The state of development studies: origins, evolution and prospects

ABSTRACT

In reviewing the evolution of development studies, this article identifies three distinct traditions in teaching and research on development studies: international, national and global. Scholars and practitioners also make critical choices regarding focus, scale and expertise. The nature of explanation has shifted from understanding historical change, to assessing policy interventions at a demonstrable level of causality. The field is dividing into parallel dialogues that view development as national (domestic well-being), global (cross-border interdependencies), or foreign (poverty hotspots abroad). Development studies needs to bridge these dialogues, by encouraging the use of mesolevel data (between the nation-state and households), adopting greater geographic precision and offering thick explanations of social change.

RÉSUMÉ

Cette revue de l’évolution des études du développement identifie trois traditions qui s’intéressent respectivement aux zones de pauvreté à l’étranger, au progrès national et aux interdépendances mondiales; montre qu’elles ont évolué d’un intérêt pour les grands courants historiques du changement social vers l’étude des conséquences à différentes échelles et pour diverses dimensions du bien-être; avance qu’elles sont aujourd’hui caractérisées par le cadre organisationnel dans lequel elles sont enseignées et pratiquées; et soutient que ce champ se divise en trois ensembles qui traitent en parallèle des décisions souveraines sur l’utilisation de la richesse nationale, des problèmes communs aux interdépendances mondiales et des problèmes propres aux zones de conflit. Or, faire le pont entre ces ensembles distincts exigerait des recherches qui recourent davantage à des données à l’échelle méso, adoptent une plus grande précision spatiale et offrent des explications denses (thick) du changement social.

KEYWORDS:

• Development studies
• epistemology
• history
• public policy
• global development

This article examines the origins and evolution of development studies, as well as its status and prospects in the coming decades.¹ The first section traces the history of development studies over more than two centuries, and identifies three distinct traditions focused on poor places abroad, progress at home and global interdependencies. The second section shows that development studies evolved through a slow accumulation of ideas, with newer waves of thinking coming to prominence yet seldom completely displacing older ideas. Over the past 70 years, the field has shifted away from descriptions of historical patterns of broad social change. It now tends toward causal explanation that links particular interventions – in policy or technology – to their outcomes at demonstrable scales or specific dimensions of human well-being. The third section argues that what makes development studies unique today is the organisational setting in which it is taught or practiced. This includes critical choices over the focus and scale of questions asked, and how they relate to other areas of expertise. At the same time, open data and digital communication are transforming how and where scholars and practitioners work. The fourth section posits that the field is dividing into parallel dialogues concerning sovereign decisions over use of national wealth, common problems regarding global interdependencies and foreign problems dealing with troubled places abroad. The developing world has diverged into distinct sets of problems and potentials, which requires scholars to use more mesolevel data (between the nation-state and household), adopt greater spatial precision and offer thick explanations of social change.

Origins

Concern over development has been with us for as long as people have existed, for it is fundamentally about improving the human condition. At its core, development studies combines both concern over the existence of poverty within society (the have-nots) as well as the quest to understand and shape how society changes over time. In this respect, development studies has deep historical roots that stretch across time connecting different thinkers and eras. For example, Aristotle pondered the concept of “flourishing lives” long before contemporary scholarship on capabilities (Nussbaum 1988), and Ibn Khaldun reflected on the rise and fall of states long before the recent concern over fragile states (Alatas 2013).

Waves of scholarship

The eighteenth and twentieth centuries each witnessed a wave of scholarly attention to the existence of poverty within society, and what could be done to address it (Ravallion 2011). Hulme (2014) describes the context around the first wave as analysis of domestic social problems, the enactment of England's poor laws and France's rules about indigence and the writings of de Condorcet, Malthus and Engels. The contributions of David Hume, Adam Smith, James Steuart and John Stuart Mill mark the origin of debates on economic growth, the distribution of wealth and the principles underlying public action. The work of French thinkers complemented such writing with a focus on promoting equality, freedom and justice. Meanwhile newly independent countries in the Americas aspired to build a different society inspired by such ideals. The underlining concern of such thinking was to imagine and achieve a better society at home.

The second wave follows the end of the Second World War and accompanies a preoccupation with reconstruction, decolonisation and newly independent but poor countries. President Truman's (1949) inaugural speech introduced a “four point” plan expressing both optimism in modernisation through science and technology and a norm of richer countries assisting poorer ones irrespective of previous colonial history. The Marshall Plan and parallel massive aid concentrated on humanitarian assistance and reconstruction in Europe and Asia. This period saw political independence spread across former colonies in Africa and Asia. It also saw the emergence of development practice as comprehensive and sustained efforts to improve poor places abroad: to grow their economy, reduce poverty, (re)build infrastructure, foster trade and strengthen local governance.²

It is tempting to equate development studies to this second wave, given the sheer magnitude of ideas and writing involved and the tremendous changes that occurred in the world order. Yet to do so ignores both how the field has built on earlier thinking and erroneously casts development studies as primarily concerned about foreign aid. Despite a newfound enthusiasm for global efforts to shape a future free from war and want, development studies retained an earlier concern about how to improve society “at home”. Harriss (2014, 37–46) observes that a number of the key scholars emigrated from their home countries to elaborate their ideas in Western universities, such as Paul Baran, Alexander Gerschenkron, Karl Polanyi, Paul Streeten, Hans Singer and others.³ Additional scholars originating from the South came to the forefront of development thinking, such as W. Arthur Lewis, Arturo Escobar, Raul Prebisch, Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen.

