The Decimation and Displacement of Development Economics

Contemporary mainstream development economics is an overdetermined product of three historical processes: the late neoclassical turn within mainstream economic theory; transformations within the institutional‐discursive matrix of development, from growth‐centred policies to poverty alleviation‐ and good governance‐oriented policies; and a broader transition from post‐war Keynesian developmentalism (with its variants in the second and third worlds) to existing varieties of neoliberal governmentality. This article assesses the trajectory of development economics through two historical shifts in the theoretical field. The first is from the ‘old’ school of structural transformation with a focus on sectoral balance and shifts to the ‘new’ school of structural adjustment programmes with a focus on micro‐level incentive problems. The second shift is from the aggressively neoclassical orientation of the ‘new’ school to that of the contemporary constellation, where what is considered to be ‘good’ development economics has been gradually reduced to micro‐level impact appraisals of developmental projects (the so‐called ‘randomization approach’), while the broader macro‐economic and historical questions are being increasingly handled through methodologically‐individualist, late neoclassical models of institutions and growth (the so‐called ‘new institutionalism’). The article concludes by insisting on the need for a new paradigm of development economics that would not only unearth the conflictual and antagonistic nature of development, but also render it an indispensable dimension of the study of development in a pluralist manner.