Resource mobilization is the main challenge to achieve sustained growth in poor economiesdiscussAt times, it seems as though no other discipline has been subject to so much interpretation in both thought and practice as has what we commonly call 'development'. In large part, this is because the field is founded on concepts which are highly subject to the impregnation by whoever is using them of their own cultural and moral preferences. Further, the relative success that a particular individual or group might have at winning the support of the agents of development--thereby legitimating that particular development doctrine--has to do with their institutionalized position of authority in ...view middle of the document...
Underpinning this were two beliefs that would remain central to development economics in the decades to come: a) that economies do not exist autonomously and that "economic relations between two groups of countries could be shaped in a way as to yield gains for both" and b) that what was crucial was to ensure the well-being of the overarching economic superstructure rather than "aiding individuals or building houses" . Thus, early development economics can be seen as ideologically-driven towards the successful functioning of the global marketplace. Set against the Cold War hysteria of the decades following WWII, it the ideological basis for the Marshall Plan would have given it the legitimacy it needed from policymakers and academics. The consequent successes of the Plan in facilitating trade, commerce, and relations between Europe and the United States served to entrench its values in development policy and thought.At the same time that economic development was gaining influence amongst Western elites, and certainly by the time that the oil shocks of the 1970s raised the spectre of a fallible global market, dissidents were beginning to question, among other things, the role of the global market in exacerbating the plight of poor nations vis-à-vis the industrialized West. Raul Prebisch, for instance, who is generally thought to be the first to use the terms 'core' and 'periphery' when talking about development, claimed that the countries of the world can be divided into two categories based on different modes of production. The interaction between these modes of production is characterized by an unequal relationship in which the modes of production of the periphery nations are exploited by core nations to their own ends. This was a fairly radical position to take at the time, and though it did enjoy a brief period of popularity it never achieved the same status as market-based development. However, in a basic sense it shared a common understanding of the world with the mainstream economic development community. Meier makes note of this:Both represent audacious attempts to interpret the evolution of whole societies, primarily from an economic perspective...and both recognize that economic change has social, political and cultural consequences.It is precisely this claim to be able to understand societies in economic terms that made economic development palpable to policymakers and other agents of the development process. For if the agents of development operate within the constraints of a global market economy, and they do, they will be pressed to show the results of their policy to stakeholders soon after implementation and in terms that can be translated into the language of economic inputs versus gains. Of course, the real world is much more complex than can be indicated in solely economic terms and as inconsistencies began to pile up between economic development models and real world outcomes, so grew doubts that this kind...
