Critical transformations and global development: materials for a new analytical framework

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the disconnection between current analyses of global development and 21st-century developmental realities. It argues for a reworking of the development sciences on the basis of ‘transformation analysis’, attending, in particular, to those phases in longer-term social change that it characterizes as periods of ‘critical transformation’. Taking ‘the global’ seriously as an analytical category, it argues for an innovative development science capable of application in both the ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ worlds, and thus of yielding more appropriate practical and policy guidance. The paper briefly explores the empirical utility of transformation analysis by attention to the recent development histories of Hungary and Malaysia.

摘要

关键转型与全球发展 – 对新分析框架的思考. Area Development and Policy. 本文针对目前全球发展分析与21世纪发展实情之间存在脱节的问题进行探讨，认为应在‘转型分析’的基础上对发展科学进行修订，尤其应关注长期社会变化中的那些‘关键转型’时期。本文将‘全球’作为分析范畴，认为应建立一种在‘发展中’和‘发达’国家及地区均可适用的创新发展理论，从而可以提供更适合的实践和政策指导。本文通过分析匈牙利和马来西亚近来的发展情况简要探讨了转型分析的实证效用。]

RESUMEN

Transformaciones críticas y desarrollo global. Area Development and Policy. En este artículo se aborda la desconexión entre los análisis actuales del desarrollo global y las realidades de desarrollo en el siglo XXI. Se argumenta que es necesaria una modificación de las ciencias de desarrollo a partir de un ‘análisis de transformación’, prestando atención sobre todo a las fases del cambio social a largo plazo que se caracterizan como periodos de ‘transformación crítica’. Asumiendo seriamente que el término ‘global’ es una categoría analítica, se aboga por una ciencia de desarrollo innovadora que se pueda aplicar tanto en mundos ‘en desarrollo’ como ‘desarrollados’, y por consiguiente producir una guía más apropiada para la política y práctica. En este artículo se analiza brevemente la utilidad empírica del análisis de transformación enfocándose en las recientes historias de desarrollo de Hungría y Malasia.

Аннотация

Критические трансформации и глобальное развитие: материалы для новой схемы анализа. Area Development and Policy. В настоящей статье рассматривается разрыв между современными походами к анализу глобального развития и реалиями развития в 21-го веке. Автор призывает пересмотреть подходы к исследованиям в области развития на основе «анализа трансформаций», уделяя внимание, в частности, тем этапам в долгосрочных социальных изменениях, которые можно охарактеризовать как периоды «критической трансформации». Принимая «глобальность» как серьезную аналитическую категорию, статья утверждает целесообразность развития инновационной науки о развитии, которая сможет найти применение и в ‘развивающихся’ и ‘развитых’ мирах, и тем самым обеспечить более адекватные практические и политические ориентиры. В статье кратко анализируются эмпирическая полезность анализа трансформаций с упором на недавнюю истории развития Венгрии и Малайзии.

KEYWORDS:

• global development
• transformation analysis
• economic
• social and political change
• development trajectories
• Hungary and Malaysia

关键词:

• 全球发展
• ；转型分析
• ；经济、社会和政治变化
• ；发展轨迹
• ；匈牙利和马来西亚

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• desarrollo global
• análisis de transformación
• cambio económico
• social y político
• trayectorias de desarrollo
• Hungría y Malasia

Ключевые слова:

• глобальное развитие
• анализ трансформаций
• экономические
• социальные и политические изменения
• траектории развития
• Венгрия и Малайзия

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors are grateful to the reviewers and editor for their extensive comments made on an earlier version of the paper. Additionally, as the paper formed the basis of lectures given by Jeffrey Henderson at the Universities of Maastricht, Bristol and California at Santa Barbara, he wishes to express his thanks for the comments made by participants at those lectures.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. By ‘development science’ we refer to those social science disciplines and their relevant subdisciplines – as well as the interdisciplinary project, development studies – that study economic, social, political and cultural development, as well as their causes and consequences.

2. In principle, ‘transformation analysis’ could be applied at world-regional and global levels also, but this exercise is not attempted here.

3. But see also Castells (2000a, 2000b, 2004) and the emerging work around ‘uneven and combined development’ (e.g., Dunford & Liu, 2017).

4. Though sticking closely to orthodox economic theory, Lin (2017) has indicated some of the ways in which developing countries can learn from China’s experiences.

5. The sense of ‘critical’ employed here is somewhat akin to that evident in Scheffer’s (2009) work on ‘critical transitions’ in ecological change. There, however, the term refers to the tipping point (an event or series of events) beyond which the turn to a new ecological order becomes inevitable. Our use of it refers more to CTs as processes that prefigure tipping points in their latter stages.

6. The notion of ‘developmental trajectory’ used here relates to ‘pathways’ to the future (economic, political, social, cultural) and thus to the possibility of different collective futures being imbricated in the same starting point. As such, it is a structural idea. Consequently, recessions or booms, for instance, do not necessarily imply changes in trajectory.

7. The classic example here being the persistence of the QWERTY keyboard layout into the personal computer era, a standard originally adopted for reasons of mechanical efficiency in 19th-century typewriters (David, 1985).

8. Haydu’s (1998, 2010) iterative problem-solving approach compares time periods in which social actors produce contrasting solutions to recurrent dilemmas under distinct conditions (see also Kaup, 2015, on Bolivia). TA is similarly concerned with the ways in which previous sequences and efforts to resolve contradictions influence later periods of contestation. Our own work on Zambia has found enduring contradictions that have periodically recurred in new ways and under novel circumstances since the 1960s (Jepson & Henderson, 2016). However, as an approach, TA does not focus on a specific set of actors and in comparison with Haydu’s schema makes more precise claims around sequencing and periodization of change.

9. At the beginning of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), Karl Marx famously comments on history repeating itself: ‘the first time as high tragedy, the second time as low farce’ (Carver, 1996, p. 31). While that may appear to be possible in history-understood-as-events (the way, in fact, that Marx employs his comment), in history-understood-as-process, it clearly is not.

10. There are similarities here with Sewell’s (2008) work on the ‘temporalities of capitalism’.

11. We are grateful to Laszlo Czaban (University of Manchester) for sharing his reading of the Hungarian and English scholarly and media literatures with us, as well as for his views on the current state of Hungary’s political economy and politics. The interpretation developed here, however, is entirely our own.

12. ‘Kadarism’ refers to the partially liberalized, partly marketized, form of state-socialism that developed in Hungary during the political administration of Janos Kadar (General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, 1956–88).

13. The Gini coefficient for Malaysia in 2009 was 0.46 (World Bank, 2017b) and for Hong Kong (in 2016) was 0.54 (Hong Kong SAR, 2017).

14. A recent – and internationally publicized – manifestation of which has been the disappearance of nearly US$700 million from the sovereign wealth fund, 1Malaysia Development Bhd., and the appearance of a very similar amount in the personal bank account of Prime Minister Najib Razak (Wall Street Journal, 2015).

15. The NEP may have been the only example in any capitalist political economy of a redistribution programme being consciously developed as a central element of an industrialization project.