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CHAPTER 11
THE DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGE
Overview
For much of the twentieth century, the overwhelming majority of the world’s population who live
in developing nations have not experienced the kind of economic prosperity that the vast majority
of people in developed countries have. An obvious question is: why have so many less developed
countries remained impoverished, "underdeveloped,” or “undeveloped”? While one chapter can
We define poverty and highlight debates over how best to measure it. We briefly touch on
decolonization in the 1960s before focusing the rest of the chapter on the period from the 1970s
until today. Instructors will most likely want to assign supplementary materials about colonial
The section on “Development and Globalization” is quite extensive. Our goal is to focus on
contemporary scholarly analysis of development and trace some of the changes in development
strategies as thinking by the World Bank and NGOs has evolved. We label a “top-down”
approach to development focused on promoting good governance and financial inclusion, and we
Key Terms
•
ethical poverty line
•
Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)
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•
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
•
New International Economic Order (NIEO)
•
structural adjustment programs (SAPs)
•
middle-income trap
•
informal economy
•
microcredit
•
Grameen Bank
•
philanthrocapitalism
•
social entrepreneurship
Teaching Tips
• This chapter does not give much attention to the colonial era in developing countries.
Instructors are encouraged to bring in supplementary materials to show how colonial
experiences shaped development (and continue to affect development today).
• Start by focusing on the plight of LDCs and the debate surrounding why some developing
nations like the NICs have been successful while others have such a hard time developing.
There is much fruitful discussion revolving around a comparison of differences in conditions
and policies in East Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
• Ask students to wrestle with the issue of how much state involvement or activism is necessary
if poor nations are going to develop. Have them tie their responses to the different IPE outlooks
of mercantilism, economic liberalism, and structuralism.
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• Pietra Rivoli has two fascinating chapters on how the global textile industry has affected the
lives of women who work in textile factories. Have students read the chapters and debate
whether the betterment of women’s lives over time from employment in factories justifies
exploitation and harsh working conditions. This discussion can also focus on whether it is
1. Explain what is meant by the “development challenge.” What factors have acted as barriers to
development and which have contributed to the ability of some LDCs to overcome these
barriers?
2. Outline the major elements of the four IPE development theories and discuss the extent to
which some of them have been more successful than others.
3. Some authors, like Oswaldo de Rivero, claim that development is a myth, something most
countries cannot attain. Have students discuss the potential impossibility for most countries to
attain significantly higher standards of living, given climate change and constraints on water,
resources, land, and energy.
7. Critique the use of GDP as a measure of social well-being. What other ways of measuring a
country’s well-being have been developed?
8. Do you agree with those who argue that significant reductions in poverty can be made by
“nudging” the poor to make more “rational” choices to achieve their goals? Or do you agree
with those who argue that poverty is caused by structural factors and can best be reduced by
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9. What criticisms do feminist political economists make of programs that the World Bank and
TNCs promote to improve the lives of women and girls in the Global South?
12. Describe the trends in debt service ratios of the poorest countries between 2000 and 2015.
Would you characterize the HIPC and MDRI Initiatives as successful? Justify your answer.
13. What lessons can be learned from China’s development model that might lead to more
successful development strategies in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia?
Sample Multiple-Choice Questions
1) Which region of the world in 2013 had the highest proportion of its population living on $190
a day or less?
a) Latin America and the Caribbean
2) According to World Bank data, the proportion of the population in developing countries living
d) 16 to 4 percent
3) Per capita income in the United States averages approximately
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a) $3 a day.
4) Which country or organization spearheaded the creation of UNCTAD?
a) the Soviet Union
5) The economic liberal model of development
a) is based on the successful experience of the Asian NICs.
6) The Washington Consensus is synonymous with
d) the UN’s outlook on development.
7) Which of the following most clearly reflects economic liberal principles?
8) Dependency theorists are least likely to criticize which of the following?
a) the World Bank
9) Which of the following is not an accurate characterization of East Asian “developmental
states”?
d) They generally promoted export-oriented industrialization.
10) Which development economist argues that a developing country has a better chance of
achieving good governance if it manages to build a sizeable income-secure middle class
(constituting at least 20 to 25 percent of the population)?
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11) Brazil’s Bolsa Família is a program that
a) gives payments to parents if they keep their children vaccinated and attending school
12) By the 2000s, the World Bank stressed the importance of all of these factors in development
except
a) financial inclusion.
d) They are run top-down, not bottom-up.
