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GLST 395: Political Economy of Development: People, Processes, and Policies Report a Broken Link

This course provides a broad overview of the historical evolution of the dynamic and contested concept of development, its theoretical study, and its application in the domestic and international policy spheres.

Unit 1: Introduction to Development Studies: Theory and Practice

READING 1: Desai, Radhika. (2009). Theories of development. In Haslam, Paul A. Haslam, Jessica Schafer and Pierre Beaudet (Eds.) Introduction to international development: Approaches, actors, and issues (pp. 45–65). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
READING 2: Jerven, Morten. (2014). Measuring African development: Past and present. Introduction to the Special Issue. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 35(1), 1-8.
READING 3: White, Linda A., & Martha Friendly. (2012). Public funding, private delivery: States, markets, and early childhood education and care in liberal welfare states—Australia, the UK, Quebec, and New Zealand. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 14(4), pp. 292–310.
         VIDEO FILE: Rosling, Hans. (2009). Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset.

Unit 2: A Long View of Economic History: Putting ‘Development’ (and the lack of it) Into Perspective

READING 1: Pomeranze, Kenneth, & Stephen Topik. (2015). Introduction and Chapter 1 (The making of market conventions). In The world that trade created: Society, culture, and the world economy 1400 to the present (pp. ix-xiii, 3–48). New York: Routledge.
READING 2: Pomeranze, Kenneth. (2012). Contemporary development and economic history: How do we know what matters? Economic History of Developing Regions, 27(S1), pp. S136–S148.
READING 3: Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, & James A. Robinson. (2000). The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation. National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, MA) Working Paper No. 7771, pp. 1–63.

Unit 3: Development as a Domestic Policy Objective: The Role of the State

READING 1: Reinert, Erik S. (2012). Neo-classical economics: A trail of economic destruction since the 1970s. Real-World Economics Review, 60 (Open source).
READING 2: Mkandawire, Thandika. (2010). How the new poverty agenda neglected social and employment policies in Africa. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 11(1), pp. 37–55.
READING 3: Chang, Ha-Joon. (2002). Breaking the mould: An institutionalist political economy alternative to the neo-liberal theory of the market and the state. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 26(5), pp. 539–559.
READING 4: Chatterjee, Elizabeth. (2022). New developmentalism and its discontents: State activism in Gujarat and Modi’s India. Development and Change, 53(1), 58–83.
          VIDEO FILE: James, Emily. (2002). The Luckiest Nut.

Unit 4: International Development Aid: Then and Now

READING 1: Doucouliagos, Hristos, & Martin Paldam. (2009). The aid effectiveness literature: The sad results of 40 years of research.  Journal of Economic Surveys, 23(3), pp. 433–461.
READING 2: Alesina, Alberto, & David Dollar. (2000). Who gives foreign aid to whom and why? Journal of Economic Growth, 5(1), pp. 33–63.
READING 3: Six, Clemens. (2009) The rise of postcolonial states as donors: A challenge to the development paradigm? Third World Quarterly, 30(6), pp. 1103–1121.
READING 4: International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
 READING FILE 5: Berger, Hannes. (2021). Dynamics of global asymmetries. Third World Quarterly, 42(11), 2767–2784.
          VIDEO FILE 1: Rosling, Hans (March 23, 2015). Hans Rosling: How to beat Ebola. BBC Magazine.

Unit 5: Development and Economic Globalization: The Enforcers and the Resisters

READING 1: Brodie, Janine, & Alexa DeGagné. (2014). Neo-liberalism. In Janine Brodie, Sandra Rein, and Malinda Smith (Eds.), Critical concepts: An introduction to politics (pp. 60–76). Toronto: Pearson
READING 2: Stiglitz, Joseph. (2002). Globalization and the logic of international collective action: Re-examining the Bretton Woods Institutions. In Deepak Nayyar (Ed.), Governing globalization: Issues and Institutions (pp. 238–253). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
READING 3: Cornwall, Andrea, & Althea-Maria Rivas. (2015). From ‘gender equality and ‘women’s empowerment’ to global justice: Reclaiming a transformative agenda for gender and development. Third World Quarterly, 36(2), pp. 396–415
READING 4: Slowey, Gabrielle, & Lorna Stefanick. (2015). Development at what cost? First Nations, ecological integrity, and democracy. In Meenal Shrivastava and Lorna Stefanick (Eds.), Alberta oil and the decline of democracy in Canada (pp. 195–224). Edmonton: Athabasca University Press.
READING 5: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2021). Forward. The state of the world’s indigenous peoples (vol. 5): Rights to lands, territories and resources (pp. vii–ix). Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
          AUDIO FILE: BBC. (2022). Real story: The global debt crisis.

Unit 6: Challenges of “Development” in the Twenty-First Century: Inequality, iCapitalism, and Climate Change

READING 1: Mitchell, K., & M. Sparke. (2016). The new Washington consensus: Millennial philanthropy and the making of global market subjects. Antipode, 48(3), pp. 724–726.
READING 2: Domosh, Mona. (2015). Practising development at home: Race, gender, and the ‘development’ of the American South. Antipode, 47(4), pp. 915–941.
READING 3: Jacobs, M. (2023). Reflections on COP26: International diplomacy, global justice and the greening of capitalism. The Political Quarterly, 93(2), 270–277.
          VIDEO FILE 1: Patel, Raj. (2015) Peter Raj: The secret ingredient for ending world hunger.
          VIDEO FILE 2: La Via Campesina. (2012). La Via Campesina in movement: Food sovereignty now.