Development Theory and Actors

by

Development Theory and Inclusive Sustainable Development

Development theory is critical to understanding development initiatives and how they are created. Development theory has evolved greatly throughout the years in response to research and a better understanding of the world around us. Development began as a separate discipline after World War II when many former colonies were gaining there independence and Europe needed to be rebuilt. One of the first theories of development was modernization theory, developed by Rostow. Modernization theory argued that the third world was not developing because they were clinging to traditional culture and they would develop as they began to adopt more modern practices. Rostow was criticized for ignoring how the devastating effects of colonialism impacted development in developing nations. Dependency theory arose as a direct response to Modernization theory and argued that underdevelopment was the result of an unequal flow of resources from the periphery to the core as a result of colonialism. Both these theories and many other that followed measured development in terms of economic; countries with a higher GDP were seen as more developed. However, in recent years development has started to be looked at in a new way.

One of the most prominent scholars of development, Amartya Sen, argues that development cannot simply be measured in economics. Development must also be measured in the opportunities or “freedoms” a population has. In order to measure the opportunities a population has, we must use other tools and not simply the GDP. The Human development index (HDI) is a better measure of development because it includes life expectancy, education, and per capita income which gives a better picture of the opportunities of a population. Sen argues that development and development initiatives must also include marginalized populations such as women and minorities because there can be no true development if a large percentage of the population is excluded. This point is critical to my project which deals with the sexual and reproductive rights of women with disabilities in Latin America. Women with disabilities make up 10 percent of the population but are often excluded from development initiatives which impedes development. The lack of sexual and reproductive health care for women with disabilities also works to exclude them from development. In order for countries to be truly developed, they must make sure they are allowing marginalized populations such as women and people with disabilities to have the same opportunities as those populations traditionally included in development initiatives.

by

Grand Challenges and Why They Matter

Progress can only be defined by the way that major obstacles are overcome. Without hardship, there cannot be progress. Since history itself, humanity has faced many grand challenges that have shaped the world into what it is today, and the grand challenges that we currently face will determine what the future looks like. But what are grand challenges and why are they so important? To start, grand challenges are issues that directly affect humanity as a whole and require multi-stakeholder partnerships and cross disciplinary work to achieve results and find a solution within a given time frame. This term was first coined during the cold war, when the Kennedy administration ambitiously set out to land man on the moon for the first time. In 1961, Kennedy announced to the country: “before this decade is out, [we will be] landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” At this point in history, this was a grand challenge because no one thought it could be done and that it was out of the realm of what humanity was capable of. Yet it was achieved in 1969 with international help and with scientists from many disciplines, and the belief that it could be done.

If we look at some of the main issues of today, it seems impossible that we will ever end poverty, or ever become more sustainable, or be able to eliminate inequality. When the UN OWG met in Rio of 2012, 30 state members gathered together to address these grand challenges and frame them into the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Not only did they gather to identify the problems, but they gathered to set a critical deadline for when these goals should be achieved by 2030. Since the sustainable development goals were implemented, significant progress has been made. Between 1999 and 2013, poverty has been reduced from 1.7 billion to 767 million, which is very significant. Progress has also been made in hunger with the amount of undernourished people going from about 930 million in the early 2000’s to 793 million in 2014. In the field of medicine, “The risk of dying between the ages of 30 and 70 from one of four main non‑communicable diseases (NCDs)—cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes or chronic respiratory disease—fell from 23 per cent to 19 per cent between 2000 and 2015” (UN, Sustainable Development Goals Report 2017). However, with the deadline of 2030, the progress is not happening fast enough to achieve everything that the UN set out to do.

Although it may seem impossible to meet all of the goals set out by the SDGs before the year 2030, by setting an agenda and a deadline, it pushed countries around the world to take initiative and move in the right direction. Regardless of whether the goals are actually met by the given year, there will be significant progress made in making the world a better place for all.

by

Using Sen’s Capabilities Approach to Tackle Disability Discrimination

Despite agreeing that for some reason, certain countries struggle to “catch up” to a Western standard of development, the word development itself means something different to all who hear it. There are competing theories of development ranging from Utilitarianism, Libertarianism, to the Rawlsian Theory of Justice and how to approach it like the direct approach, supplementary approach, and indirect approach.