14) Which person pioneered a successful microcredit program through Grameen Bank?
a) Bill Gates
15) The “10,000 Women,” “Girl Effect,” and “5 to 20” campaigns are examples of
16) Which scholars are skeptical that foreign aid helps poor countries develop?
a) Martin Ravallion and Stephen Radelet
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17) Which of the following was a policy to significantly reduce the amount of debt held by the
world’s poorest nations?
d) capital mobility
18) China has helped Africa’s development in all the following ways except
a) by providing aid and low-cost financing for construction of roads, dams, and ports.
19) What do we call the process in which a country with significant manufacturing becomes more
and more reliant on exports of minerals, natural resources, and agricultural goods?
a) philanthrocapitalism
Suggested Readings and Links
Ang, Yuen Yuen. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2016.
Germano, Roy. Outsourcing Welfare: How the Money Immigrants Send Home Contributes to
Stability in Developing Countries. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Helleiner, Gerry. Toward a Better World: Memoirs of a Life in International and Development
Economics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.
Hickel, Jason. The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets. New York: W. W.
Norton, 2018.
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Audiovisual Resources
Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas. Joakim Demmer, dir. WG Film, 2017. A documentary on
foreign land investments in Ethiopia and their effects on small farmers.
Life and Debt. Stephanie Black, dir. Tuff Gong Pictures, 2001. “Addresses the impact of the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and
Poverty and Profit: The Business of Development Aid. Caroline Nokel, dir. Produced by
Thurhfilm for DNR, 2017. “The result of in-depth research, the film reveals the abuse of state
We Come As Friends. Hubert Sauper, dir. Adelante Films and KGP Kranzelbinder Gabriele
Production, 2014. Examines how foreigners affect the lives of the poor in South Sudan.
Supplementary Materials
The material below was written by Cynthia Howson and appeared in the 5th and 6th editions
of this textbook. It has not been updated since the 6th edition.
FEMINIST CONTRIBUTIONS TO IPE
Feminism has contributed to IPE scholarship in a variety of ways, and its influence can be seen
throughout the discipline. Feminists began to make significant inroads in the social sciences
during the 1970s, when IPE first developed as a discipline and the need for more interdisciplinary
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Women Matter; Gender Matters
Gendered analysis takes into account not just sex (biological males and females) but gender as the
socially constructed norms that determine what is masculine or feminine. Women matter simply
because women are intrinsically valuable as human beings. Gender matters to IPE scholars
because to understand many issues in IPE we need to understand the way our values and
assumptions about gender affect institutions. Seems pretty simple, right? But it took a long time to
convince mainstream scholars and policy makers of those two points. In the examples that follow,
we will look at how some policies have ignored women, with unfortunate consequences.
Policies like JFM have different impacts on men and women. In fact, gender is so important
that we might say most major policies—from food stamps to timber tariffs—affect men and
women differently. During the first debates in 2009 over President Obama’s stimulus package,
feminists pointed out that promoting jobs in construction (as was advocated by many) meant job
creation primarily for men. If women matter as much as men, some said, then stimulus money
should also be directed toward sectors where there is greater representation of women in the labor
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most new jobs go to men. Historically, when gender experts have not been included in policy
design, gender has been ignored. Often, this has a negative impact on women, but it also
frequently works to the detriment of the policy’s overall objectives. In the case of JFM, failure to
consider gender-differentiated outcomes failed to protect women, but in doing so, it also failed to
find a solution to women’s overexploitation of forest resources. That is one reason why gender
matters.
So, feminists have convinced IPE scholars as well as policy makers that women matter and
therefore, gender-differentiated policy impacts matter. But gender matters for another reason. The
Liberal Feminisms
Even within liberal traditions, there are many debates among feminists. Classical liberal feminists
(sometimes called libertarian feminists) are most concerned with individual freedoms, freedom
from coercion, and “self-ownership” for men and women. Politically, they are concerned
In defining freedom in terms of individual rights and seeking to limit the coercive power of
the state, liberal feminists often do not support laws that promote women specifically, including
those that would regulate equal pay with men or guarantee access to public office. Some liberal
Other liberal feminists tend to support individual rights and free markets, but argue that men
hold a disproportionate share of power in society. Because this institutionalized patriarchy is not
confined to the state, liberal feminists advocate for both legal and social change. For example,
Since then, liberal (and other) feminists have studied the many effects of global markets and
development projects on women. Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), instituted in many
developing countries during the 1980s and 1990s, have been criticized for (among other things)
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In contrast, Pietra Rivoli argues that the advent of free trade has been a great benefit to women
in many poorer countries.
