Week 12 - Development Flashcards

Question

Rodney Walter Argument 3: Socialism as a Model for Genuine Development Relation to International Economics and Development

Answer 1

- Rodney presents socialism as the corrective to capitalist international economics, which is structured around profit and inequality - Planned economies redirect resources inward, aiming for autonomy and egalitarian growth - This reframes development as freedom from dependency and exploitation, not mere integration into global capitalism

Answer 2

- Rodney warns against the term “developing countries” as it implies linear progress under global capitalism - He insists that underdevelopment is a product of capitalist domination, not lack of effort - The resources of underdeveloped regions were not absent, they were stolen - He critiques standard indicators like per capita income and national income for masking inequality and ignoring historical causation

Answer 3

- Rodney deconstructs the global economy as a system of wealth extraction, not mutual benefit - Africa and similar regions are not failing to develop - they are being prevented from developing - International trade, investment flows, and institutional control (e.g., IMF, World Bank) reproduce inequality, making the capitalist world economy a mechanism of underdevelopment

Answer 4

A “social process which is dependent upon the outcome of man’s efforts to deal with his natural environment.”

Answer 5

“…are exploited by others”

Answer 6

1. Structural-Historical framing of development as exploitation 2. Integration of class, labour and social relations into development analysis 3. Conceptual link between development and ideology

Answer 7

- Rodney’s framing of development as a historically and structurally unequal global process, not a neutral achievement - This means that development in the West is inseparable from the underdevelopment of Africa, Asia, and Latin America - He redefines development as interdependent - This is important to our understanding because it exposes how economic structures - such as global trade and production - have roots in colonial exploitation - Rodney’s analysis helps us see development not just as a set of indicators (e.g., GDP or industrialisation), but as a systemic outcome of power imbalances - It also provides insight that neoclassical economics ignore, which tends to treat underdevelopment as an internal issue (bad governance or poor institutions) - Rodney forces us to shift the lens outward, identifying global capitalism itself as a barrier to development

Answer 8

- Rodney’s insistence that development cannot be understood without analysing the social relations of production - This means that economic development is not just about outputs and growth, but about who owns what, who works, who profits, and how labour is organised - He treats development as a social process, not just a technical one - This is relevant because it highlights how labour in underdeveloped countries is exploited in the global economy (e.g., in global supply chains, wage disparities) - Rodney shows how international labour hierarchies fuel the enrichment of the Global North - It provides insight that is absent in many development models (like Rostow’s modernisation theory or Solow’s growth model), which abstract away from class and social conflict

Answer 9

- Rodney’s analysis of the interplay between economic base and ideological superstructure, showing that development is also shaped by values, beliefs, and institutions - This means that economic systems (like capitalism or socialism) are not only material but also ideologically sustained - education, religion and political institutions - This is important to our understanding of development because it illuminates how ideologies like meritocracy and “free markets,” legitimise inequality and mask dependency - Western models of development are not culturally neutral, but carry assumptions that often marginalise local realities - Rodney’s strength lies in making us aware of how ideological control reinforces material underdevelopment, rarely explored by classical or neoliberal economists

Answer 10

1. Overemphasis on External Exploitation and Structural Determinism 2. Limited Engagement with Empirical and Quantitative Economic Tools 3. Idealisation of Socialism and Insufficient Critique of Its Historical Limits

Answer 11

- One weakness is Rodney’s emphasis on external exploitation (imperialism, capitalism) as the primary cause of underdevelopment - This means he tends to underplay internal factors, such as domestic governance, institutional capacity, political corruption, and cultural dynamics, which are equally critical - This is weak in our understanding of development because it risks promoting a monocausal, deterministic view where local agency is sidelined - If underdevelopment is entirely due to external forces, it becomes unclear how domestic policies could have any meaningful impact - Rodney overlooks the possibility that postcolonial states may perpetuate underdevelopment through domestic policy failures - His structural determinism may discourage policy-oriented solutions that focus on capacity-building, democratic governance, or regional cooperation

Answer 12

- Another weakness is Rodney’s minimal use of economic modelling, empirical data, or quantitative analysis - His arguments are compelling in theory but lack engagement with economic tools commonly used in international economics - This means his critique remains largely ideological, which weakens its applicability in development planning that rely on measurable outcomes - This is weak in our understanding because modern international economics often requires data-based assessments: calculating investment flows or cost-benefit impacts - Rodney’s approach may therefore seem impractical to economists designing real-world interventions - Neoclassical economists would argue that without models, Rodney’s critique cannot inform economic policy

