Dr E A Brett (Room V511)

MSc Development Management and MSc Anthropology and Development students only.

DV406 Development Management.

‘These days it takes … stupid policies or bad or unstable institutions to prevent economic development. Unfortunately, growth retarding-regimes, policies and institutions are the rule rather than the exception, and the majority of the world’s population lives in poverty’ (Mancur Olson) This course will look at competing explanations for this problem, and at the way in which better understandings of the role of formal and informal institutions and organisations and the relationships between them can help change agents to develop sustainable strategies to overcome these problems. Why are some countries rich and others poor? Why are some governed well and others badly? This course employs a political economy approach to examine the institutional roots of development and non-development. We explore deep theories about the emergence of the state, and the different social, political and economic actors that work within it and vie to control it. And we examine how these forces interact to drive processes of change. Stepping back from theory, we then delve deeply into analytical narratives of real processes of development and decomposition, viewed through an institutional lens. We close with an historically grounded analysis of the process of institutional transformation that turns predatory into developmental states. It will do this by reviewing the literature that explain problems of state failure and reconstruction, and economic and social societies in poor countries by applying the analytical models developed in DV406 to societies undergoing fundamental institutional transformations.

This is a core course for the MSc in Development Management and the MSc in Anthropology and Development, and open to only those students. The course will be taught through lectures, seminars and workshops. There will be 9 lectures accompanied by 9 weekly seminars. Week 10 will be devoted to the Development Management Consultancy Project. The seminars will take the form of a discussion of the topic covered in the previous lecture and will be conducted on the basis either of a student presentation or a class exercise. Lectures will focus on the theoretical debates driving current policy practice in the development community, while seminars will relate these to practical problems of implementation, drawing on case studies, class exercises, and the personal experience of participants.

10 weekly lectures and 10 weekly seminars held in the LT. Four hour revision session in ST.

A 2000-word essay will be assigned at the beginning of the third week of the course.  Students will have one week to write their essays, which will be based solely on the course materials covered to that point (i.e., no outside research necessary).

There is no general textbook for the course, which will bring together insights from many disciplines dealing with the management of institutional and policy reform. The weekly reading lists identify a small number of key texts which everyone should read, and provide a range of further readings for those particularly interested in the topic. The following general texts deal with key issues addressed on this course.

Collier, P. 2007, The bottom billion, Oxford University Press; Castells, M. 2000 End of millennium, vol III, 2nd ed.Blackwell; *Easterley, W. 2006 The white man’s burden, Oxford University Press; Chang, H. 2003, Rethinking development economics, Anthem Press; Gardner, K. and Lewis, D. (1996). Anthropology, development, and the post-modern challenge, Pluto Press. Khan, M. & J. Sundaram, 2000 Rents, rent-seeking and economic development, Cambridge University Press; Kohli, A. 2004 State-directed development, Cambridge Univeristy Presss; Linz, J. & A. Stepan, Problems of democratic transition and consolidation, Johns Hopkins; Olson, M. 1982 & S. Kahkonen, The rise and decline of nations, Yale University Press; A Not-so-Dismal Science: A Broader View of Economies and Societies, Oxford, University Press, 2000; *Putnam, R. D. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press; Rodrik, D. (Ed.). 2003. In Search of Prosperity: Analytical Narratives on Economic Growth: Princeton University Press; Schuurman, F. 1993 Beyond the impasse, Zed Books.

Two-hour examination (80%) and a 2000 word essay (20%).