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As textile and apparel production has moved to countries like China, it
has created relatively high-paying jobs in urban areas for hundreds of thousands of young women
who otherwise would be stuck in rural poverty. Despite the sweatshop-type conditions and poor
labor practices in many of these clothing factories, women employed in them have gained higher
incomes, economic autonomy, and even social liberation. Women’s economic empowerment
Feminist Critiques of Mercantilist Perspectives
Feminist scholars have played an influential role in questioning the assumptions and approaches
of IPE scholars in the mercantilist and realist traditions. They have sought to redefine our
understanding of international power and national security. Traditionally, the study of IPE has
privileged macrolevel issues: the actions of nation-states, peace and war, international diplomacy,
Some feminist scholars have had considerable influence simply by approaching research from
different levels of analysis, often by beginning at the household or community level. They find
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Similarly, feminist scholars point out that state-centric IPE scholars have overlooked the
informal and non-wage-based economy in which many women work. This sector is a critical
underpinning of the market system as a whole and of the ability of a state to compete in the global
Feminist scholars have redefined the concept of security, showing the ways in which
international relations are gendered and making women’s often invisible roles more apparent. At
the same time, feminist activists have promoted women’s ability to participate in spheres of
For example, a team of political scientists, a psychologist, and a geographer—Valerie Hudson,
Mary Caprioli, Chad Emmett, and Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill—have found a significant correlation
between the security of women and the security of states.
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States that have high levels of physical
security for women tend to be more peaceful and have better relations with their neighbors.
In her influential book Bananas, Beaches and Bases, Cynthia Enloe shows how diplomats and
soldiers depend on the often unpaid and devalued work that women do. By studying the role of
diplomats’ wives or the way military bases depend on cooks, laundresses, nurses, and sex
workers, she shows how private and personal relationships influence the international political
Feminist security theory shows how the invisibility of gender in theories of war has masked
important dynamics, including the myth that wars are fought to protect society’s most vulnerable
sections. For example, women form the bulk of refugees and civilian deaths in war, and mass rape
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Structuralist Feminism
Marxist feminists challenge the idea that capitalism benefits women in almost any instance. Many
see gender not as the key factor in exploitation but as a source of oppression that is facilitated by
fundamental source of the degradation and oppression of women.”
Other structuralist or radical feminists—often influenced by Marx—argue that patriarchy is
part of a system of exploitation that requires a complete overhaul (though not necessarily a violent
one). They may or may not believe that the best way to end exploitation is to end capitalism, but
many would agree with Reed that there is a link between the power mechanisms that determine
Where liberal feminists criticize neoliberal economic policies when they hurt women,
structuralist feminists see those policies as emblematic of a greater problem. Meanwhile, they
criticize microfinance because the loans given through its programs actively promote women’s
State-centric IPE scholars have overlooked how globalization has direct, specific effects on
women. Many newly industrializing countries have encouraged foreign direct investment in
Women also tend to be disproportionately hurt by the restructuring of the global economy and
adjustments to crises within it. Cuts in social services and public goods cause male and female
unemployment, but have tended to force more women into poverty, double shifts, and informal
activities like prostitution, which damage their physical and mental health.
SMUGGLING IN SENEGAL: GENDER AND TRADE POLICY
Senegal is one of the highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs) in West Africa that has adopted
a variety of economic liberalization measures advocated by the World Bank and the IMF. One
exception is its sugar industry (actually one company, CSS), which has enough political power
that the government protects it from international competition by setting sugar import tariffs so
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high as to effectively ban imports. The Gambia, the small country surrounded by Senegal, has
much lower tariffs, and its government is only too happy to have traders buy its cheaper sugar
imported from Denmark and Brazil. Here, we have a recipe for smuggling.
In West Africa, market women are very important because trade is one of the few occupations
available to women and because villages need access to basic supplies (like sugar). Given
A story will illustrate what happens from Senegal.a Fatou Cisse is a mid-level trader in a
border town that hosts a market once a week. She makes about $100 during a good month. She
pays a neighbor (a 20-year old man) to take her by horse-cart three times a week to The Gambia,
where she buys a 50-kg sack of sugar on credit from her regular supplier, a male immigrant from
Mauritania. Her driver knows the bumpy terrain well and tries to get back to the village using
paths that are not easily reached by customs officers’ cars. They are not in luck. A male ex-trader
Stories like this one illustrate both the complexity and the gendered nature of the globalization
of production. Governments make international trade policies they hope will benefit their
economies. For Senegal, this means some protectionism in response to powerful sugar lobbies—
negotiations that are dominated by men. Because men and women have different obligations and
Reference
aA composite account from a survey of women smugglers in Cynthia Howson, “Trafficking in
Daily Necessities: Female Cross-border Traders in Senegal.” PhD Thesis, SOAS, University
of London, 2011.
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