To some, development is about economic growth. To others like Amartya Sen, development is defined more as consisting “of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency” or “the process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy” (Development as Freedom). This is the capabilities approach, meaning that instead of focusing on individual income as the goal, development work must expand to include social and economic arrangements (ie the facilities for education and healthcare) and political and civil rights (ie the liberty to participate in public discussion and scrutiny). This follows the Rawlsian Theory of Justice model where John Rawls argues that justice and freedom are not mutually exclusive, instead of building institutions based on the idea of the social contract instead of the Utilitarian approach of the greatest good for the greatest number, excluding the rest. He expands freedoms to include 1) political 2) economic and 3) social opportunities as well as 4) transparency and 5) protective security, which all work together to develop and support the plurality of institutions.

Similarly to Sen, Sumner and Tribe, in International Development Studies, view development as three, inter-related views on development. These are 1) Long-term process of structural change in the international system, 2) Short to medium-term poverty reduction and MDGs , and 3) Development as discourse (a set of ideas; that shapes/frame reality).

Because the state must be in a supporting role to give people the agency to build these institutions, it is interesting to look at Sen’s approach in regards to inclusive development for persons with disabilities. Persons with disabilities often do not have these freedoms and do not have the ability to achieve the lives they have reason to value under the capabilities approach. By using Sen’s and Sumner and Tribe’s views on development, disability rights activists have a guiding framework with which to engage in conversation on a higher level.

by

Development Theory

The word “development” has no clear and universal definition and understanding. It is vague. What does “development” mean? Is it different in different situations and contexts? Development is hard to define and even harder to understand, making it one of the most complex and most common terms used today. I could spend a lot of time defining the term from a variety of angles, but I will end it here. In his book, Amartya Sen defines development as the removal of unfreedoms and give back opportunities to those who were affected by these unfreedoms. Per Sen, an example of an unfreedom is poverty, something that has not purposefully been imposed on people but has affected people left and right.

To combat Sen, the authors of Why Nations Fail, Acemoglu and Robinson define development as how well economies are doing, whether they are succeeded, barely getting by, or failing. For Acemoglu and Robinson, economic indicators, such as GDP or unemployment, are important predictors in how well an economy is doing. If GDP is on a decline, the economy, and therefore the development, of a country is not doing well. If unemployment is high, that is also true. Acemoglu and Robinson believe that economic growth, measured by economic indicators and technological advancement, is development. This is more akin to how we understand development on a global level today. On a global scale, we classify countries as developed, developing, and least developed. In this idea of development, the concept of development is strictly based upon economies.

Development is more than just economies and freedoms. There are a variety of development theories out there, including modernization theory, structuralism, dependency theory, basic needs theory, and neoclassical theory. Out of these, basic needs theory is the one that I am most indifferent about. In the United States, we use the foundations of basic needs theory to determine poverty levels and how we distribute state and federal help programs like food stamps. Basic needs theory is rooted in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who created a five tier pyramid that has the basic human needs at the bottom and culminates with self actualization at the top. This pyramid emphasized basic needs to be air, food, and water on the bottom level and shelter and clothing on the second level. In the world, these basic needs are understood and that is why food shelters and homeless shelters exist to provide assistance for people to obtain these needs.

by

Development Theory and the Influence of Amartya Sen

The definition of development is one that has been contested by many economists, cultural theorists, politicians, and international organizations. Questions of “What is Development? How do we measure it? And how can we promote it internationally?” have long dominated discourse surrounding international development and have been answered in many different ways. Most notably, three major theories of internationally development have emerged over the course of history, with each building off each other. Modernization Theory, the idea that societies transition from pre-modern ones into modernized ones through similar processes, was a popular development ideology in the 1950s but eventually declined with the rise of Dependency Theory. Dependency Theory was theorized in direct response to the claims of Modernization Theory and suggested that development is driven by the flow of resources from undeveloped periphery states to industrialized core states, at the expense of the periphery. While neither Modernization Theory or Dependency have many modern day adherents, the ways in which the they came to prominence shows the way in which theories of development interact with one another and change over time.

One of the more significant contributions to international development discourse in recent history is that of economist Amartya Sen. For Sen, traditional measures of development that solely focus on economic production and growth cannot fully measure the living conditions and general well being of a nation’s people. In Development as Freedom, Sen outlines his “capabilities” approach to development in which human well being is best measured by assessing standard of living and access to individual freedoms like healthcare and education. Stemming from his conception of development, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) adopted the Human Development Index (HDI). The index incorporates Sen’s ideas of measuring well being by compiling indicators like life expectancy, expected years of schooling, and Gross National Income (GNI) into a single measurement.