Organisational traditions

Scholars have produced detailed accounts describing a history of development theories and schools of thought (Rist 1997; Kothari 2005). While such works speak to the plurality of ideas in the field as a whole, it can be useful to consider how certain traditions were adopted by real-life organisations. For the sake of argument, below I identify three organisational traditions which correspond to concern with development abroad, at home or globally. This typology is based on my experience spanning periods in Latin America and North Africa, as well as positions at headquarters and abroad for a development research organisation.⁴ In this experience, people abroad tend to describe development in terms of their own agency in shaping the future of their society, independent of outside assistance. Meanwhile, my home country of Canada witnessed an increasing interplay between development and foreign policy through increasingly integrated programming and budgeting. Other more nuanced typologies are possible, but this one suffices to suggest in later sections that the space for development studies has evolved, as universities and organisations increasingly navigate among three parallel dialogues.

A tradition of international development focuses on actions especially designed for poorer countries. This tradition fosters scholarship on poverty and inequality and prepares practitioners for careers in organisations that seek to understand and affect change abroad. Experience living and working in other countries is essential for establishing one's credibility as a professional. Starting from historical ties to particular parts of the developing world – such as the Commonwealth, Francophonie or Iberoamerica – this tradition evolved unique concepts and theories for the study of the developing world post-independence. Methods tend toward interpreting local realities with the aid of overarching theories and identifying patterns through comparative analysis of experiences in different countries.

A tradition of national development focuses on crafting plans at home to shape the future of one's own society. This tradition solidified with the independence of many African and Asian countries in the postwar decades, yet extends back to Latin America in the nineteenth century. Graduates expect to pursue careers in government and civil society that shape domestic policy. Knowledge of other countries is useful, but secondary to technical skills and an ethic of public service. This tradition is driven by the imperatives of nation-building and the role of public institutions in charting the process of development. This tradition intermingled with political and economic studies, analogous to what became schools of public policy in the West. Methods tend toward subject-specific interplay of theory and practice, in such diverse subfields as social policy, public health and public finance and administration. While most easily recognised in the developing countries, this tradition has precedents in early Western attempts to replicate their own historical experience at modernising, rather than prescribing a unique course for poor countries. Equally, this tradition underpins the contemporary discourse of South–South cooperation recognising a sovereign right for each country to decide on its own policies.

A tradition of global development focuses on creating a common future, recognising the interdependence of different countries in producing public goods and confronting public ills. This tradition flourished in the 1990s, with the dissolution of Cold War identities, increasing economic and trade integration and a rising concern over the systemic risks introduced by globalisation. It is simultaneously inward and outward looking, understanding one's own society and its role in an interconnected world. Graduates expect to be global citizens, cultivating varied experiences at home and abroad, applying turnkey skills that can be useful in both settings. This tradition intermingles with international relations and foreign policy, driven by a concern with messy and complex problems beyond the control of single nation-states. Methods tend to de-emphasise theory in favour empiricism and problem solving, following a recent shift toward positivism and a pragmatic preoccupation in finding “what works”.

Again, these three traditions of international, national and global development are but a convenient shorthand for describing distinct outlooks on development studies. Any particular faculty, curriculum or research programme draws on elements of any or all three. The usefulness of these traditions lies in inquiring about the context of any particular organisation: its perspective on what constitutes development and the assumed career aspirations of students and staff. All three traditions embrace the characteristics of interdisciplinary inquiry, at multiple scales and ranging from theoretical work to empirical and policy-oriented research (Loxley 2004). This is hardly surprising as such characteristics are increasingly common across the social sciences. For example, the integration of history, geography, political economy and sociology features in public health, public policy, international relations and business schools. At the same time, development studies is not always restricted to focus on poor countries abroad, as it also examines change and crises “back home” in the developed world (for a discussion of land grabs in Europe see van der Ploeg, Franco, and Borras 2015).

These organisational traditions are analogous to tropical, international and global health, frames which shape the application of medical sciences toward developing countries (Evans 2014). Based on such traditions, schools and organisations select particular ideas, concepts and theories to teach and transmit to students and staff. Such traditions influence the approach to development studies more than the country in which a school is located, and multiple traditions coexist in the same country. Similarly, organisations can and do change their approach over time, through changes in instructors, management, curriculum and strategy.

In general, development studies has been defined as knowledge and understanding of the world in which we live (Sen 2005). Informed by practice and facts on the ground, it includes ideas, concepts and theories that constitute our knowledge of how societies change. Ideas that describe the ends and means of development both inform and inspire the actions of individuals, organisations and states in their continuous effort to invent a better world. As noted by Beland and Cox (2011): “what things change and how they change are all the result of what people choose to do … these choices are shaped by the ideas people hold and debate”. Development studies examines how the real-life experiences of different communities, countries and organisations have been inspired by, and have contributed to, thinking on development (Kanbur 2009). Beyond the strategies pursued by donors, NGOs and governments, development studies must necessarily address the choices made on the ground, including how states marshal the resources available to them in order to care for their citizens.

Evolution

Histories and timelines of development studies mention key events and crises separating periods in which certain ideas came to prominence or held good currency. A partial list would include the ideas of economic growth (big push; balanced and unbalanced growth; structural change), industrialisation, agricultural and demographic transformation, dependency, basic needs and human capabilities, participation, gender, sustainable development and political ecology.⁵ Timelines give an impression of succession, yet newer thinking does not always displace previous knowledge. Development studies experienced few paradigm shifts (Kuhn 1962), one of which was the move beyond income as the sole proxy for well-being, to better understand multiple deprivations and dimensions of poverty (Seers 1969; Alkire 2007). Older ideas are critiqued and placed in historical context; for example, Rostow's stages of growth – subtitled “non-communist manifesto” – is appreciated as an artefact of its time rather than a universal law for which it was once espoused. This is particularly the case of how policy and practice understand development studies. To paraphrase Keynes (1936, 384),⁶ old ideas can live on in the minds and hearts of former students caught up their daily grind, with scarce opportunity to requestion the first principles underpinning their work.

