A Changing Global Development Agenda?

What is new and different about development as it goes more global today? The 2030 (post-2015) agenda has underlined the global character of contemporary development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) apply to countries in all world regions, not just those of the global south. In addition, many development issues (climate change, health, migration, etc.) are increasingly framed as markedly global problems that need distinctly global responses. Global institutions and global policies are expected to figure prominently in providing those solutions. At the same time, global power shifts are introducing new state and non-state actors that recalibrate the dynamics of development politics. How does this wide-ranging globalisation affect research and practice of development?

This special issue of Forum for Development Studies debates these questions from a variety of disciplinary, theoretical, empirical and policy angles. The conversation comprises two main parts: a set of four shorter think-pieces by leading veteran observers of development; and a set of six longer research articles by prominent, especially Nordic, scholars. Initial drafts of all papers were presented at the third Nordic Conference on Development Research, organised by the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg in November 2015. Together, the 10 writings provide provocative suggestions on future courses of development knowledge and action in a more global twenty-first-century world.

The present opening essay sets out broader themes which crosscut the more specific papers that follow. This introduction, too, has two main parts. The first part examines shifts in the conceptualisation of development (in terms of definitions, theories and methods) that accompany the changing global agenda. The second part considers shifts in the substance of development (in terms of actors, issues and policies) that figure in the changing global agenda. Forward references are made throughout both parts of this introduction to the 10 articles that follow.

Overall, this introduction and the special issue as a whole suggest that today’s global development agenda involves important and contested mixes of change and continuity. Two general positions might be distinguished. First, some of the contributions to this special issue argue that today’s global development agenda involves actual or prospective transformation. These accounts propose that, substantively, global power has radically realigned and/or that, theoretically, the concept of ‘development’ has come into question. Second, other articles offer a reformist reading of more incremental change. These authors suggest that notable recent conceptual adjustments do not entail deeper paradigm shifts, and that important innovations in development institutions and programmes do not involve comprehensive policy reorientations. However, all of the articles agree that development today is not what it was a generation ago. So what are the more particular debates about the extent, direction and speed of change?

Changing perspectives on development?

‘Development’ is an essentially contested concept, with no consensus about its meaning. Thus, Bull and Bøås are ‘struck by the co-existence of strategies and theories with deeply diverging views on what development is and should be’ (2012, p.230). ‘Development’ is also a moving target, with continually changing theories and practices (Hydén, 2014, p.501). So scholars define and theorise ‘development’ in radically different and frequently also competing ways (Hettne, 2005, 2009). These divergences are often closely related to contending understandings of other related contested concepts, such as ‘change’, ‘progress’, ‘transformation’, ‘emancipation’, ‘integration’, ‘growth’ and ‘justice’.

That conceptions of development vary is not in itself a problem. After all, development is complex, multidimensional and shifting over time. Indeed, conceptual pluralism is both necessary (to reflect diversity) and productive (to generate creative debate). Rather, the problem lies in the tendency among both researchers and practitioners of development to talk past each other in unproductive contestations (see Bull and Bøås, 2012). These misunderstandings and frictions tend to result from weak understanding of the intellectual history of development research, in particular regarding the contexts in which different theories and perspectives were developed.

The 10 articles in this special section adopt different approaches to development and related global changes. This introduction teases out important differences between the various contributions. The point of such an exercise is by no means to create new ruptures in development research and practice, but to facilitate dialogue between different standpoints. Such interchange can deepen understanding – which may in turn also facilitate navigation through contemporary global changes.

There are, of course, several ways to classify different approaches to development. The present discussion distinguishes between three main orientations, here termed ‘classical’, ‘global development’ and ‘post-development’ (Coetzee and Söderbaum, 2016; Hettne, 2009; Hettne et al., 1999). Certainly, these three approaches are not totally, permanently and unbridgeably divided. On the contrary, in both development theory and development practice, different perspectives may overlap with and borrow from each other in rich cross-fertilisation.