In my opinion, Sen’s contributions to the way in which development is understood globally are incredibly valuable, especially in encouraging a more nuanced understanding of development that promotes sustainability and inclusion. In a world of incredible economic affluence, as well as immense poverty and inequality, it is easy to get trapped in the “GDP ideology” conception of development. But, to fully understand where societies need to improve, an understanding of development in terms of ability of all people within a nation to live a healthy, prosperous, and free life is essential. By adopting Amartya Sen’s understanding of Development as Freedom, the international community can work towards an inclusive, sustainable world that is not inherently biased towards Western conceptions of development.

by

Development Perspectives and the Green Revolution

Development is complex and ambiguous considering the varying conceptions of freedom and what a good life is. The realm of developmental studies is constantly evolving and thus requires constant innovation, multi-stakeholder participation, and knowledge circulation. Development studies and policies have generated transformations throughout the world since the end of World War II. The first perspective of development included grand visions of societal transformation and the emancipation from underdevelopment, however this grand vision limited the capacities to guide sustainable development. In response to the challenges of a complete societal transformation, development perspective shifted to focus on performance assessments and measuring progressive change on a short term basis. This perspective centralized focus on the outcome of change, which at times undermined the preferences of the local actors benefitting from development. The Western notion of development has dominated the field and the Post-modern approach aims to highlight the negative impacts of these notions. (Summer and Tribe, 2008)

Considering the power dynamics behind development, the public and scholars alike must be aware that forms of development must be attuned to individual communities needs and wants, since not all countries and regions are equally developed or underdeveloped. The Post-Modern approach acknowledges that a ‘one size fits all model’ cannot work effectively in the realm of development. Diverse populations require diverse mechanisms and community-based approaches allow communities to help guide development. International Development had been steered by Western ethnocentric notions, which have vastly expanded the role of technological innovations within the field. While technology offers many opportunities for progress,  various technical approaches have the power to undermine long-term sustainability efforts, especially within the agricultural sector of developing countries.

One example of Western ethnocentric development can be highlighted by the Green Revolution, which was the adoption and spread of high-yielding seed varieties (HYVs) (otherwise known as genetically modified organisms), among small-scale farmers in developing countries. The development of HYVs began in Mexico through a partnerships between the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Government. The HYVs were adapted to Mexican wheat varieties in 1961 (Wu 2004, 12). By 1965, the HYV of wheat improved yields by 400% in comparison to yields from 1950 (Randhava 1986, 365). This development highlights the first and second perspectives of development. The grand vision of societal transformation was marked with applied innovation and technologies to address one of the world most pressing problems, hunger. While the second perspective addresses the notion of performance assessment and measuring progress on a short-term basis. The rapid increase of yields provided the Development world a strong performance indicator of the short-term progress which aided in the implementation of the technologies worldwide.

As these technologies increased short-term yields, the long-term sustainability was not fully integrated in the approach. By the mid 1980s, yield growth slowed down and environmental degradation caused by intensified agricultural productions, which has been widely recognized as a downfall of these technologies (Pingali 2012). Furthermore, farmers who introduced the seeds in their farming practices were then required to buy new seeds externally on a yearly basis, contrasting the traditional manner of reusing seeds yearly. While Development and technological innovations go hand in hand, we must be aware of the implications of technology and address the short-comings of progress, such as the environmental and social implications of developmental strategies. Amartya Sen defines freedom as having the capabilities to live the life one desires to live, thus the Development community must understand the complexities of communities and their needs and desires before implementing strategies (Sen, 1999).

References

Randhawa, M. S. A History of Agriculture in India, Four Volumes. New Delhi: Indian Council of Agricultural Research, 1980.

Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom, Anchor Books, 1999.

Sumner, Andy and Michael Tribe. International Development Studies: Theories and Methods in Research and Practice.Sage, 2008.

Pingali, Prabhu L. “Green Revolution: Impacts, limits, and the path ahead.” Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Boston, MA. Vol. 109 no.31.

Wu, Felicia, and William P.Butz. “The Green Revolution.” The Future of Genetically Modified       Crops: Lessons from the Green Revolution, 1st ed., RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA; Arlington, VA; Pittsburgh, PA, 2004, pp. 11–38.

 

by

Why is Multi-stakeholder Cooperation Essential for Sustainable Development?