Rather than a neat succession of intellectual traditions, development studies – and the practice it inspired – elaborated, borrowed and accumulated an array of ideas, concepts and theories. Amartya Sen's “development as freedom” deeply influences the contemporary practitioners. Yet Sen readily recognises how his work builds on the ideas of early thinkers. These include Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiments (1759, 1), relating individual satisfaction to the happiness of others, Peter Bauer (1957, 113) and W. Arthur Lewis (1955, 420) aiming to expand the “range of human choice” and efforts by Paul Streeten and Mahbub ul Haq to enable “people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives” (UNDP 1990, 9). Accepting Sen's ideas does not require a complete cognitive shift. It is still possible to view and understand the world in different ways: while offering a distinct view on development, it does not complete negate previous explanations.

As development studies evolved, the field embraced increasingly broader notions of what constitutes success, at varying scales of ambition and cost: national income and individual freedoms, global health and safer communities, poverty eradication and social justice. Social progress is now understood to be positive movement in some combination of income, education, health, nutrition, housing, the environment, personal security, personal liberty and the quality of public institutions – including their distribution across population groups and regions. There has been a unifying trend in development studies toward notions of human freedom underlying diverse goals and problems (Qizilbash 1996; Clark 2002; Alkire 2002; Hulme 2010). Yet development practice and policy also diversified into distinct epistemic communities. While some consensus emerged on the ends of development, it has not consolidated an agreement on the means to achieve it, the concepts used to explain it or the methods to study it.

Many of the topics considered vital to any curriculum of development studies, such as the role of civil society and adaptation to climate change, were absent in the most forward-leaning thought on development 70 years ago. That our conception of development has expanded, such that ignoring these issues is now unthinkable, speaks to what Sen (2005, 457) terms the constructive roles of democracy and epistemology, which he defines as “government by discussion” and “learning from discussion”. It is through such discussion that the objectives of development broadened beyond poverty and wealth and their distribution, to include education, health, nutrition, security, political empowerment and human capabilities.

As a result, the field and its practice can appear eclectic and confusing. Yet clarity emerges when development studies is assessed in light of the recent history of science: shifts in the nature of explanation used and the incentives shaping a career in development studies or practice.

Nature of explanation

Development studies address questions ranging from the macrolevel to the microlevel, from understanding how societies change over time to solving problems of individual poverty and deprivation. Cowen and Shenton (1996) distinguish between immanent and intentional development, as spontaneously coming from within or purposely led by external forces. Easterly (2006) and Nederveen Pieterse (2012) contrast those who approach development as a search for grassroots solutions (“we develop”) with those who approach it as a plan for technical problem solving (“we develop it”). Other authors distinguish between big and small development. The former tends to be overarching in nature, the realm of grand theories of social change, seeking to transform entire countries or society through “wholesale investments in roads, ports, agriculture, education, justice, finance and public health … to build national systems” (Harman and Williams 2014, 932). In contrast, small development addresses the material plight of individuals and groups within society, seeking to compensate for the failures of such systems. Dichotomies of immanent versus intentional, or big versus small, cover variation in the unit of analysis used and the purpose behind the questions asked. Between these extremes, development studies embraces the use of various datasets describing different aspects of poor places and people, ranging from national accounts and census panels to ethnographic studies and household surveys. Quite simply, the questions asked within development studies vary, as do the methods used to answer those questions.

The twenty-first century has witnessed two opposing trends: toward positivism in thinking and methods, alongside a renewal of critical social science. The first trend reflects broader pressures upon and opportunities for the social sciences. The late twentieth century witnessed an increasing expectation to demonstrate the “value” created by public funding for research and scholarship. Particularly where foreign aid spending supported such scholarship, development studies experienced periods of scrutiny, which heightened during times of austerity and budget cuts. Consequently, the field was pressed to become progressively more interventionist, demonstrating how its knowledge and insights contribute to real-life outcomes, such as income generated and lives saved. This push toward practical application encouraged the adoption of smaller-scale units of analysis, where causal mechanisms could be demonstrated more clearly. The nature of explanation turned toward positivism.

Beyond the rise of quantitative methods,⁷ there was a fundamental shift in the style of writing used by thinkers in different time periods. A previous generation of scholars, steeped in classical literature and the writing of philosophers, aspired to understand the “other” and historical transformations. To exaggerate the point, the test for accepting a development theory was whether it helped understand the world: interpreting past events and predicting what might happen next. Concepts were valued for their ability to diagnosis the problems facing society and for prescribing action. Yet recently the rules of natural science have exercised greater influence over thinking and scholarship. Development studies always coexisted with the application of natural sciences, particularly in agriculture and health, underpinned by disciplines that simply adapt existing theories and models to local variations in biota, climate and disease burden. Yet the methods of inquiry and explanation from the natural sciences – how they frame research questions and seek answers – came to pervade development studies more generally. A significant part of scholarship came to expect theories that are falsifiable, leading to development practice based on empirical evidence rather than interpretation of historical patterns. Grand narratives still shape global agendas, but in everyday life the practitioner is as likely to speak of policy experiments, measurable targets and development indicators. Development studies embraced the use of mathematical models, systematic reviews and quasi-experimental designs, inspired by their apparent success in economics and clinical medicine. The historic quest for broad explanation of social transformation now competes with the modest search for specific cause-and-effect mechanisms. Contemporary writing on development includes inquiry on particular interventions by donors or states, and aspires to demonstrate impact in terms of change in the real world.