Answer 13

- Rodney’s ideological preference for socialist development, which he presents as the definitive alternative to capitalism - without addressing the practical failures of socialist states - This means his analysis may be overly idealistic, lacking a nuanced examination of how socialist regimes have also reproduced inequality and authoritarianism - This is a limitation for understanding development because it ignores why many socialist economies stagnated or collapsed, and why several market-oriented models (e.g. East Asian Tigers) succeeded in improving human development without full socialism - Rodney overlooks the internal contradictions within socialism, such as top-down planning inefficiencies or labour discipline under authoritarian regimes

Answer 14

- Collier argues that globalisation, while a powerful force for development, has failed the bottom billion - a group of countries stuck in structural traps such as civil war, poor governance, and resource dependence - While many low-income countries have benefited from global trade, capital inflows, and migration, the bottom billion have been excluded or actively harmed by these same globalisation processes - As a result, they have missed the convergence boat, leading to widening global inequality and new challenges for international development

Answer 15

- Collier notes that globalisation has worked well for many developing countries - particularly in Asia = China, India, and others used trade, capital, and diaspora networks to integrate and grow rapidly - However, the bottom billion have failed to participate in this convergence - Despite escaping certain civil war or bad governance, they have not seen the growth experienced by others - This means that globalisation does not inherently deliver development - instead, it depends on timing, geography, and institutional readiness - For countries without governance stability or basic infrastructure, globalisation can deepen marginalisation - This exposes a flawed assumption: that global market forces lift all boats; in reality, they often reinforce existing inequalities

Answer 16

- 73% of bottom-billion countries experienced civil war - 76% went through prolonged periods of poor governance - Countries like Angola and Nigeria made reforms but still face low convergence

Answer 17

- Collier emphasises that international trade has driven sustained development in most of the developing world - However, the bottom billion missed the optimal entry window - In the 1980s, the wage gap was wide enough to make developing countries attractive - But by the 1990s, Asia had already created powerful agglomeration economies, meaning firms preferred to cluster there. - This reveals that breaking into global trade is not simply a function of cost advantages - spatial and historical momentum matter - Trade theory often emphasises comparative advantage, but Collier shows that without timely entry and enabling conditions, cost advantages are insufficient - Hence, trade globalisation can entrench underdevelopment by favouring existing hubs and locking others out

Answer 18

- By the 2000s, 80% of developing country exports were manufactures - Mauritius, the only African country with proper governance and policy during the 1980s, attracted manufacturing investment while others didn’t

Answer 19

- While economic theory predicts that capital should flow to the most capital-scarce countries due to higher returns, Collier demonstrates that private capital flows bypass the bottom billion - Instead, it concentrates in countries with agglomeration and stability (e.g., Malaysia, China) - Even post-reform bottom-billion countries struggle to attract investment due to persistent perceptions of risk, small market size, and bad reputations - This highlights a contradiction: financial globalisation is highly asymmetric - Poor countries need capital to develop, but capital avoids risk - even when risk declines - This creates a vicious cycle: lack of capital reduces productivity, keeps wages low, and undermines growth

Answer 20

- In Africa, there is twice as much public capital as private; in East Asia it’s the reverse - Uganda’s risk rating improved from 5 to 23 between early 1990s and 1997, but remained below the 30–40 threshold needed to attract serious investment - By 1990, 38% of Africa’s private wealth was held outside the continent

Answer 21

- Collier extends the idea of capital flight to human capital - the educated elite from the bottom billion are increasingly choosing to emigrate - Unlike the uneducated, who emigrate for wage differentials, the educated seek safety, opportunity, and returns on their skills - This results in a brain drain that undermines recovery - IE literature often discusses remittances as beneficial, but Collier shows that for the bottom billion, the loss of talent outweighs remittance benefits, especially in reforming societies

Answer 22

Ethiopia lost top finance professionals to American academia

Answer 23

- Even those countries that escape initial traps often fall into a low-growth equilibrium - They cannot access trade, capital, or human capital on meaningful scales - Meanwhile, Asia’s continued rise raises the global bar, making it harder for bottom-billion countries to catch up - This challenges the assumption that reform leads automatically to convergence - Collier shows that even with reforms, historical timing and lost opportunities create enduring disadvantages

Answer 24

- Côte d’Ivoire fell into civil conflict after a long period of low growth - Zimbabwe entered governance collapse after stagnation - Malawi initially grew well but declined as regional conflict spread - Tanzania is resource-scarce and landlocked - vulnerable to future traps

Answer 25

“…prosperity, it is now making things harder for these latecomers”

Answer 26

public capital as private capital”

Answer 27

“…desperately short of qualified people”

Answer 28

1. Collier introduces timing and path dependency as critical variables in development 2. Collier exposes asymmetries in investment risk perception 3. Collier reframes migration as a selective drain on institutional capacity, not just a source of remittances