Classical approaches

‘Classical’ or ‘traditional’ perspectives see Development Studies as a new social science discipline which was established after the Second World War. Classical development research includes theories of modernisation, structuralism, dependency and ‘another development’ (Hettne et al., 1999). These approaches regard development as a particular problem of so-called ‘poor countries’ in the ‘developing world’ or ‘the South’ (previously ‘Third World’). In general, these perspectives have little interest in complicating or questioning the concept of development, because the main attention goes to studying the (usually material) hardships of poor countries and poor people.

Within classical approaches, one can distinguish between those who define development ‘as a long-term process of structural societal transformation’ and those who define it ‘as a short-to-medium term outcome of desirable targets’ (Sumner and Tribe, 2008, p.11). Long-term views are typically more accentuated in academic circles, while short- to medium-term views are more prevalent in policy circles, with a focus on evaluations and indicators, as illustrated, for instance, by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (Sumner and Tribe, 2008, pp.11–14; Jerven, 2017). Policy-led approaches also have a close connection to development assistance, since much attention is placed on finding concrete solutions to (the lack of) development.

Important elements of pioneering works of classical development theorists, such as Gunnar Myrdal and Dudley Seers, still hold considerable relevance today, although they also need to be adjusted to a different world order context (Coetzee and Söderbaum, 2016; Hettne, 2009). Many current development scholars remain sympathetic towards certain aspects of classical approaches, in particular their focus on development as long-term structural and societal transformation. However, much of the scholarly community is preoccupied with paradigm shifts and creating ‘ruptures’, at the expense of understanding the continued relevance of classical theories. According to Bull and Bøås (2012, p.332), development scholars should recognise that:

the ideas of the modernisation school as well as dependency theory are as vividly alive as ever in development discourse, practice and as possible normative goals and explanatory mechanisms in development. Thus, rather than being treated as odd political prophecies, they should be continuously refined, criticised and brought into dialogue with competing viewpoints.

In this special issue, the continued relevance of classical approaches to development is especially exemplified in Arne Bigsten’s contribution, which focuses on ‘the main determinants of development in poor countries’ (Bigsten, 2017, p.134). In a spirit of classical development thinking, Bigsten emphasises production processes, economic growth, the level and distribution of income, inequality in and between countries, access to public services, political and economic institutions, as well as security and environmental quality. Yet, edging towards global development approaches, Bigsten also underlines the need to take account of global issues, global governance and the provision of global public goods.

Global development approaches

‘Global development’ perspectives reassess development in the light of globalisation and associated transformations of the nation-state. Work in this vein often criticises the state-centrism, national developmentalism and methodological nationalism inherent in large parts of classical development thinking (Buch-Hansen and Lauridsen, 2012, p.293; Hettne, 2009). The ‘global’ perspective underlines that many development challenges extend beyond individual countries and, moreover, often confound the distinction between rich and poor countries.

According to global conceptions, the object of development studies cannot be restricted to ‘poor countries’, however these might be defined. As Barry Gills (2017, p.156) further explains:

rather than continue to frame ‘development’ as a concept which applies solely to the so-called ‘less’ or ‘under’-developed regions of the world, in a globalizing era all countries and regions of the world are interlocked in a mutual process of development.

Certainly, some classical approaches also emphasised that the concept of development has universal relevance (e.g. liberal development economics) or certain world-systemic dynamics (e.g. structuralism and dependency theory). However, the new generation of ‘global development’ looks beyond countries and their ‘international relations’ to consider regions and the planet as a whole as spheres of development in their own right.

Relatedly, global development approaches emphasise the role of global cooperation and global governance as distinct from, and more than, interstate or international governance. Strong focus is placed on meeting global challenges and providing global and regional public goods for matters ranging from climate change and financial stability to peace and global health. Thus, in this collection, Inge Kaul breaks with classical approaches by underlining the need for global public policy in the context of globalisation and global change. According to Kaul, ‘Policy interdependence and international cooperation … have assumed a new quality given ongoing global power shifts among countries and between state and non-state actors’ (Kaul, 2017, p.143).

