Reconceptualizing the Politics of Development

Abstract

Abstract The first decade of the twenty-first century saw the emergence of a shift from ‘institutions matter’ to ‘politics matters’ within discussions of why some countries have managed to achieve higher levels of development than others. A key focus within this newly politicized body of development theory has been on the role of elites and inter-elite bargaining in shaping how institutions function and how they distribute resources and status within society. This chapter critically discusses this literature, before setting out a ‘power domains’ framework of analysis that can help generate new and policy-relevant insights into the politics of development. The first level of this framework uses an adapted form of ‘political settlements’ analysis, which moves beyond a narrow focus on elite incentives to incorporate a stronger appreciation of the role played by both ideas and broader social groupings in shaping the configuration of power within which elites operate. By linking this form of political settlements analysis to a second level of analysis on specific policy domains, we can investigate how this broader configuration of power plays out in relation to specific fields of policy and practice. The chapter also establishes the methodological approach that was used to underpin the comparative investigations into the politics of development that are reported in later chapters.