Studying Development and Explaining Policies

Development is an ideological project. It originated in the need to address the negative consequences of capitalism in metropolitan countries and was integral to the project of imperialism, whose legacy it bears. Development policies and development studies both confound the intention to develop with the process of development. Theorists of development and of state-directed development, and most of their critics, share dualist assumptions. They have been concerned to explain how to modernize backward and rural economies and to transfer resources to create modern industrial economies. They have drawn on and influenced commu nist, state-led and market-oriented development strategies.