Several other articles in this special issue also address global cooperation, for example, around the new SDGs and Agenda 2030 (see Bexell and Jönsson, 2017; Aguilar-Støen, 2017). In this context, it is important to highlight one important difference between the MDGs and the SDGs. While the MDGs focused on ‘poor countries’, the SDGs concern the whole planet, North as well as South.

Yet, several authors in this special issue who take a global development approach are also somewhat sceptical of the underlying conception of the SDGs and Agenda 2030. For instance, Morten Jerven (2017) claims that the SDG approach is overly preoccupied with goals, indicators and measurement. For Jerven, the problem is not a lack of information, but a lack of action. In their article, Magdalena Bexell and Kristina Jönsson (2017) argue that, in spite of cosmopolitan aspirations and the urge to ‘leave no one behind’, Agenda 2030 remains state-centric, with great room for state sovereignty and national self-regulation. Meanwhile, Gery Nijenhuis and Maggi Leung question whether, in the context of migration, the place-based notion of development which underpins the SDGs can adequately address ‘the complex, spatial-temporally inter-dependent processes and relations that shape global and local development’ (2017, p.63). For their part, Tiina Kontinen and Marianne Millstein argue that, even if the SDG concept of development actors is broader than the MDGs, ‘The whole approach to civil society in the SDGs is flawed’ (2017, p.69).

Barry Gills is even more sceptical when it comes to the overall prospects for global collaboration. Gills stresses ‘the unsustainable and destructive aspects of the present dominant paradigm of global economic development and the inability of the existing institutions of world order to effectively solve these crises’ (2017, p.156). For Gills, global development requires a fundamental transformation of global cooperation, and ‘the vision of transforming world order by overturning the legacies of imperialism is still as relevant as it was several decades ago’ (2017, p.159). In this way, Gills has similarities with post-development thinking.

Post-development approaches

A third category of perspectives, often characterised as ‘post-development’, questions the whole concept and project of development (e.g. Escobar, 1995; Rahnema and Rawtree, 1997; cf. Coetzee and Söderbaum, 2016). These critical theories typically charge that conventional development thinking is constructed from ‘outside’, especially in the rich industrialised North. As a result, ‘development’ fails to recognise the intricacies of local conditions. Moreover, say these critics, mainstream development is based on orthodox Eurocentric scientific discourses, and often infused with neoliberal practices. Post-development conceptions often link ‘development’ theory and practices with colonialism and associated paternalism, racism and arrogance. ‘Development’ therefore tends to view the local as passive, inferior and the object of development.

Influenced by postmodernism and postcolonialism, post-development scholars affirm that social systems exist of many different groups, each with a plethora of different stories about the world. Hence, knowledge cannot be unified, in one place, confined to and represented in one location. Instead, postmodernist thinking allows for, and celebrates, a multitude of discourses, which in turn are understood differently by different groups. From a radical post-development perspective, ‘development’ is an imposed colonialist ‘meta-narrative’. Hence, according to Buch-Hansen and Lauridsen (2012, p.295):

The way out of development … [is] about unmaking the knowledge-power effects of the development discourse (including established scientific discourses) and carving out space for a variety and a mixture of localised and pluralistic histories, cultures, identities and knowledge systems.

In this issue, Morten Bøås can be placed within a category of post-development. In sketching out a new development agenda for fragile states, Bøås stresses the need to ‘rethink notions of fragile states as a deviation from the norm of the Western state’ (2017, p.152). Furthermore, ‘we need to drop old habits and practices that have emerged during decades of development assistance to “ordinary” developing countries’. Moreover, says Bøås, would-be ‘development’ promoters need to be present on the ground, since ‘hiding between high walls and fortress-like installations will do no good. … the only way to regain [relevance] is by being present locally’ (2017, p.152). In a similar vein, Mariel Aguilar-Støen (2017, p.91) emphasises that it is essential that power is redistributed from central government to local actors.