The second and countervailing trend was renewed attention to agency, power and the root causes of poverty and inequality. While part of development studies became more positivist, the challenges addressed by the field shifted towards wicked problems characterised by complexity and uncertainty regarding the underlying causality. For example, the rise of a security agenda in the twenty-first century witnessed renewed consideration of governance, empowerment and accountability in generating and combating the public ills of fragile states, illicit trade, terrorism and sexual violence. The reality of development is messy, filled with multiple variables and causal mechanisms, most of which cannot be controlled. Development studies emerged in part from anthropology and sociology, and there has been a re-engagement with these fields, which themselves witnessed important advances in methods and reflective practice (Edelman and Haugerud 2004; Mosse and Lewis 2006). The result is a mutual rise in the demand for, and supply of, critical insights and theoretical approaches from social sciences (Mitchie and Cooper 2015). Such work necessarily incorporates a healthy dose of humility and realism; it can compare across unique experiences in different locations in search of patterns but stops short of falsifiable theory or general laws of social change (see Borras et al. 2012; Elder et al. 2013; Couto Soares, Scerri, and Maharajh 2013). Today, people are adapting in real time to change in glacier-fed rivers and semi-arid lands, without relying on computer models of greenhouse gases or climate scenarios.

Contemporary development studies embraces both theoretical and empirical dimensions, yet the former is often grounded in ways of thinking (epistemology) particular to related disciplines such as economics, health and agriculture. Moreover, the pressure on development studies to demonstrate its contribution to pragmatic outcomes creates a tendency to obscure theory under more accessible insights and rhetoric about what constitutes development and how it happens. Theorising about development can depart from normative or empirical bases, from moral principles and values relating to a desirable society or from evidence about how societies have changed over time. In practice, the theoretical and empirical lines of thought are intertwined and many scholars speak to the interplay between the two.

Career incentives

Beside changes in the nature of explanation, career incentives also shifted. A degree in development studies ceased to be either necessary or sufficient for employment. Donor agencies, NGOs and international organisations place a premium on specialised skills, such as in economics, health and crisis management. Job opportunities and research funding are increasingly open to specialists who wish to benefit people in Africa or Asia, while maintaining a career in their area of expertise. This differs radically from a previous generation of practitioners who began with a genuine interest in the developing regions of the world⁸ – a thirst to learn and understand their history, politics, culture and ways of being – and picked up specialised skills “on the job”. Beyond skills and training, practitioners also face diversifying employment prospects as foreign aid becomes an increasingly modest portion of the financial flows into developing countries (Kharas 2014). Graduates who once coveted the prospect of working in donor agencies or NGOs are now just as likely to seek employment within philanthropy, financial institutions or private corporations, more and more of which are based in the developing world.

Graduates who opt to pursue an academic career must demonstrate their achievements in terms of publications and grant seeking. Tenure has become a scarce prospect, as universities shift to a progressively greater share of term and contract positions. The credibility of a young academic is no longer based on her or his time overseas accompanying people experiencing development; instead it depends on a critical mass of peer-reviewed publications, preferably in highly cited journals. More recent performance assessment schemes do consider the “impact” of a scholar's work on real-world policy and practice, yet these measures do not yet weigh as heavily as criteria of academic quality or research excellence. There are well-known hazards of assessing the impact of social sciences (Bastow, Dunleavy, and Tinkler 2014), which are especially acute in development studies at a time when the opportunities to work in donor agencies or inform development practice may be eroding.

Current status

Those concerned with development want to understand and assess the policy and experience of others in order to develop ideas relevant to their own countries. Development studies is pulling together, breaking out of disciplinary silos and drawing on ideas, concepts and theories across the natural and social sciences. There is an increasing accord among scholars and practitioners around the goals of development, alongside a plurality of views on how to achieve it. Yet development studies is also tearing apart, shifting as lines between global poverty, poor places and international relations blur and hitherto developing countries become major powers (Woods 2008; Spence 2011). Far from being a periphery, parts of the developing world have become central to global prosperity and security and to the movement of people and ideas.

Today, variety is also driven by the organisational context: the setting in which development studies is taught or practiced. Development studies always varied by region, with distinct schools of thought holding sway in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, North America, Asia and Latin America. Social geography influences the approach to development studies through shared traditions in political and social science, history of engaging the developing world and common pressures on academia. While differences between countries or regions remain, they are secondary to variation between teaching and research organisations within the same polity. Underneath a tradition of development studies in the United Kingdom lies the intellectual rivalry among the universities of Oxford, Manchester, Sussex and London. Each is a composite of diverse personalities and ideas that navigate the hallways and lecture rooms at Queen Elizabeth House, the Blavatnik School of Government, the Institute for Development Policy and Management, the Institute of Development Studies, the London School of Economics and the “Bloomsbury Colleges” including SOAS, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and more. Similar organisational diversity exists elsewhere within and beyond the English-speaking world. The perspectives adopted by particular colleges and faculty within the same institution provide an even richer array of ideas, theories and practice of development. Administrators and faculty decide on curriculum and research programmes, in part to distinguish their school from others in the competition for reputation, talent and funding. Ironically, the act of defining such a niche can lead a college to have more in common with distant collaborators than with nearby rivals.⁹

As each organisation tailors its approach to development studies, it makes a series of critical choices regarding the focus and scale of questions addressed, the expertise related to development studies and the potential of open data and digital communication.

Focus and scale

One critical choice is the balance between development as “subject of study” and “field of action”. The process of change within society is a subject of observation, inquiry and scholarship, yet such study is not always passive. An education in development studies must include the ability to reflect critically on one's work: the consequences of conducting research and the ethical considerations for the people involved or the implications of explicit attempts to inform policy and practice. In an age that values science for its “impact”, one must be aware of how development studies is used (or misused) to inspire actions among individuals, organisations and states in their efforts to invent a better world.

