Introduction

Abstract

The time of one-sided analyses and actions is at an end. The economic, social and environmental dimensions of development — irrespective of the unit or level of analysis — are increasingly interdependent, with continuous synergies, interrelations and connections as shown by scholars and practitioners from different disciplines. The global debate has gone beyond simple mainstream prescriptions (“getting prices right”), government intervention to correct market failures and the separation of the “economic” from the “social” ‘inherent in the leader-follower hierarchy model of orthodox policy recommendations’ (Mehrotra and Delamonica, 2007, p. 14). In recent decades, the international community has faced rising challenges, as dynamic socio-economic environments, evolving technological trajectories and increasing interdependency among places and actors have made the economy more and more self-transforming from within (Witt, 2003; Boschma and Martin, 2007; Goldin and Mariathasan, 2014). In addition, development initiatives are characterized by multidimensional, multilevel and dynamic processes, involving multi-stakeholder and multiple local and extra-local relations. This complexity challenges project-based and supply-driven implementation, as well as “straight-jacketed” assessments of development interventions reduced to linear input-action-output-outcome relations. Development initiatives are crucially embedded in diverse and peculiar local and country contexts, with high diversity and heterogeneity of values, interests, policy ideas and discourses within the “socio-economic infrastructure” (Lambooy, 2000) and the “policy networks” of each society (Cooke and Morgan, 1998).

Everything has been thought of before, the difficulty is to think of it again.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe