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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
hardly do justice to the enormous literature on development, we hope that instructors will find that
we have provided an engaging overview of key questions and debates about development. Most
of the focus is on poor developing countries in Africa, because the BRICS and Middle East
chapters cover other parts of the developing world, Nevertheless, we highlight lessons from East
Asia development.
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
We discuss debates about the effects of foreign aid, provide data on aid disbursement by the
biggest donors, and highlight new trends of social entrepreneurship and private philanthropy. As
in the 6th edition, there is discussion of the HIPC Initiative to cancel debt of the poorest countries.
The last section before the conclusion discusses in some depth the positive and negative effects
that the rise of China is having on developing countries. Note that the chapter’s two boxes are
designed to get students to think critically about how the choice of different poverty and social
well-being measures can significantly affect our interpretations of development.
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)
•
Washington Consensus
•
capital mobility
•
odious debt
•
HIPC Initiative
•
debt service ratio
•
reprimarization
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.
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investment. Remind students of the discussion of FDI by TNCs in Chapter 6.
• 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
“moral” to impose sacrifice on the current generation in places like China and India in order to
reap potential benefits for the next generation. The chapters are “The Long Race to the
Bottom” and “Sisters in Time” in The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, 2nd ed. with
updates and epilogue (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2015), pp. 92-119.
Sample Essay Questions
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?
3. Some authors, like Oswaldo de Rivero, claim that development is a myth, something most
4. How does the choice of different poverty lines or the MPI affect our assessments of the state
of poverty in developing countries?
5. What are some of the characteristics of good governance? What criticisms might a
structuralist make of development strategies that focus heavily on promoting good
governance?
6. Why is it difficult for many countries to escape the “middle-income trap”?
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
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with those who argue that poverty is caused by structural factors and can best be reduced by
redistributing national income, strengthening the political rights of the poor, and
democratizing? Do you think that development strategies should be based on “growth first” or
“welfare first”? Why or why not?
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?
10. Describe trends between 1990 and 2016 in disbursements of net official development
assistance by the United States, Germany, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Which
countries significantly increased aid after 2004? Which countries are the most generous (based
on aid as a percentage of their GDP)?
11. What criticisms have been made of philanthrocapitalism? Do you find anything wrong with
wealthy private philanthropists funding programs in developing countries designed to end
extreme poverty, promote humanitarian causes, or educate girls?
12. Describe the trends in debt service ratios of the poorest countries between 2000 and 2015.
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?
14. The chapter ends with a bleak assessment by Oswaldo de Rivero about the unsustainability of
development due to population growth. Challenge de Rivero’s “neo–Malthusian” perspective.
What makes you more optimistic about development? Do you think that conservation, new
technologies, better government policies, or other factors might permit humanity to resolve
current physical-social imbalances? Why or why not?
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?
2) According to World Bank data, the proportion of the population in developing countries living
d) 16 to 4 percent
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3) Per capita income in the United States averages approximately
a) $3 a day.
4) Which country or organization spearheaded the creation of UNCTAD?
d) OPEC
5) The economic liberal model of development
d) the UN’s outlook on development.
d) import substitution industrialization
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
d) They generally promoted export-oriented industrialization.
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d) a and b
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
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?
Suggested Readings and Links
Ang, Yuen Yuen. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2016.
Center for Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/.
Pulitzer Center. The site has a large number of international news stories written by Pulitzer
Center grantees. Most of the stories focus on developing countries. At
http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting.
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UNCTAD. http://unctad.org/en/Pages/Home.aspx.
United Nations Development Programme. http://www.undp.org/.
Wengraf, Lee. Extracting Profit: Imperialism, Neoliberalism and the New Scramble for Africa.
Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2018.
World Bank. http://www.worldbank.org/.
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
current globalization policies on a developing country such as Jamaica”
(http://www.lifeanddebt.org/ website). A bit dated but highlights important development and
debt themes from the 1990s.