Analysis of development can seek to explain changes in a country's social, economic and political situation, or the lack thereof. Extended visions of development might add important factors such as the biophysical environment, spirituality or other philosophical and ethical dimensions to the formulation (see Levy 2013; Levy, Dalton, and LeBlanc 2013; Wackemagel and Rees 1996; Sen 2009). There has been a continuous quest to learn from past experience – the success of others – and apply that knowledge to present-day action in order to realise future potential. In contrast, the absence of development is also a concern, as demonstrated through attention to the topics of deprivation, dependency, underdevelopment, fragile states and corruption. The focus is on the barriers that prevent desired change, rather than to arrive at a universally accepted set of development objectives or strategy to achieve them.

A second critical choice is to decide where to locate an institutions’ work on a spectrum that stretches from “big ideas” in development to seeing change as “one experiment at a time”. As noted above, there was a move away from grand narratives, such as modernisation or dependency theory, toward more modest insights grounded in realist and positivist philosophy. Thinking on development once aspired to explain the unintentional evolution of people and places through history. In contrast, recent thinking tends to focus on the gap between the goals of public policy and what is achieved in practice, evolving in response to perceived success, failure and surprise. It reflects a desire to do things differently in order to improve upon past performance and realise a better future. There is also a tension between focusing on the study of low- and middle-income countries, and on the application of science and technology to the needs of the poor.

To the extent that institutions grapple with big ideas in development, these range from escaping hardship to living a meaningful life. For much of human history, the question was about how to survive in the face of scarcity. Development studies continues to encompass debates around the role of states and markets (and their respective failures) in alleviating deprivation and poverty. Economic growth is a necessary condition to improving human well-being; yet other questions revolve around how to manage wealth from such growth. Beyond overcoming the public ills of poverty and illiteracy – through investments in health and education, safety nets and social protection – societies must confront new threats such as obesity, inactive lifestyles and noncommunicable diseases. Study on social determinants of heath and cross-country data on causes of death demonstrate that the burden of such diseases is particularly heavy for poor and vulnerable people (WHO 2008; Global Burden of Disease Study 2014).

Related expertise

A third critical choice concerns where development studies fits into the academic landscape, especially as the set of related disciplines has expanded. Radically distinct approaches to development studies emerge depending on the curriculum, faculty expertise and affiliated programmes. Development studies is often paired with or embedded in complementary fields of knowledge, such as international relations, global studies, economics, political science, public health or environment. It is common for faculty to be shared or cross-appointed between development studies and other departments or programmes. This creates opportunities for cross-pollination, as students are exposed to ideas that help to interpret what they see and learn. Yet it also dilutes the distinct identity of development studies, leaving the field as a mediated space between disciplines; an open scholarly community united by a desire to understand efforts to benefit poor people and places, rather than the desire to preserve and transmit a particular intellectual tradition.

One recent trend, in the past 10 years in particular, is to connect development studies with business schools. The private sector is presently held up as the motor of economic growth, reflecting a focus on smaller-scale processes of cause and effect, as well as past disillusion with state-led effort and macro-economic policy (see Edwards 2008; Novogratz 2009; Martin and Osberg 2015). Recent thinking has reified the role of entrepreneurs, business communities and social enterprises that are self-financing, use existing distribution channels and “give back” to the societies in which they operate. In India, corporate responsibility has risen with a new generation of business leaders-turned-philanthropists and legislation mandating companies to invest 2 per cent of profits into social development (Jansons 2015). The altruism of development studies now competes for attention with realism in international relations, rationalism of economics and managerialism of business schools and organised philanthropy.

Engineering and design for the poor have become tangible expressions of the promise of development, ranging from soccer balls that turn kinetic energy into electrical power to solar-powered lamps and long-lasting water filters with nanopores. Beyond their instrumental value as products marketed to the poor, such innovations exercise an influence on the imagination, shaping a discourse of alleviating deprivation through marketing and business models grafted onto the existing economy. Whereas a previous generation of students sought wholesale change in political and social life to “put farmers first”, today's students speak of extending markets to reach the “bottom of the pyramid”. A crop scientist can modify salt-tolerance in the quinoa genome or a medical technician can design a handheld ultrasound probe for prenatal care, without spending years on farms or in health clinics in rural areas. Experience overseas remains useful, but its absence does not inhibit efforts to design and engineer innovations intended to improve lives. With the falling costs of technology (including genetic sequencers, 3D printers and computer-assisted design software), development studies has to share space with – and offer something to unify – a growing community of “do-it-yourself” innovators motivated by passion to help, but not necessarily looking for a lifelong career in Africa and Asia.

Open data and digital communication

Each organisation also grapples with the increasingly open and powerful ability to tap into and contribute to scholarly communication. The barriers to engage with the scholarly community have fallen, with open access journals, electronic diffusion of calls for papers, international distribution of conference and workshop materials and the growth of open data and science. Moreover, desktop video conferencing and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) make it ever easier to connect with a diversity of scholars and practitioners, overcoming the previous barriers of international travel and long-distance telephone fees.

These trends have made it more practical for development scholars and practitioners to base themselves in Dhaka or Beirut, rather than Washington or London. There is less of a penalty for not being in one of the intellectual capitals of the world. It is also more feasible to hear voices from a broader range of places, and more feasible for diaspora members training and working abroad to engage colleagues back in their countries of origin. Indeed, a number of countries have created scholarships and funding opportunities to tap into and attract their foreign-trained nationals. These trends also provide universities and other organisations an opportunity to “localise” their curricula and research programmes, responding to a particular setting – its local history and policy priorities – rather than replicating what others do at the global level. Thus contemporary thinking on development comes from diverse locations, with Beijing, New Delhi and Rio de Janeiro challenging and enriching the ideas emanating from London, New York and Paris.