In the field of development, there is a multitude of actors that promote the SDGs and work towards improving the world on many different levels. These levels can go from grassroots movements, to local government action, to International cooperation. Each level of development has its own methodology, its own approach to resolving the Grand Challenges that we face, and each development actor presents different tools and knowledge for resolving the issues.

At the grassroots level where NGOs and other developmental organizations that are locally based perform hands on development work, they operate directly with the target population and do most of the developmental field work necessary to help local communities grow. These organizations collect over time the knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work on a local scale, and it allows them to understand the needs of the population, making the development work as efficient as possible. However, grassroots organizations often lack the funding and resources to expand the scale of operations to affect more people, and because of this, the impact of their development work remains local.

Governments also play an essential role in development work as they manage the resources of the country and therefore have more power to fund development projects. The government also has a large extent of knowledge on the needs of the population. However, what the government has in resources and knowledge, it lacks in efficiency. Governmental development is often criticized for its bureaucratic red tape that makes it very difficult to efficiently manage and run development projects, and this lack of efficiency results in development operations that become much more expensive and yield lesser results.

Finally, international developmental organizations such as the World Bank, the IDB, the United Nations, the HLPF, and many others offer a macro approach to development through international cooperation. The advantages to this approach are that it allows to create a conversation surrounding specific developmental issues and brings them to light, making governments realize the importance of development work in the grand scheme of the SDGs. It is also a good place for different governments to propose ways to implement development with the purpose of meeting a particular criteria and through treaties, binds countries to meet the goals. Unfortunately, there is not a strong enforcement mechanism that forces countries to implement the development work they signed off to.

At each level of development there are partial solutions to meeting the SDGs but still encounter specific difficulties at each layer. The difficulties that the different levels of development encounter however can be solved using the tools and knowledge that other actors operating at different scales have to offer. No single actor possesses the solution to development, but by putting actors together, the optimal combination of knowledge and resources would be met, allowing for the maximum amount of progress to be made. This is fundamental to understanding the importance of multi-stakeholder operations in development and why it is essential to have platforms where the different actors operating at different levels of development can share ideas and knowledge to all resolve Grand Challenges.

by

Entitlement Theory and Access to Communication

Amartya Sen, author of “Development as Freedom,” first coined the term of entitlement theory in his paper “exchange Entitlements” as a way to describe the causes of famine. What he found was that famines often are not due to a lack of food, but rather a lack of access to the food that the country has available. In class, we discussed the importance of ICTs in the development framework and how people living in different societies and living in different areas of the world don’t have the same access to communications resources as people who live in large concentrated urban areas.

In the Maitland Commission Report, the ITU presented the idea of a “missing link” in the age of communication as there is still a large percentage of people that live completely isolated from the rest of the world due to a lack of access to telephone lines, internet and other forms of ICTs. One of the reasons that these populations remain without access to these technologies is because companies in charge of installing the infrastructure do not see any benefit in spending time and resources to provide this technology to marginalized communities. Another issue is that often, even if the technology is available to the communities, they are unable to afford the fees for using the internet or cellular reception. How then can these populations be given access to these technological entitlements?

One way to address this issue is through government intervention to ensure all people get access to the ICTs. By providing subsidies to companies providing the communications infrastructure, it gives private enterprises an additional motive to provide the services to marginalized communities. Another way to provide the service is through government acquisition of the technology and provide it themselves. However, involving the government in providing ICTs to the population leads to other challenges such as a loss in efficiency due to additional bureaucratic transaction costs, an increase in prices as the government tries to compensate for the higher costs, and problems with the quality of the good provided due to lack of competition.

In order to find the perfect combination of public and private that would allow marginalized communities to access ICTs, there are several conditions that need to be met that Amartya Sen defined. The first condition is that the highest level of efficiency is achieved in democratic governments. This is because democratic institutions provide greater stability and are subject to the interests of the voters, and therefore have a responsibility towards the population. There are cases in countries where the government intervened in the distribution of ICTs in order to spike the prices for personal gain or for military spending, but in the case of democratic institutions, there are checks and balances that keep that from happening.

A second condition is to ensure perfect competition and a breadth in the market. Having a large diversity of suppliers that can compete on an even playing field would cause prices of ICTs to go down and would also decrease the prices of the infrastructure, therefore making it more beneficial to provide the good to the most consumers possible, making it more affordable and more available to people in marginalized communities.

