The Decimation and Displacement of Development Economics

摘要

Contemporary mainstream development economics is an overdetermined product of three historical processes: the late neoclassical turn within mainstream economic theory; transformations within the institutional-discursive matrix of development, from growth-centred policies to poverty alleviation- and good governance-oriented policies; and a broader transition from post-war Keynesian developmentalism (with its variants in the second and third worlds) to existing varieties of neoliberal governmentality. This article assesses the trajectory of development economics through two historical shifts in the theoretical field. The first is from the old' school of structural transformation with a focus on sectoral balance and shifts to the new' school of structural adjustment programmes with a focus on micro-level incentive problems. The second shift is from the aggressively neoclassical orientation of the new' school to that of the contemporary constellation, where what is considered to be good' development economics has beengraduallyreduced to micro-level impact appraisals of developmental projects (the so-called randomization approach'), while the broader macro-economic and historical questions are being increasingly handled through methodologically-individualist, late neoclassical models of institutions and growth (the so-called new institutionalism').The article concludes by insisting on the need for a new paradigm of development economics that would not only unearth the conflictual and antagonistic nature of development, but alsorender it an indispensable dimension of thestudy of development in a pluralist manner.