Answer 29

- One strength is that globalisation’s benefits are historically contingent - countries must join at the right time or risk permanent exclusion - This means that development is not just about internal reform, but also about entering global markets before agglomeration effects make entry unfeasible - This is relevant to our understanding of development because it challenges the assumption that integration into global trade is universally possible, and highlights how missed opportunities compound over time - Collier’s path-dependent framing helps explain why some nations remain marginalised despite reforms

Answer 30

- Collier’s emphasis on the credibility trap, where even reforming states cannot attract capital due to persistent risk perceptions and small market size - This means that capital does not flow where it’s most needed - as classical economic models would predict - but rather to where risk is perceived as lowest, reinforcing inequality - This is important for our understanding of development because it shows that financial globalisation is not neutral - It also provides a critical insight into how reputation and investor psychology impact international capital distribution - these issues are largely absent in traditional investment theory, which tends to focus on rational returns and ignores reputational inertia

Answer 31

- His analysis of selective migration, where the emigration of educated elites undermines state-building in bottom-billion countries - This means that global labour mobility, often viewed as beneficial for development (e.g. through remittances), can actually exacerbate underdevelopment by stripping away human capital needed for reform - This is relevant because it challenges dominant narratives that celebrate migration as a uniformly positive force

Answer 32

1. Collier underplays the role of domestic institutions in explaining persistent underdevelopment 2. Collier provides limited empirical engagement or economic modelling 3. Overgeneralisation of the ‘bottom billion’ as a homogenous group

Answer 33

- While Collier acknowledges governance and conflict, he does not explore how domestic institutions shape long-term economic outcomes, instead focusing heavily on external constraints - This means his analysis may over-attribute failure to external structural factors like agglomeration or capital flows, while under-analysing how institutional quality and state capacity shape development - This weakens our understanding because institutional economics stresses that political and economic institutions are foundational to development. Without these, no amount of trade or capital will lead to sustained growth - It overlooks how some countries with similarly poor geography or colonial histories (e.g. Botswana) have outperformed others due to strong domestic policy and institutional decisions

Answer 34

- Another weakness is the lack of detailed empirical modelling to support his claims - This means that his conclusions - such as those about agglomeration exclusion, capital flight, or credibility traps - lack the quantification backing that policymakers often require to translate arguments into concrete interventions - This is weak in international economics because the absence of robust empirical backing reduces the applicability of his findings to real-world development programming

Answer 35

- Collier’s tendency to treat the bottom billion as a relatively uniform category, despite the vast diversity in political systems, cultures, histories, and economic structures within these countries - This means his policy implications - such as the need for external intervention or structural reform - risk being too broad across such varied contexts, and may unintentionally reinforce one-size-fits-all approaches - This is weak for development understanding because international economics increasingly emphasises context-sensitive, country-specific policy prescriptions, recognising that what works in post-conflict Liberia may not suit resource-rich Angola

Answer 36

- The post-WWII Development Project was a Western-led international strategy centred on national economic development, apparently to uplift postcolonial states - But ultimately structured to reproduce global inequalities by maintaining the colonial division of labour under the guise of modernisation - It institutionalised development through bodies like the IMF and World Bank, embedding liberal capitalist ideologies into global structures and thereby limiting sovereign development paths.

Answer 37

- The development project recast postcolonial poverty as underdevelopment, presenting it as a natural condition requiring Western aid - This concealed the exploitative history and re-legitimised global economic hierarchies through a liberal framework - The real aim was to preserve access to cheap raw materials and markets while preventing postcolonial states from adopting socialist alternatives that could threaten Western economic dominance

Answer 38

- Development framed disparities as due to “underdevelopment,” not colonial extraction - U.S. and allies worked to limit solidarist internationalism, e.g., opposing socialist or non-aligned pathways

Answer 39

- This argument illuminates how the creation of “development” became an ideological and material mechanism to secure postcolonial resources - It challenges simplistic economic models by revealing development as historically and politically structured, not technocratically neutral - By reframing colonial outcomes as domestic deficiencies, the development project obscured historical responsibility, redirected solutions into Western-led institutions, and restricted economic sovereignty - thus undermining genuine structural transformation

Answer 40

- Bretton Woods System: A multilateral financial system created in 1944 establishing the IMF and World Bank to promote international stability and development - The IMF and World Bank institutionalised rules that prioritised Western economic interests, compelling postcolonial states to adopt liberal economic frameworks in exchange for aid - Loans were often conditional, channelling investment into specific sectors beneficial to Western markets (e.g., raw material extraction), rather than domestic development goals - Links to Gramscian hegemony, where consent to Western norms is manufactured through institutions - Reflects World Systems Theory: core states exploit peripheral states via institutional mechanisms

Answer 41

- Exposes how “free markets” were not neutral, but shaped by hegemonic economic powers through global institutions - Multilateralism gave development a façade of global consensus, but in practice, concentrated economic control in Western hands, entrenching asymmetrical development outcomes and making economic independence nearly impossible for poorer nations

