What is development?

The concept of development emerged out of the devastation of World War Two and the hope that the rebuilding process would provide a new world order of justice, welfare and democracy for all. Some people also think that development is revision of the relationship between Europe and North America and parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This has historically been based on imperialism, colonisation and repeated interference in local economies and societies. According to this view, development, is the latest, most ‘enlightened’ concept to emerge from a long history of ‘western’ ideas about the wider world.

For centuries, Europeans and North Americans have often justified their actions in terms of ‘helping’ the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Invasions, occupations and colonisation were framed as bringing ‘civilisation’ to ‘barbarians’, or nowadays as bringing ‘democracy’ to the ‘oppressed’. Development, too, can be seen in this way, in that it can be what we think is good for the people we are claiming to help, rather than their own self-identified needs and aspirations. Keeping this in mind, we will look at development from three perspectives: economic growth and development, the United Nations’ Development Programme, and moving the balance of power in favour of ordinary people.

1) Economic growth and development

A perspective equates economic growth with development. Under this conception, development means modernisation, and modernisation means pursuing industrialisation and economic development. Economic growth in turn, it is said, helps improve standards of living, which brings with it increased democracy. Modernisation is seen as being synonymous with westernisation, in that it takes as its model western industrialised democracies.

This modernisation perspective of development began to be questioned by some from the late 1960s onwards. Critics pointed out that no two countries start from the same position, and that even if they follow the modernisation model it is not guaranteed that they will arrive at ‘developed’ country status. This may not even be the appropriate route for them to take. Furthermore, much of so-called underdevelopment is in fact a direct result of exploitative policies by rich countries, such as the extraction of primary resources for low prices and unfair trading practices.

2) The United Nations’ Development Programme (UNDP)

As a result of these criticisms, international development agencies began to adopt a second, wider perspective for measuring development. The United Nations measures human development by surveying a wide range of statistics grouped around health, education, the economy and gender. The UNDP publishes annual Human Development Reports showing global progress in these indicators.

According to the UNDP, development is “to lead long and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable, to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living and to be able to participate in the life of the community".

In the year 2000, members of the United Nations synthesised much of this thinking into a set of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which are a further measure of global development based on achievable targets (Link to “Millennium Development Goals”).

3) Shifting the balance of power

Achieving human development is intimately linked to a further, third, perspective of development which goes beyond these measurable indicators, but is seen as a means to achieve them. This perspective views development as freeing people from obstacles that hinder their ability to develop their own lives and their communities. Development, in this perspective, is not simply about ‘western’ aid agencies, and ‘westerners’ building schools, roads, hospitals, and providing emergency relief. It is more fundamentally about shifting the balance of power in favour of ordinary people. Development, therefore, is empowerment: it is about local people taking control of their own lives, expressing their own demands and finding their own solutions to their problems.

However, this is of course easier said than done. People do not live in a vacuum but within particular social, economic and political structures, at the local, national and global level. These structures can limit the freedom of people in the developing world to decide on their own futures. While there is not enough space here to examine all of these structures in detail, the next section will look at what is arguably the most important one that affects us all but has particular implications for developing countries: globalisation.