Towards an international political economy of

development'. I agree with much of what Hettne says but I think the argument strategy whichhe uses severely limits the scope of intellectual advances open to him.

DEVELOPMt- \T THEORY: LEARNING THB LESSONS AND MOVING ON 27

33, See also Hettne [ f995] where the argument is reworked. In partieular I note the new subheadingof the book. It is ceHainly true in my own case thai the work of Susan Strange on internationalpolitical economy provided a eiue as to how to rework the materials of development theory. AsI have noted earlier. Strange e.xplicitly. if restrictedly, acknowledges the work of developmenltheory in the construction of her own work. However, unlike Strange and Hetlne. who ofierschematic treatments of the business of change. 1 prefer to record the deep roots of these ideaswithin the received culture which I inhabit.

34. Indeed. Gellner [J964] argues that science is the mode of cognition of itidustrial societies andthat industrial society is the ecology of nattjral science; there is a deep mutual dependence.

^5. Formally, the character of the classical European tradition of social theori.sing can be recalled a.sa series of debates about the nature and scope of intellectual enqutry into tbe s^ phere of the social.The received classical European tradition has a particular set of commitments in respect of itsintelleetual status and social role, and these can be eluctdated around a trio of arguments: (i)from natural science to empiricism; (ii) from human understanding to hermeneutics; and (iii)from routine political life within the community to critical theory. An outline of these debatescan be found in Bernstein 1/9761. Fay [J987] and Bauman 1/987].

36. This theme of the 'insecurity of the modern world' is entirely familiar within certain strands ofEuropean social philosophical criticism. The idea has been unpacked in psychological andcognitive terms. The idea has been deployed in the context of various substantive issues. At thistime I have in mind the culture-critical work of Bauman [!9H9: I992\.

37. In the case of classical European social theory we can identify just such a manoeuvre in the shiftfrom analysing progress, which one can argue for as a tendential aspect of the form of life ofmodernity (the cognitive strategy o\' Jurgen Habermas who lodges a demand for the practicalconditions of tree communication within the fundamental character of human language itself),m other words a minimum ethic and tendential mechanism point to the idea of progress, toafiirming a spurious confidence in respect of bureaucratically ordered social change. This basbeen critically discussed in terms of a distinction between 'legislators', who erroneously supposethat they can authoritatively decipher the logic of the social world so as to informbureaucraticaily rational strategies of ordering, and "interpreters', who operate in a scepticalpiecemeal ta.shion so as to inform debate within the public sphere in the belief that reasoneddebate, modelled on the broad pattern of the successful naiural sciences, will best illuminateroutes to the future [Batunan, !9H7\.

38. In regard to ihe early monetary theorists Robinson f/9621 remarks that the model of a smoothlyworking market read in Freudian terms looks expressive of a desire to return to the security ofthe womb.

39. On this business of the linkage of modernity and natural science, see Gellner |/964; !9H8\40. In Strange \I9HH] the material is radically simplified as the issue of complex change in my

lerms. is represented in a schematic fashion within the context of debates within intemationalrelations. However smiplicity can be a virtue and in Strange's case she has made the argumentsaccessible to a wide international relations audience.

41. One problem with the international political-economy approach is that it reduces the business ofthe internal make-up of any state-regime to a reflection of trans-state fiows of power Acorrective to this can be found within the regulationist school who have offered not dissimilaranalyses which do pay attention to the internal dynamics of state-regimes within the shiftingpatterns of power ot the global system. The literature centres on the identification of patterns ofaccumulation and regulation within state-regimes and across wider sweeps of the globalindustrial-capitalist economy. Jt ,s possible to develop a repertoire of concepts which deal withthe ways in wbieh agent groups read and react to enfolding structural change, and which dealwith the ways in which state-regimes deal not merely with each other b^ ut also with theirdomestic populations, see Preston {I994h\.

42. On this see. for example, Axford | /995|, Hirst and Thompson i 1996]. Gamble and Pavne \!996\and Preston [!Q97\. '

43. The following factors contributed: Ii) the oil price shocks of the early i970s; (ii) the financialmiphcat.ons tor the USA of the war m Vietnam and the subsequent shift to debtor status in theReagan years: (niMbe rise of the EEC and the Japanese sphere in East Asia; (iv) the (partial anduneven) globalisation of the industrial-capitalist system; and (v) the abrupt ending of the


comfortably familiar bipolar block system,44. The USA was the major sponsor of the doctrines of economic liberalisation which further

undermined the order of the global system. The end of the short twentieth century has seen theUSA continuing to press for an open global trading system but these arguments are now madewithin the context of a tripolar system and without the convenience of the existence of theSecond World which provided an excuse for US hegemony within the sphere of the West.

45. When the extent of global structural change finally became unequivocally clear with the collapseof the USSR, the countries of Europe found an available reply in the guise of the EuropeanUnion. The idea of the European Union was pushed to the fore in discussions about the futureof the continent.

46. Overall, the region has been undergoing considerable structural change since the late I97()s andin respect of the sets of relationships within the region it can be argued that the economic coreis Japan and that around this core are a series of concentric spheres. In Northeast Asia thecountries of South Korea and Taiwan have close links with Japan. In Southeast Asia thecountries of ASEAN have become increasingly integrated within the Japanese sphere. In thesometime socialist block, China and Indo-China, there is extensive Japanese activity. Andfinally, in Australia and New Zealand there is extensive concern to reorganise economies andsocieties so as to attain a measure of integration with the Pacific Asian countries.

47. See for example Zysman 1/996], Bernard [1996].48. A fuller statement is made in Preston [1996].49. R Gott in The Guardian, 30/3! Dec. 1991.50. On this, in the context of the Asian financial crisis see Wade and Veneroso [1998] and

Henderson ?^ a/. [1998].51. Think for example of the Rio Summit of 1992.52. A burgeoning area of work, see Hirst and Thompson | /9961 and Gamble and Payne [1996].53. See Zysman [7996]; Bernard [1996].54. This theme runs back into the social sciences in a number of areas: economic anthropology,

economic sociology, the work of institutional economics and the various strands of politicaleconomy within the broad marxist tradition. At the present time this material seems to be mprocess of rediscovery through international political economy^ and it is bemg turned tocontemporary problems of how to grasp and order the tripolar global system.

REFERENCES

Axford, B., 1995, The Global System, Cambridge: Polity.Bauman, Z., 1987, Ugislators and Interpreters, Cambridge: Polity.Bauman, Z., 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambri

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Development Theory Learning the Lessons and Moving On