Answer 42

- Public Law 480: A U.S. law that allowed food surpluses to be shipped as aid to foreign countries - Food aid was strategically used to offload surpluses from industrial agriculture, undermine local farming, and create dependency on foreign food - It tied recipient states into long-term food import relationships, discouraging agricultural self-sufficiency and reinforcing global divisions in agricultural production

Answer 43

- Public Law 480 linked U.S. food surpluses with “aid,” but this discouraged domestic food production in recipient states - Countries developed long-term import dependencies, harming rural development

Answer 44

- This shows that international food flows are governed by power relations and surplus management - Agricultural trade, often assumed to be neutral, is deeply politicised and developmental in consequence - The food aid regime reshaped international agricultural economics in ways that disempower local producers, sustaining poverty in agrarian societies and exacerbating inequality in global food systems

Answer 45

1. Exposes the political and historical construction of development as a global economic framework 2. Integrate material flows (like food and industry) into the analysis of international economic inequality 3. The analysis reveals how global institutions embed ideological control through economic conditionality

Answer 46

- One strength is that the chapter highlights how development was not a neutral process but rather a historically and politically constructed project - This means that development was shaped to preserve global economic hierarchies through frameworks like the Bretton Woods system, rather than to empower postcolonial states - This is important because it shifts the lens from economic growth indicators to power relations and historical dependency, challenging assumptions that development naturally follows liberalisation or market integration - It also provides insight that neoclassical theories often overlook: the fact that rules of the global economy are historically biased, and that postcolonial states inherited structural disadvantages shaped by Western interests

Answer 47

- How material flows - like food and industrial relocation - are used to reproduce global inequalities, rather than reduce them - This means that material flows are strategically managed to benefit dominant economies and reinforce dependency in the Global South - This is relevant because it reveals the development consequences of trade and aid policies that are often treated as humanitarian - The case of food aid, for example, shows how surplus disposal simultaneously displaces local production and builds long-term dependency - It also provides insight demonstrating that who produces, who consumes, and who controls surplus matters in shaping global development patterns

Answer 48

- Focus on how institutions like the IMF and World Bank imposed ideological discipline by attaching liberal conditionalities to aid, limiting national development paths - This means that the post-war development framework was not just financial - it was ideologically driven, designed to prevent alternative models (e.g. socialism) - This is key to understanding development because it highlights that multilateral institutions do not just stabilise economies - they shape them in line with dominant ideological agendas, particularly neoliberalism - It also offers insight that challenges institutionalist views which often portray these organisations as neutral arbiters - Instead, the chapter shows that economic policy is constrained by institutional power, and development strategies are structured by external ideological coercion

Answer 49

1. The analysis largely omits the role of domestic agency and internal institutional reform 2. The critique of international institutions is ideologically grounded but lacks empirical depth 3. The portrayal of industrial relocation simplifies complex global production dynamics

Answer 50

- Places exclusive emphasis on external structures and historical legacies - like colonialism, Western-dominated institutions - while underplaying the role of domestic policies, governance, and institutional choices in shaping development outcomes - This means that national governments in the Global South are portrayed as passive recipients of global pressures rather than as active agents capable of strategic decision-making - This is weak for our understanding of development because it downplays how internal institutional quality and policy innovation contribute to divergent development outcomes - even within similarly constrained global environments - The authors also overlook insights from the developmental state model, which shows how countries like South Korea and Taiwan used strong state intervention to industrialise successfully - Failing to account for domestic institutional variation risks over-determining underdevelopment as a structural inevitability

Answer 51

- Relies on broad statements rather than detailed empirical case studies or policy analysis to substantiate claims about conditionality, power, or outcomes - This means the argument may lack the empirical specificity that economists require to apply it to real-world development planning - This limits our understanding because it does not adequately evaluate how conditionality works in practice, how countries have navigated these constraints, or how the institutions themselves have evolved over time - Without empirical nuance, this risks appearing ideologically rigid and historically static, reducing its usefulness for contemporary economic policymaking

Answer 52

- Tends to portray industrial relocation to the Global South as a mechanism of labour exploitation and dependency, without fully addressing the diversification, or technological learning that can emerge from export-led industrialisation - This means that while it is right to question exploitative labour conditions, it does not sufficiently explore the developmental potential that integration into global value chains has offered to many countries - This weakens our understanding of development because it overlooks the transformative effects of industrialisation in some regions, especially where states have successfully upgraded from low-skill to high-skill manufacturing - Countries can capture value through learning, innovation, and industrial policy within global systems, even if unequal - By presenting industrial relocation as mainly exploitative, the authors risk a narrative that does not account for why many states still pursue export-oriented development, or how strategic integration, when well-managed, can support sovereign development aims

Week 12 - Development Flashcards

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