In sum, this special issue suggests that perspectives on development in today’s more global world are, if anything, more plural and contested than ever. Globalisation in lived experience has gone hand in hand with the rise of more global approaches to development research, challenging the methodological nationalism of classical theories. In addition, raised awareness of cultural diversity in contemporary globalisation has encouraged the spread of post-development critiques. Yet, while classical, global and post-development approaches are in key respects divergent, they can, in some respects, also complement, refine and deepen each other. Arguably, the richest understanding of (post-) development arises when these contending positions are placed in debate with one another, as this special issue seeks to do.

Changing substance of development?

Alongside shifts in development knowledge, this special issue also considers ‘a changing global development agenda’ in terms of shifts in development practices. New ways of thinking and doing tend to unfold in tandem, each reflecting and shaping the other. In diverse ways, the articles that follow this introduction assess how global change affects actors, issues and policies in the field of development.

Actors

As noted earlier, classical approaches assume that the main agent of development policy is the state. Traditional conceptions inherited from the mid-twentieth century affirm that development is primarily made by and through public regulatory authorities with monopoly power over a given national-territorial domain. Certainly, the state in many, if not most, cases remains a pivotal player in development policy: contemporary globalisation has by no means signalled the end of the state (Sørensen, 2004). However, the days of blanket state-centrism in development practice are well and truly past.

For one thing, as the articles in this special issue variously indicate, much more nuance is required when assessing ‘the state’ in contemporary (post-) development. Bøås in particular highlights that classical assumptions of an ideal-type modern western state are unsustainable today (if indeed they ever were). Many kinds of states play development games, and different states have different positions in development dynamics. Public authority apparatuses in Bhutan, Botswana, Brazil and Britain relate to development quite differently. Moreover, as Gills (2017) emphasises, so-called ‘emerging powers’ have altered the geopolitics of development in the more global world of the twenty-first century, as seen inter alia with the rise of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the formation of the Group of Twenty (G20).

As well as involving a diversity of states, contemporary more global development involves various public authorities which operate on other-than-national scales. For example, much official development practice today is devolved in local and provincial governments that operate with greater autonomy from national capitals than in former days of the ‘developmental state’. In addition, regional and global intergovernmental agencies have proliferated in the development policy landscape. These supra-state actors, too, have obtained increased initiative in development practice, particularly in respect of territories where national governments are poorly resourced.

Then, as several articles in this special issue underline, development practice nowadays also involves non-governmental actors to unprecedented degrees. Business, civil society, consultants, old and new media, celebrities, academics and more multiply the types of actors in an ever more crowded development policy field. In this special issue, for example, Kontinen and Millstein (2017) underline that state and non-state actors come together in different networks and alliances around development. Goodluck Charles et al. (2017) highlight the role of firms in development and strong cross-sectoral ties in state-business relations. Aguilar-Støen (2017) invites readers to reflect about both the proliferation of non-state actors and the porosity of the boundaries between state and non-state sectors.

Furthermore, as highlighted particularly in post-development perspectives, development (and anti-development) actions in a more global world can involve pointed interventions from subaltern circles. Far more – and far more visibly – than in state-centred development of old, today’s development politics are peppered with social movements of Dalits, indigenous peoples, peasants, persons living with disability, religious revivalists, sexual minorities, slum dwellers, youth and other marginalised groups. Such actors promote many of the more transformational (as distinct from reformist) visions of (post-) development.