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
approaches became apparent. Feminists argue that every area of IPE—from the structure of state
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explains what feminism is, why it is important, and what some of its areas of consensus and
debate are. Although almost all feminists agree that women and men are equally valuable and that
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,
Believing that men and women are equally valuable is the defining feature of feminism. This
means that if a policy hurts women, feminists would argue that the policy is bad—even if it does
not hurt men or children. For example, overexploitation of forest resources is a problem that
concerns many governments and international aid donors like the World Bank. One effective
policy response is for international actors (like donors and environmental NGOs) to work with
governments and include local communities in Joint Forestry Management (JFM). Communities
promise to protect the forest from illegal timber harvesting, grazing, and even fire, in exchange
for non-timber resources. This is a sustainable, participatory policy, so it should be great for
everybody, right? The problem in some cases such as India, political anthropologist Andrea
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
force, such as health and education. The same question applies to international trade policy.
Bilateral trade agreements may benefit men in the most powerful industries more than women in
less important sectors of the economy. For example, NGOs like Action Aid and Women in
Development Europe (WIDE) have criticized Europe’s negotiations with India over a free-trade
agreement because it privileges large corporations and ignores potential effects on women and
other vulnerable groups.
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How will this kind of agreement affect small farmers and informal
sector traders who cannot compete with large producers? Does it matter that women tend more to
be in the former groups than the latter?
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A nonfeminist might argue that large industry and infrastructure investments are important
types of spending, and women will benefit from more jobs and an improved economy even if
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
roles assigned to men and women, our gendered resources and obligations, the things we buy,
where we work, how much money we make, and our room for maneuver in making decisions—
these gender-influenced things shape markets and affect the distribution of power and resources in
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
primarily with de jure inequality, meaning laws that proactively discriminate against women by
barring their right to vote, to enter contracts, to transfer property in a free market, to use
contraception, and to be protected by the state when their inalienable rights are threatened. Laws
that condone marital rape, domestic violence, or men’s control over women’s property are all
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,
they advocated that state universities in the United States be required to provide equal athletic
opportunities to both men and women (known as Title IX rules). They also lobbied for the
Violence against Women Act (VAWA), in response to the systematic difficulty in effectively
prosecuting perpetrators of rape, domestic violence, and other gender-based crimes. These laws
attempted to compensate for existing social discrimination rather than to curb inherently
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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)
reducing governments’ investment in health, education, and other social services so as to
disproportionately hurt women and children. Similarly, development programs and government
aid have been found to disproportionately benefit men, who have greater access to capital, land,
salaried jobs, pensions, and political networks. Many women spend a disproportionate amount of
time doing unremunerated labor such as housework, subsistence farming, fuel gathering, and
caring for children, the sick, and the elderly. In the case of the JFM example, liberal feminists
criticized the original projects because they were not designed to have gender equitable impacts
by taking these particular roles of women into account.
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
comes from China’s industrialization and openness to global markets and investment. Over time,
as the “bottom” of society rises, women may even gain more employee, union, and political
rights. Similarly, the World Bank asserted in its World Development Report 2012 that, overall,
globalization has helped promote more gender equality.
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Trade openness, economic integration,
and the spread of information technology have created more jobs for women and spread new ideas
about gender norms. Countries with export-intensive industries employing many women tend to
lose international competitiveness unless they reduce gender inequality.
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,
and global security, to name a few. By focusing research questions on states rather than cities,
transnational corporations rather than small producers or grassroots organizations, and countries
rather than households, IPE scholars make implicit assumptions that macrolevel institutions are
masculine. Certainly, women’s influence in society has been most visible in smaller arenas. In this
way, by privileging the state, IPE scholars have (perhaps unwittingly) rendered women’s
contributions all but invisible.