The movement toward open data and digital communication is furthering reducing the disadvantages of geographic location. In particular since about 2005, more and more sets of development indicators have become freely available online, compiled by the World Bank, national statistical agencies and others. Young students and professionals tend to be more captivated by Hans Rosling's data visualisation and TED talks than with Karl Polanyi's great transformation and classical literature. At the extreme, the existence of massive amounts of data flips the scientific process, positioning method before theory. Traditional scholarship begins with a research question formulated after a deep knowledge of theory and the literature. One then selects methods to collect data in a manner tailored to that question and add to existing knowledge. In contrast, there are new opportunities to examine previously collected data, searching for patterns and unexpected correlations. Findings are valued for identifying new avenues for inquiry, rather than by the standard tests of scholarly contribution and the internal validity of the analysis (Nielsen 2012). Such techniques further reduce the penalty faced by scholars unfamiliar with the latest literature or the ideas their colleagues are working on. Of course, some theory helps make sense of the world and interpret findings, yet working with the data can generate novel hypotheses rather than requiring theory to shape data gathering and analysis (see Loxley, Sackey, and Khan 2015). Whereas one used to lament policy decisions taken in the absence of evidence, it is possible to generate insights that are largely free of theory.

Prospects

During the twenty-first century, globalisation has given rise to an increasingly interconnected world, one in which events in the developing world fundamental influence the prospects for prosperity and security elsewhere. Yet what has hitherto been referred to as the “developing world” is also diverging into separate realities. Bolivia and Burundi possess distinct problems and potentials, hardly amendable to a single set of ideas, concepts and theories for how to improve the human condition. Furthermore, what constitutes success in development now spans per-capita income, equity, sustainability, realisation of human rights, empowerment and happiness. Development studies must offer a similarly diversified set of insights, or scale back its domain of scholarly explanation and real-world application.

One way forward for scholarship is to focus on a smaller portion of humanity. The majority of world's poor people are no longer contained within poor countries, 60 per cent of the MPI poor¹⁰ live in just five countries: Pakistan, India, Nigeria, China and Indonesia (Alkire, Roche, and Sumner 2013). Meanwhile the diversity of experiences within borders is often greater than that between countries. The levels of poverty and inequality found among municipalities within central Chile rival the national averages in Western Europe and African countries (Bentancor, Modrego, and Berdegué 2008). The variation in life expectancy and income found among communities along the Nile River or neighbourhoods in Cairo exceeds the gap in national averages between Egypt and nearby Jordan or Sudan. Time and again the aftermath of financial and political crises has highlighted the vulnerability of living just above the poverty line as such shocks can knock people into the ranks of the poor. Moving forward, development studies needs to pay more attention to data at a mesolevel, between national accounts and household surveys, to explain phenomena below the nation-state and above individual citizens. Furthermore, whether development scholars choose to focus on “least development countries” or “where the poorest people live”, their work will necessarily address more specific parts of the world, and in finer resolution, than in the past.

Beyond geographic coverage, development studies also faces choices concerning its intended audience. It has sought to inform the thinking and practice in donor agencies, NGOs and developing country governments. The first audience is arguably shrinking, especially where responsibility for foreign aid is (re)merged into foreign ministries, embedding development into a multifaceted agenda that includes political calculus and trade considerations¹¹ and focusing on fewer countries and thematic priorities. Yet the national and global development traditions are thriving as the field addresses governments in their efforts to aid citizens and neighbours and the host of allies that support them, including multilateral organisations, international NGOs, civil society and the private sector.

Development studies has mediated the spaces between disparate fields of knowledge, but its opportunity to do so is increasingly circumscribed as the field divides into three parallel dialogues. Any policy domain requires an epistemic community, scholars and practitioners who share common ideas and debate common topics (Haas 1992). Yet development studies has multiple communities with different sets of actors, distinct focal points for policy and practice and diverging problems and potentials across the developing world.

Three dialogues

One dialogue focuses on sovereign problems that concern the use of national wealth. All polities face real constraints in public finance and all societies face challenges related to expanding access to and improving the quality of education and health, designing social protection to ensure a minimum well-being for everyone or encouraging opportunities for entrepreneurs and minorities. Dialogue and action on sovereign problems involve national treasuries, political parties and (mis)informed citizens. Beyond making research findings relevant and actionable for policymakers, there is value in enhancing policy literacy and numeracy among citizens. Society can only benefit when its people better understand the key policy issues, options and trade-offs. Public opinion polls can be as influential as policy briefs in encouraging governments to act. Each society can draw on the experience of others abroad, but solutions must be tailored to fit within local cultural, political and economic reality. All nations are a work in progress, grappling to match finite state resources with the expanding aspirations of citizens.

This dialogue is rooted in a thriving tradition of national development. The nation-state is the level where society envisions and pursues development on its own terms. Despite a recent renaissance of technocratic approaches to development, politics matter and shape the extent to which national wealth is collected and how it benefits disadvantaged citizens. There is a diminishing role for foreign aid – at least in the form of transfers of wealth from large to small economies – as more countries finance a larger share of their own development. This dialogue embraces the diversifying set of actors practicing development, which presents a larger and more democratic audience for development studies.¹² It is no longer sufficient for ideas and scholarship to be accepted in Washington or Whitehall, they need to be debated and valued in Addis Ababa and New Delhi as well as within the vibrant online communities of blogs and social media.

A second dialogue revolves around common problems that concern global interdependencies, including international public goods, public ills and systemic risks (Goldin and Mariathasan 2014). Many of the problems that preoccupy development scholars spill across borders, and potential solutions require cooperation among different polities. Climate change, emergent diseases, international migration, trade regimes and transitional crime all surpass the ability of any one country and are affected by the choices made by others. Yet each of these problems involves separate sets of actors, ranging from municipalities and hospitals to trade negotiators and the alphabet soup of international forums (IPCC, WHO, IFIs).¹³ Development studies cannot prepare students and inform practitioners in all such challenges, yet the field can offer unique perspectives, drawing on a depth of real-world case studies and natural experiments. Global challenges are often assumed to be unprecedented phenomena, without previous theoretical consideration. While the scale of these challenges may be unprecedented, the historical experience and theoretical insights of development studies are often applicable. Even if imperfect, some evidence and theory is better than treating each new challenge as sui generis.

