lecture

what is development?

  • development, at its most generic, can be thought of as ‘good change’ (Chambers, 1997)

  • development as a strategy

  • development as an outcome

  • development can be defined as bringing about social change that allows people to achieve their human potential

delivering development

  • can include:

    • building schools » training teachers, providing textbooks n laptops

    • building roads » to connect ppl w markets n ports

    • building clinics, hospitals, training doctors, providing medicines

    • supporting civil service reforms n new tech

    • delivering sanitation n fresh water

    • providing clean energy n tech

technical or political?

  • formerly largely thought of as technical

  • dependent on availability of specialists etc

  • increasingly more political

    • eg gender politics, patronage, etc

what is politics?

  • traditional ‘arena’ view

    • politics as » activity of governing, govt and policy-making

    • public sphere n govt as focus

    • analysis of who is ‘in power’ and the political systems that decision-making happens in

  • broader ‘process’ view

    • politics as a process that happens everywhere

      • workplaces

      • families

      • organisations

    • anywhere where people interact and there is social activity

    • “politics is a universal and pervasive aspect of human behaviour and may be found wherever two or more human beings are engaged in some collective activity” (Leftwich, 2004)

    • analysis of the processes that determine ‘who gets what, when, how’ (Lasswell, 1936)

  • the art of getting things done

    • compromise

    • order

    • justice

what is the politics of development?

140727_book_item_140727.pdf

  • “…the process of contesting alternative desired futures”

  • “…both the obstacle and the way to address [development]”

analysing the politics of development

  • institutions are contested by more/less rational actors with competing interests, holding a range of ideas about what is right n fair

    • institutions: formal n informal rules, scripts, logics » from big structures to tiny habits

    • interests: material or symbolic rewards to form a course of action

    • ideas: ideas, beliefs, attitudes, customs, ideologies, that determine what is legitimate

politics of development & SDGs

  • shift from Millenium Development Goals (2000) to Sustainable Development Goals (2015)

structure of the global goals

  • the goals have a nested structure

    • goal = social and political priority

    • target = time-bound outcome

    • indicator = data to monitor progress