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
that because men and women have different gendered obligations, they also play very different
roles in global processes and are impacted differently by them. More importantly, ignoring certain
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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
economy. Many sectors of national economies have become “feminized,” including caregiving,
domestic services, education, and sexual services, where women face low wages, marginalization,
and exploitation. Other service industries including customer service, administration, and health
care are dominated by women. Some of these services can be provided to Europe or the United
States electronically from India at much lower labor costs.
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
international diplomacy and military security. Traditional theories of international relations and
national security have tended to ignore gender as an analytical tool. Many feminists argue that this
is not just because women are excluded from positions of power, but because women’s roles are
considered unimportant.
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
arena. International policy makers, she argues, “have tried to hide and deny their reliance on
women as feminized workers, as respectable and loyal wives, as ‘civilizing influences,’ as sex
objects, as obedient daughters, as unpaid farmers, as coffee-serving campaigners, as consumers
and tourists.”
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It would be easy to argue that the practical functions of everyday military
operations or lawmaking do not directly influence larger processes. But the practical dynamics of
political negotiations and military engagements can have a tremendous influence on their
outcomes.
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
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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
the capitalist system. Evelyn Reed, a prominent Marxist feminist, wrote in 1970: “It is the
capitalist system—the ultimate stage in the development of class society—which is the
fundamental source of the degradation and oppression of women.”
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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
international relations and those that determine race, class, and gender relations. Women and
people of color make up a disproportionate number of the poor in most countries, and
structuralists argue that this is a result of systematic exploitation within and between countries.
State-centric IPE scholars have overlooked how globalization has direct, specific effects on
women. Many newly industrializing countries have encouraged foreign direct investment in
export-oriented manufacturing facilities that employ a large number of women. Melissa Wright
has studied how these factories in northern Mexico (called maquiladoras) and southern China
treat women as “disposable,” paying them low wages in dead-end jobs. Even though these women
are important to global capital accumulation, a mythical discourse portrays them as “industrial
waste” that can be easily “discarded and replaced” when they have lost the “physical and mental
faculties” for which they were hired: dexterity, patience, and sacrifice.
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Wright and others point
out that many women resist this marginalization and disposability.
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
international political economy.”
SMUGGLING IN SENEGAL: GENDER AND TRADE POLICY
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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
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
Senegal’s international trade policy and women’s gendered role as traders, women have become
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
from a nearby village who knows their schedule works with the customs officers as a secret
and the bureau chief each take 10 percent of the seized sugar (2.5 kg) and report a seizure of 12.5
kg that will be picked up by government officials and resold at auction. Having paid $28 for her
sugar, Fatou will sell what she has left at her weekly village market for $17.50. Luckily, she has
just enough left over from the previous week to pay her supplier and try again.
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
If you were an IPE scholar hoping to study the impacts of Senegalese sugar policies, you
might choose to study only the negotiations between governments and industry officials, but your
conclusions would be much more limited than if you considered the role of gender and
investigated multiple levels of analysis.
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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.
1
Andrea Cornwall, “Whose Voices? Whose Choices? Reflections on Gender and Participatory Development,” World
Development, 31:8 (2006): 1325–1342.
2
WIDE, “The EU-India Free Trade Agreement negotiations: Gender and Social Justice Concerns. A Memo for
MEPs,” (2009). Available at www.boell-india.org/downloads/MEP_Memo_final__892009.pdf.
3
Gita Sen, “Gender, Markets and States: A Selective Review and Research Agenda,” World Development, 24:5
(1996), p. 823.
4
Pietra Rivoli, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and
Politics of World Trade, 2nd ed. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
5
See Chapter 6 of World Bank, World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development (Washington,
D.C.: World Bank, 2011), at http://go.worldbank.org/6R2KGVEXP0.
6
Valerie Hudson, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli, and Chad F. Emmett, Sex and World Peace (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2012).
7
Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2000), p. 17.
8
Evelyn Reed, “Women: Caste, Class or Oppressed Sex,” International Socialist Review, 31:3 (1970), p. 40.
9
Melissa Wright, Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 2.
10
Cynthia Enloe, Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,
2007), p. 18.