Managing Development in a Globalized World

Concepts, Processes, Institutions

Habib Zafarullah, Ahmed Shafiqul Huque

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781420068375
• eBook ISBN: 9781351559416
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Traditionally, development has been rooted in ideologies and assumptions prevalent in the developed world and in practices and strategies adopted by leading industrial nations. However, historically, eclectic ideas and approaches often clash with existing long-established notions of progress and modes of realizing social and economic change. Managing Development in a Globalized World: Concepts, Processes, Institutions explores this topic by incorporating ideas and interpretations that have previously been neglected or given inadequate attention in the discourse on developing countries. It underscores development as a continuous process that must be supported by sound policies and efficient management, supplying a wider understanding of the field.

The authors argue that the application of innovative development techniques and best practices is essential for obtaining optimum results in meeting the needs of society. They examine the style of managing development with a new perspective that links the phenomenon with changing demands and the interplay of internal/external actors and a host of stakeholders. An exploration of key sectors in development provides clear comprehension of problems and solutions.

A careful synthesis of theoretical/conceptual and empirical literature, the book assesses real-world situations and provides insight into the operational dynamics of development policies, programs, and institutions. It focuses on goals, values, and dynamics of development management that are undergoing rapid changes and continue to be enhanced to alleviate poverty and improve living standards in an era of globalization and inter-regional and inter-institutional synergies. It highlights best practices essential for the efficient and effective delivery of human development services that are designed and put in place to obtain optimum results in meeting the needs of society.

CONCEPTS, PRINCIPLES, AND PROCESSES I

Chapter 1

Contextualizing Development in a Globalized World

Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times—times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation—that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils.

Nelson Mandela

The Changing World

The world has been changing and changing rapidly. After the end of World War II, the political map of the world underwent significant transformations. Borders were redrawn, new states formed, and old states refashioned. Friends became foes, and enemies emerged among allies. Global politics was divided into two opposing camps. In one belonged the United States and its postwar allies, especially Britain and Western Europe, and in the other the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe. There emerged an ideological divide between capitalism and communism, between two superpowers desperate to gain the upper hand in global hegemony. This rivalry, in many ways, was instrumental in creating rifts in nationalist movements against colonial powers in the dominions and protectorates they held across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific—the developing world. In some places, the momentum of such movements was decelerated because of dilemmas the ideological split created. In others, the continued rise of nationalism and subsequent agitations for independence in colonial empires gained pace in the postwar milieu. Decolonization ensued with each superpower enticing newly independent countries to its side with offers of development aid and reconstruction services. Departing colonial powers also had stakes in continuing their links with the colonies and providing similar benefits. Often nationalist leaders remained confused in the power play of international politics and unable to decide on the correct path to development—capitalist or socialist. Indeed, the Cold War between the capitalist and socialist forces had had a profound influence on the way new nations planned and managed their social, political, and economic life. Arguably, these countries adopted the mantras of “nationalism” and “developmentalism” in seeking a “third way” to “avoid either an unconditional alliance with either bloc, or the adoption of borrowed models of economic and political development” (Cammack and Tordoff, 1993: 6).

The path to development for these countries proved somewhat hazardous, for many of them faltered in achieving desired results. Decisions to take the capitalist path, fast-paced industrialization, or a market-based economic system often backfired. Market failures had then to be addressed by state intervention in social and economic affairs. The socialist mode adopted by some countries, on the other hand, deterred private enterprise from gaining a foothold and the economy, as a result, became laggard.

Politically, democracy took a back seat in most of these nations; authoritarian rule, some extreme in nature, was for postcolonial nationalist leaderships the preferred option for nation-building purposes in the initial years of independence despite clamors for greater representation of the people in national and local politics. The levers of economic development were harnessed by the state, and stringent regulations governed social and economic relations. However, totalitarianism in China and bureaucratic-authoritarian rule in Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore provided development dividends early and paved the way for gradually opening up the economy. In some countries such as India, for instance, where democracy was embraced early, political institutionalization was relatively easier to obtain and created a political culture that helped sustain democratic rule. A democratic political approach in dealing with national problems combined with a mixture of capitalist- and socialist-inclined economic policies supported industrialization and import substitution as well as created better conditions for agricultural development to occur. Elsewhere, over time, the positive move toward liberal democracy became inevitable as a response to the global surge toward democratization. On the other hand, externally imposed economic development strategies influenced by neoliberal ideas challenged national sovereignty (see Cammack and Tordoff, 1993).

During the 60-odd years after the end of the war, the world experienced varied transitions in almost every front possibly imaginable. In global politics, the end of the Cold War was a significant phenomenon that had wide ramifications for the developing regions. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of glasnost and perestroika, the map of Eastern Europe underwent major alterations (see Lane, 1992). Political and economic reforms ushered in right earnest (Goldman, 1997; Weiner, 1994; Wolf, 1992). Elsewhere, in several developing countries (DCs), the wave of democratization had already begun to make its presence felt. There were serious attempts to transform political and economic structures and initiate policies and programs to alleviate poverty and make advances in social development. The international development community (IDC) became more active in supporting development across the globe, while the “third sector” in many countries moved to become more vibrant in a bid to make positive contributions.

The neoliberal agenda in economic matters began to be increasingly accepted as classical approaches to development retreated to the background or were supplanted. Economic liberalization policies changed the way countries interacted with one another in trade to boost competitiveness and secure comparative advantages in international commerce. Transfer of ideas, from political to economic to technological, movement of people—either sanctioned or unauthorized, business partnerships, wider intellectual interactions or dialogues, cross-cultural communications, and so forth have been the direct offshoots of globalization, a phenomenon that has virtually changed the way individuals, groups, and states think and act regarding development and social progress. Indeed, the barriers between continents, regions, nation-states, societies, and peoples have been gradually disappearing.

