Developmentalism : The Normative and Transformative within Capitalism Hardback

Why do so few countries achieve development success?

Achieving development requires many changes over a short period of time, generating instability and risk.

It is a deep and integrated economy of change involving force, strategic thinking, and ideological conviction - it emerges when successful development is seen as necessary for the survival of a political order.

Developmentalism engages with the moral issues that this raises. Developmentalism: The Normative and Transformative within Capitalism uses a historical comparative approach to understand development as a transformation which involves a deep and integrated political economy of change - a shift from a state of 'capital-ascendance' to 'capital dominance'.

It is only through a transformation towards capital dominance that mass poverty reduction and the construction of a commonwealth are possible.

However, capitalist development is extremely difficult and requires a highly exacting political endeavour.

The politics of development is conceptualized as developmentalism: a strategy and ideology in which governments exercise heavy directive power, endure instability and crisis, and secure a rudimentary legitimacy for their efforts.

This book argues that developmentalism requires a conflation of successful capitalist transformation with some form of existential insecurity of the state itself.

It flourishes when capitalist transformation connects to profound questions of sovereignty, statehood, nation-building, and elite survival.

Developmentalism shows deep contextualisation of capitalist transformation as well as the massive improvements in material life that it has generated.