Development Theory: Learning the Lessons and Moving On

Abstract

The familiar pattern of the post-Second World War system, with its two great powers, a divided Europe and a marginalised Third World was decisively superseded in the 1989–91 period of the collapse of the political-cultural project of state-socialism in Eastern Europe and the USSR. As the associated patterns of thought, the ideological apparatus of ‘cold war’, dissolved, a novel global industrial-capitalist pattern became visible in a tripolar system with three key regions: Europe, the Americas and Pacific Asia. The ways in which a series of agent-groups understand themselves and their place in the global system are presently undergoing significant change. At the same time, ongoing reflection within mainstream social theorising, in which self-understanding has shifted from naturalistic modelling to interpretation and criticism, has recovered the classical European concern for complex change. In the more restricted sphere of development theory, these intermingled changes imply that claims to authoritative technical expertise oriented to recapitulation must be set aside in favour of a notion of dialogue between First World theorists, policy-makers and political actors, and their counterparts in the Third World, and oriented to understanding the unfolding dynamics of industrial capitalism within the peripheral areas of the global system.