It will be interesting to explore the extent to which the status of the non-Western DCs has changed from what one commentator noted in the late 1960s: “A generation ago the lands of the Third World were politically inert, objects of international bargaining, and patient servicers of the international economy” (Barnet, 1968: 6). Much has changed since then. What are the characteristics of these countries? What is the nature and extent of poverty? How have these countries responded to demands and changes in the global space? Has their dependency on the affluent and powerful nations attenuated? What has been the impact of globalization with all its varied features? How is democracy faring in these countries? What has been the nature of development synergy and partnerships in the new world environment? We shall explore these in the following pages, but, first of all, let us attempt to define and categorize the DCs.

Defining and Categorizing DCs

During the Cold War and later, the countries of the world were arbitrarily divided into three groups, based solely on economic determinants rather than historical, social, or political criteria. Thus, there emerged in both academic and popular literature in the West and North such terms as the “First World” (the so-called affluent countries, mainly in the West but also including Japan, Australia, and New Zealand), the “Second World” (countries that belonged to the communist bloc of Eastern Europe), and the “Third World” (countries that included the relatively “poor” countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific). This apparent Western bias in the threefold classification has been suspect, but political scientists have attempted to rationalize, often persuasively, the use of the term “Third World” (Smith, 2003: 10, 11).

Classifying countries according to their geographical location also became popular for some time. As the “Third World” countries are mainly located below North America and Europe, they were collectively referred to as “South” and the rest as “North”—another fallacy as in the Southern Hemisphere we also find advanced countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Basically, this categorization served social scientists to study the social, political, and economic uniqueness of different countries/regions and make comparisons (Randall and Theobald, 1998; Box 1.1).

However, as more than three-quarters of the world’s population live in countries that are relatively less industrialized, more agrarian, have limited infrastructure and communication facilities, and experience persistent social and economic problems often caused by poor political and economic management and other external factors, these are collectively referred to as “developing” as opposed to “developed”—a term assigned to the advanced industrialized countries. Almost all these DCs were once under colonial (British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian, or American) rule. Only a few (such as Thailand, Iran, and Nepal) were not under colonial possession and were adroitly used as buffer zones by colonizing powers to serve their common strategic interests (Box 1.2).

While the advanced industrialized democracies, as a category, still remain, the so-called “Second World” as a distinctive entity has lost its relevance in the contemporary world. More appropriately, these categories (also known as “transitional economies”) can be subsumed in the larger “developing world” category along with the DCs in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific as they generally display quite similar economic and political features and are just about in the same state of development despite extensive variations among their ranks. Most, if not all these DCs, suffer from both chronic and acute poverty and human underdevelopment and continue to depend on external support for social and economic advancement. Nonetheless, significant dissimilarities among them are also easily discernible in terms of their respective social, political, economic, technological, and environmental conditions and policy approaches. The marked differences suggest that there is no homogeneity or uniformity among the countries and regions that some categorize as the “Third World.”

BOX 1.1 GNP PER CAPITA

A country’s gross national product (GNP) divided by its population. It shows the income each person would have if GNP were divided equally. It is also called income per capita. GNP per capita is a useful measure of economic productivity, but by itself it does not measure people’s well-being or a country’s success in development. It does not show how equally or unequally a country’s income is distributed among its citizens. It does not reflect damage made by production processes to natural resources and the environment. It does not take into account any unpaid work done within households or communities or production taking place in the gray (shadow) economy. It attributes value to anything being produced whether it harms or contributes to general welfare (e.g., medicines and chemical weapons), and it ignores the value of such elements of people’s well-being as leisure or freedom.

Source: World Bank, Beyond Economic Growth, World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004.

BOX 1.2 GIDDENS’ PORTRAYAL OF COUNTRIES

High-income countries: Account for only 15 per cent of the world’s population … yet lay claim to 79 per cent of the world’s annual output of wealth … High-income countries offer decent housing, adequate food, drinkable water and other comforts unknown in many parts of the world. Although these countries often have large numbers of poor people, most of their inhabitants enjoy a standard of living unimaginable by the majority of the world’s people.

Middle-income countries: Most of these countries began to industrialize relatively late in the twentieth century and therefore are not yet as industrially developed (nor as wealthy) as the high-income countries. In 1999, middle-income countries included 45 per cent of the world’s population … but accounted for only 18 per cent of the wealth produced in that year. Although many people in these countries are substantially better off than their neighbors in low-income countries, most do not enjoy anything resembling the standard of living common in high-income countries.

Low-income countries: These countries mostly have agricultural economies and are only recently beginning to industrialize … in 1999, the low-income countries included 40 per cent of the world’s population … yet produced only 3 per cent of the world’s yearly output of wealth … In many of these low-income countries, people struggle with poverty, malnutrition and even starvation. Most people live in rural areas, although this is rapidly changing. Hundreds of millions of people are moving to huge, densely populated cities, where they live either in dilapidated housing or on the open streets.

Source: Giddens, A., Sociology, 5th edition, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 2006, 390, 391.

The World Bank has classified the countries of the world according to gross national income (GNI) per capita to aid in its operations, especially...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Boxes
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Authors
• Abbreviations
• Part I Concepts, Principles, and Processes
• Part II Development Issues
• Bibliography
• Index