With all this proliferation of actors, development policy and practice has become strikingly polycentric across multiple scales (local-to-global) and multiple sectors (official, non-official and public–private combinations). In this light, a Center for Global Development publication has spoken of ‘hypercollective action’ (Severino and Ray, 2010). Others have conveyed the multi-actor condition of contemporary development policy processes with notions of ‘regime complex’, ‘actor-network theory’, ‘assemblage’, ‘multi-scalar meta-governance’ and more (Jessop, 2009; Keohane and Victor, 2011; Latour, 2005; Ong and Collier, 2005; Aguilar-Støen, 2017; Charles et al., 2017; Kontinen and Millstein, 2017). Yet, whatever name is applied to the situation, many diffuse and fluid sites are seeking to shape today’s global development agenda.

Issues

Alongside a multiplication of actors, development in today’s more global world also involves shifts in issue agendas. The expansion of global dimensions in contemporary society alters the character of various pre-existent issues (such as migration and environment) and also introduces some new development problems (such as digital communications). The full range of issue changes cannot be covered in this short overview, but several examples can illustrate substantial revisions to the development agenda.

Migration is an age-old feature of world affairs, but the issue has taken on different qualities with recent globalisation. For one thing, global infrastructures for air, sea and land transport have enormously facilitated long-distance human mobility. In addition, global value chains have encouraged migration to export processing zones. Global finance has greatly simplified migrant remittances. Global communications technologies have deepened diaspora solidarities. True, as Nijenhuis and Leung observe in this special issue, ‘mainstreaming of migration in development policy is absent, as is mainstreaming of development in migration policies’ (2017, p.55). However, attention to migration in the SDGs, in contrast to neglect of the issue in the MDGs, suggests that the future could bring greater sensitivity to the (global) migration–development nexus.

Like migration, ecological circumstance has always figured in development; however, ‘the environment’ takes on new faces with intensified globalisation. Trends such as human population growth, biodiversity loss, climate change, long-distance pollution and numerous resource depletions all bring distinctly global ecology to bear on development trajectories. In this special issue, Aguilar-Støen (2017) highlights new global–ecological angles to development with a study of global ‘carbon cowboys’ in Amazonia.

Digital communications are new to contemporary globalisation and substantially reframe the dynamics of development. The online world now encompasses 3.5 billion people, and top-10 countries by numbers of regular Internet users include China, India, Brazil, Russia, Nigeria and Mexico (Internet Stats, 2016). E-commerce and digital outsourcing have significantly reshaped courses of economic development. Digital exclusion is commonly cited as a major contemporary obstacle to development, although digital inclusion on disadvantageous terms (such as high-cost connectivity) can also perpetuate and in some cases even deepen poverty (DEF, 2016). Meanwhile, the rules of Internet governance can have far-reaching consequences for development prospects, even if these implications have so far been little studied (Hill, 2014). Indeed, digital development is an unfortunate omission in this special issue.

Migration, ecology and communications are but three instances of development issue shifts in the wake of contemporary globalisation. Other turns include new identity politics, global health and so on. Regarded in its full breadth, the development menu has taken on vast proportions in today’s globalised times, as witnessed in Agenda 2030 with its unwieldy 17 goals and 169 targets. How to assure that in pursuing everything one is not left with nothing?

Policies

Finally, on the substantive side of development in today’s more global world, altered actor assemblages address altered issue spectrums with some altered policy approaches. These orientations to development practice might be classified into five categories. A first of these, neoliberalism, has recast classical tenets of free-market economics to apply to an open global economy. In contrast, global social market policies have promoted deliberate interventions by state and non-state actors to counter the damages of unregulated transborder commerce. Taking reform still further, global social democracy has advocated development through redistribution on a planetary scale. Even more ambitiously, transformational policies have seen globalisation as an occasion for still more radical steps towards post-development. Meanwhile, neomercantilist policies have recoiled against global interdependence with a resurgence of cultural, economic and political protectionism.

Neoliberal policies dominated development practice in the early years of contemporary globalisation. The 1980s and 1990s saw a heyday of the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’, which prescribed that development in a more global world was best pursued through liberalisation, privatisation, deregulation, reduced state expenditure and tight monetary policy (Williamson, 1989). Today, neoliberal ‘structural adjustment’ as previously sponsored by the Bretton Woods institutions and ‘free trade’ promoted through the World Trade Organisation have fallen from favour and receded to the background of development governance. Reflecting this decline, none of the pieces in this special issue advocates neoliberal measures, and most of the articles explicitly critique this policy framework.