This dialogue is rooted in the tradition of global development, which remains strong as divergence in the developing world opens new prospects for global governance. As an increasing number of countries are no longer beholden to foreign donors, they have a newfound autonomy in their own affairs and on the world stage. As above, governments are increasingly reliant on internal revenues, including domestic taxation and access to the foreign capital they need through international finance (Sagasti, Bezanson, and Prada 2005). Their place in world affairs is increasingly earned, contributing public goods and confronting public ills, ranging from policing in Haiti by Brazilians or counterterrorism in the Sahara by Arabs and West Africans.

A third dialogue revolves around foreign problems and how to respond to troubled places abroad. Seven decades of development saw substantial increases in life expectancy, human rights and literacy. Yet there remains a stubborn set of poverty hotspots, ungoverned spaces and fragile states where life continues to be nasty, brutish and short. The set of actors involved include foreign ministries, aid agencies and NGOs. There are encouraging signs that this aspect of development studies is becoming more manageable with a historic decrease in inter-state conflict (HSRG 2010)¹⁴ and a dwindling list of low-income countries reliant on foreign aid. As such, the agenda is narrowing toward humanitarian relief, rural development and state building in remote locations, many of which have been plagued with intra-state conflict.

Thus the tradition of international development is becoming more modest within development studies: scaling back its geographic coverage in terms of numbers of countries addressed and using finer-resolution analysis at district or county level corresponding to hotspots within countries. Indeed Kharas and Rogerson (2012) project that the majority of the world's poor will once again be located in low-income countries by 2025, with over half of these people living in just 10 African countries.

These three dialogues suggest one typology for the future of development studies. As the range of organisations that engage in development expands, it diversifies and coalesces into specialised communities with distinct sets of actors.¹⁵ Once the exclusive purview of donor agencies and international organisations, there is an increasing role for national treasuries, domestic charities, diasporas and private sector in addressing different problems. The recently adopted sustainable development goals (SDGs) offer one opportunity to identify distinct sovereign-common-foreign problems. The biggest gains in reducing poverty and improving education will come through sovereign efforts in key countries that are home to the largest numbers of poor and illiterate. Similarly, action on climate change and ocean conservation necessitate global efforts involving all polities, while achieving food security and health goals requires responding to punctual events abroad, such as famine in the Sahel or Ebola in three countries of West Africa. Put more simply, when world leaders or development practitioners meet, they discuss problems that are “mine, ours or theirs”: those involving dialogue at home, those that require coordinated action across borders and those related to hotspots beyond our borders.

Bridging disciplines, encouraging precision

Mirroring this specialisation, the scholarly community of development studies is itself pulling apart into distinct fields of inquiry, structured around distinct journals, professional associations, theoretical foundations, faculties and employment possibilities. Public health, public finance, conflict studies, smallholder farming and women's rights may share a common desire for broader freedom of human choice, yet the daily tasks within these communities of scholars and practitioners are organised in such a way as to keep them apart. One telling insight is how the subject is organised in developing countries themselves. While one can find courses and programmes on the “study of the developing world”, these are relatively scarce and often embedded in schools of political science, economics or public policy. If one accepts that development studies is diversified and pluralistic, might the field reach the point of being subsumed under such disparate identities?

The future is more nuanced and already emerging. Compared to 30 years ago, development studies faces greater competition in explaining change in the developing world. This is welcome news as a broader range of social science has turned its attention to the hitherto ignored developing countries. There is a wider recognition of the fact that Africa, Asia and Latin America are indispensable for ensuring global prosperity and confronting transnational threats. As it faces new competition for students, funding and public imagination, development studies needs to more clearly identify the distinct insights and understanding it offers. Development studies is becoming more modest than in the past, favouring knowledge claims that are more specific and contingent (context-specific). Divergence within the developing world has undermined the old labels used to describe these places. Few ideas or theories can encompass the diverse realities of Bolivia, Burundi, Cambodia or Congo. Combined with the broader shifts in the social sciences, development studies is focusing on more tractable questions, demonstrating specific cause-and-effect linkages, using more mesolevel and finer-resolution datasets (see Hoogeveen et al. 2014; Kuépié 2016). To the extent that development studies focuses on eradicating poverty, it is increasingly concentrated on a smaller set of countries and places rather than vast regions.

Key to the future of development studies is how the field connects with its audiences and integrates insights from across the social and natural sciences. Development scholars and practitioners come from diverse fields and backgrounds; not only history, sociology and political science, but also economics, engineering, business and medical schools. They share a passion, a professional interest and a hunger for understanding the world and the tremendous changes that continue to shape the well-being of its people. Rather than enforcing a uniformity of theory, methods or geographic focus, it is the pluralism and interdisciplinary of development studies that allows it to be a meeting place for different dialogues. In this respect, development studies can take inspiration from environmental studies, the drawing together of history, philosophy, biochemistry, ecology and geography to foster novel insights and a common understanding among a broad audience. Given current trends, one can expect a more modest and more detailed development studies; one that focuses on mediating among disciplines and connecting diverse sets of ideas, experiences and insights. Rather than emphasising a unique identity, development studies needs to draw in complementary knowledge and reinvigorate its scholarly organisation in order to build such bridges.

Conclusion

Development studies seldom experienced scientific revolutions; newer waves of thinking built upon and pushed aside older ideas of what constitutes “development”, yet seldom completely displaced them. The questions asked and the nature of explanation shifted from describing historical patterns of social transformation, toward identifying causal mechanisms linking specific interventions and their outcomes. The apparent success of the natural sciences, and a pressure to demonstrate the “value” of publicly funded scholarship, pushed the field towards more realist and positivist methods and epistemology.