Finally, in order to set these things in motion, it is essential to raise awareness of the importance of bridging the “missing link” because through awareness, the government can act and start implementing strategies to provide greater access to the rest of the population living outside of concentrated rural areas.

In a quickly modernizing society where technological progress increases exponentially with each passing year, it is essential to make sure that no one gets left behind. ICTs are an essential part of development work, and without this access to information and communication, marginalized societies will be perpetually trying to catch up with the progress in the rest of the world and will never be able to achieve the same levels of development.

by

Development and The Poverty Trap

“Why Nation’s Fail” discusses mechanisms of “inclusive economic institutions” that allow developed countries to continue to be wealthy. Acemoglu and Robinson state these wealthy, western world countries create incentives for citizens to be innovative, provide secure education and strong infrastructure, and create laws that benefit the entirety of the population. These facets parallel the ideas within Sen’s, “Development of Freedom,” chapters of discussing democracy, famine, and women and social change. In contrast, all authors talk about undeveloped countries and the ways in which they struggle to achieve development and westernized ideals. Although I agree that many underdeveloped countries want democracy, less political upheaval, and famine, it is paramount to understand the ways in which these countries have fallen into the vicious cycle of exclusion.

Sen’s chapter on famine and other crises strongly reminds me of the nutritional poverty trap that many under developing countries face in the wake of development. Sen explains that famine and malnourishment is due to the working of the state’s economy and society as a whole, and thus the ability to acquire food has to be earned. The nutritional poverty trap states that because the poor are too malnourished, they are unable to work productively, which results in scarcity in income and production. In turn, this lack of production works to continue the malnourishment within these populations. Ordinarily, calories are too cheap within nations for causal of poverty. But famines, natural disasters and lack of proper waste management can yield to nutritional poverty. This has long-standing impacts on one’s health, causing for an overall economy to weaken, making it even more difficult to fight famines.

Acemoglu and Robinson explain that issues of politics and economics influence a countries development. Continuing with various poverty trap theories, the geographical poverty trap explains the ways in which the environment can hinder a country’s ability to develop. Geographic characteristics are unchangeable and thus heavily influence available resources for production, technology, income and overall poverty. Even with proper investments, geographic can hinder households ability to increase wages and growth. Furthermore, geographical locations can hinder strong infrastructure. Environments that are prone to drought, floods, and natural disasters are unable to provide a continuous strong infrastructure that will enable societies to be innovative. One could argue mass migration from these high-risk areas, however, within underdeveloped countries the movement to urbanized, developed cities lead to the creation of the periphery in areas. Informal settlements, slums, and improper housing forms, ultimately sustain and create poverty in new areas.

Although underdeveloped countries desire development and innovation within their states, they face several setbacks that perpetuate their poverty and underdevelopment. I believe that poverty trap theories give valuable insight into the ways in which these countries fall into vicious cycles.

by

Three Concepts

When considering a development project, the way in which things are measured and worded has a large effect on the project mechanisms and outcomes. The three concepts outlined by Andy Sumner and Michael Tribe in International Development Studies: Theories and Methods in Research and Practice are Development as a long term process of structural societal transformation, Development as a short-to-medium term outcome of desirable targets, and Development as a dominant discourse of western modernity. All three of these are presented as separate entities with different processes and outcomes. Despite this, one would hope that all three could be used in a way to make a cohesive form of development.

Development as a long term process has been attributed to academia as it is not practiced as often as it is spoken about. While the rhetoric of development has a clear impact on the way people think and how they wish to act through it, it is true that the idealistic ways in which long term development is projected does not easily lend itself to implementation.

Development as a short-to-medium term process is more measured than the long term processes desired by academics. There are performance goals and indicators that allow for this measurement to be documented within the development community and understood by funding groups and International Organizations. While this approach is able to tangibly accomplish more than long term processes, it typically only scratches the surface of the issue and has the ability to leave an even larger issue than before.

Development as a dominant discourse of Western modernity is a concept that criticizes the two aforementioned concepts. As a whole, it argues that the development being done may not benefit the communities reached in the correct ways. For example, a development scheme may detract from a community’s ability to engage in a cultural event. Considering the development community takes Western models and applies them elsewhere, this has some validity. It creates a superiority complex that continues to drive down those in receipt of development. Even with this, there are not many solutions offered that have been taken seriously.

Because all three of these have their positives and their drawbacks, they can play of each other to learn new techniques and measurement methods. Along with the third concept of development, the people being benefited can have input and truly benefit from the projects being implemented.