Global social market policies have constituted a ‘Post-Washington Consensus’ that has arguably dominated development practice of the early twenty-first century (Rodrik, 2011). This orientation retains a focus on market-led development, but replaces neoliberal faith in ‘the invisible hand’ with the promotion of corrective action by official, business and civil society actors when market forces create social and ecological damage. Global social market principles have underpinned the large-scale pursuit in recent years of corporate social responsibility schemes, green economy, good governance programmes and stakeholder capitalism. The MDGs and the SDGs have on the whole followed this vision of development through deliberately guided global markets. Contributions in this special issue by Bigsten (2017) and Kaul (2017) also broadly take a global social market line. Although having less global perspective, Charles et al. (2017) in the spirit of social market policy underline the importance of collaborative state-business relations in achieving sustainable development.

More ambitious reformism has taken shape in contemporary development policy around ideas of global social democracy (Held, 2004; Patomäki and Teivainen, 2004). Drawing upon the heritage of the New International Economic Order in the 1970s, this orientation has called for development through deliberate measures of global-scale redistribution of resources, coupled with a comprehensive democratic renewal of global governance institutions. Proposals in the vein of global social democracy include redistributive global regimes for climate adaptation, food security, foreign direct investment, health, intellectual property, migration, money, and so on (Scholte et al., 2016). In this special issue, Gills’ vision of ‘global convergence’ includes notable elements of global social democracy (Gills, 2017). However, to date, most development practitioners have preferred more modest reformism in the vein of global social markets, shying clear of more proactive and systemic measures to address economic inequality and democratic deficits.

Transformational policies have gone still further than global social democracy in their prescriptions of new world orders. These orientations have regarded contemporary trends towards a more global world as an opportunity to transcend capitalism and modernity. The wide array of proffered transformational practices includes religious revivalism (Sivaraksa, 1999), global socialism (Boswell and Chase-Dunn, 2000), feminist global care (Mahon and Robinson, 2011), transculturalism (Scholte, 2015) and eco-centrism (Shiva, 2005). Transformational visions have figured prominently at venues such as the World Social Forum and surface in the present collection when Gills advocates eco-centric practices of post-development (Gills, 2017).

Yet, for all that the contributions to this special issue mainly consider how to harness contemporary globalisation to improve (post-) development futures, actual current politics more often take a neomercantilist turn towards de-globalisation (Bello, 2004). In a variety of guises, these protectionist arguments maintain that the cultural, ecological, economic, political and social harms of neoliberalism are best countered with a retreat from global engagement to more locally and nationally focused development strategies. Such policies have in the present decade found considerable resonance with populist movements across the North, including (as this special issue was being prepared) the Brexit referendum in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the USA.

Hence, the main policy question of the moment is whether neomercantilist policies will come to dominate development practice in the years ahead, frustrating mildly reformist programmes like the SDGs, as well as more ambitious global change agendas. Yet, however intense the neomercantilist backlash may become, global connectivity cannot be wished away as a major context for future (post-) development. Even if executed, withdrawals from regional pacts, walls against immigration, local currencies, so-called ‘Internet sovereignty’ and climate change denial cannot erase the substantially global condition of contemporary history. This special issue hopefully contributes, however modestly, to more positive politics going forward.

Notes on contributors

Jan Aart Scholte is Faculty Professor of Peace and Development in the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg. His research spans globalisation, global governance, civil society in global politics, and global democracy. Current projects focus on Internet governance and legitimacy in global governance.

Fredrik Söderbaum is Professor of Peace and Development in the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg. His research covers regionalism (particularly in Africa and Europe), development and security. His most recent book is Rethinking Regionalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).