Understanding the Development Problem

Abstract

In previous chapters we have critiqued the ways in which donors and associated researchers have attempted to incorporate political economy analyses into their approaches to development. In particular, we identified three assumptions which are prevalent among aid practitioners but which constrain the effectiveness of their political economy approaches: namely, the assumption that development is a public or common good; the assumption that correct development policies can be identified and implemented through experts and enlightened reformers working in partnership; and the assumption that failure by political elites to identify and implement such policies emerges from either information failures or perverse incentives, that is collective action problems. In this second part of the book, we offer a counter proposal to each of these assumptions, developed on the basis of structuralist political economy, and illustrated through reference to four case studies of aid projects in Southeast Asia. In this chapter, we elaborate on our understanding of development as a process of contested structural change, and the implications of this for aid programming.