Over the past three decades, development studies also embraced pluralism in approaches and methods and intermingled with a diverse range of disciplines. Whether development studies is linked to economics and political science, international relations or environmental sustainability can provide more insight on its intellectual tradition than the mere fact that a university or organisation is based in Canada, UK, Latin American or South Asia. Administrators and teaching staff face critical choices when crafting curricula or research programmes, including the focus and scale of inquiry and how to situate development studies in the broader landscape of scholarship and knowledge. The field has long-standing connections with economics, sociology, agriculture and public health, while newer work draws on skills from design, engineering, marketing and business administration. The rise of regional powers and localised approaches to development are also reshaping our understanding of how human societies change.

Moving forward, the prospects for development studies are both opening and closing. The tradition of international development is declining while the traditions of national development and global development are thriving. The field is revisiting its roots to improve the human condition at home, while addressing global interdependencies and public goods (and ills) between countries. This new reality requires scholarship that adopts more mesolevel units of analysis and more precise, finer-resolution geographic coverage.

Development studies needs to bridge dialogues concerning sovereign problems that concern the use of national wealth, common problems that concern global interdependencies and foreign problems that concern how to respond to troubled places abroad. It must serve as the meeting place that connects and critiques each of these dialogues. Development studies has unique expertise on poverty, inequality and human capabilities that offer thick explanations of social change. While various dimensions of well-being – such as health, environment and governance – are underpinned by their own disciplines and concepts, they are enriched by insights from development studies, akin to the contribution of cognitive science to behavioural economics. As the map of science and scholarship is redrawn, the position of development studies on that map is becoming more precise and more interconnected with other disciplines than before. Yet development studies retains its potential to inform and inspire the actions of individuals, organisations and states in their continued effort to invent a better world.

Acknowledgements

The author is indebted to Ravi Kanbur, Rohinton Medhora and David Malone for their collaboration since 2011. Some of the points used here originally appeared in our working paper (Currie-Alder, Kanbur, Malone and Medhora 2013), but they are elaborated further in this article. I am also grateful for the comments offered by two autonomous reviewers who provided valuable insights for refining these arguments further.

Notes on contributor

Bruce Currie-Alder is the Regional Director, Middle East and North Africa, for Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Previously he assessed the environmental impact of the oil industry in Mexico and Ecuador and examined public participation in the creation of water policy and coastal management. He is author of Research for the Developing World: Public Funding from Australia, Canada, and the UK (2015) and co-editor of International Development: Ideas, Experience, and Prospects (2014), both published by Oxford University Press.

ORCID

Bruce Currie-Alder http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3224-4136

Notes

1 This article draws from Development Ideas, an online space for thinkers and practitioners to learn, share and debate about international development, including how it has changed and spread over time, and how it continues to evolve today. Readers can visit and contribute at www.developmentideas.info.

2 As well as promote, or contain, the spread of communist and capitalist ideologies.

3 Harriss also commented on this in his presentation at the ISA-FLACSO 2014 conference in Buenos Aires.

4 This experience includes periods as Chief of Staff and as Regional Director with Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), including negotiations around G8 and G20 communiques, thematic reviews, countries eligible for bilateral aid. It also includes work in the Middle East and North Africa when aid and finance from Arab countries was much more significant than most OECD donors and IFIs.

5 Key references include Rosenstein-Rodan (1943); Nurkse (1953), Hirschman (1958), Kuznets (1966), Chenery (1960), Boserup (1965), Schultz (1968), Lipton (1968), Di Maio (2014), Prebisch (1950), Cardoso and Faletto (1979), Streeten et al. (1981), Sen (1999), Chambers (1983), Tinker (1990), WCED (1987), and Forsyth (2003). This is admittedly selective list, and many more ideas could be added from the rich tapestry of thinking on development. Kharas (2014) provides a good example in the figure available on p. 850 or online http://www.developmentideas.info/chapter/development-assistance/

6 Better known for highlighting the ideas of “defunct economists”, Keynes’ final page also states “ … there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest”.

7 Current consensus advises the use of mixed-methods and choosing methods based on the question at hand.

8 This is a characterisation to illustrate the aspirations of, and pressures upon, scholars and practitioners. Today's generation continues to include scholars who are undeterred by bibliometrics, just as a previous generation included individuals who pursued careers beyond an altruistic interest in developing places.

9 For example, look at the participants in the global Masters of Development Practice (mdpglobal.org) or Global Public Policy Network (www.gppn.net), each of which unite disperse schools that sit comfortably near the top of their country`s league tables as go-to places.

10 The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) was originally developed by the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative for the UN Development Programme. It is now coordinated by a peer network; see http://www.mppn.org/about/.

11 After two years of decline following the North Atlantic financial crisis, official development assistance (ODA) appeared to rebound in 2013, but only remained steady in 2014. Fifteen members of the OECD-DAC reported declining levels of aid spending, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, France and Spain. Almost half of all ODA in 2014 came from the United States, European Union and United Kingdom (Source: http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/). See also Samy and Aksli (2015).

12 A full examination of how and why the audiences for development studies has diversified and changed lies beyond the scope of this paper. The organisational traditions and parallel dialogues described here provides one insight on this phenomenon, yet a more comprehensive discussion would touch upon the use (and misuse) of social sciences more broadly (see Bastow, Dunleavy, and Tinkler 2014).

13 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; World Health Organization; international financial institutions.

14 See also www.smallarmssurvey.org/ and www.genevadeclaration.org.

15 Sumner (2011) eloquently proposes “one-world” as the label for a broader, globalised development studies, and “bottom billion” for a narrower development studies focused on poverty hotspots.