The Development Problematic: A Macro-Micro Perspective

This paper is a contribution to the ongoing development debate. It focuses on some of the general problems underlying the development problematic, and makes use of a broad range of historical experiences. Emphasis is laid upon the development problems emerging from competence differentials in the world economy, particularly on the threat of peripheralization of less developed countries. This threat has been ever present. Whether it can be overcome depends on background conditions like the underlying social structure, in particular the agrarian structure, and the innovation and transformation capacity of individual societies, respectively. Very much depends on the sophistication of concrete development policies, particularly on the skilful opening of individual societies to the world economy and a selective delinking from it at the same time. This development issue, as most, is highly political in character. The paper substantiates this assumption by looking once again at the European development experience. The latter can only be understood by reference to its underlying process of democratization resulting from a multiplicity of political conflicts among a broad range of social forces. This experience was quite different from the history of `world empires' outside Western Europe. Although present developing societies, whether capitalist or socialist, resemble to some degree the highly bureaucratized and centralized empires of the past, they cannot escape the development and modernization pressure characteristic of the present international system. Their success or failure depends mostly on their own efforts, but also on the circumspection of the presently developed countries.