Abstract
Development theory has moved from a single-minded focus on capital accumulation toward a more complex understanding of the institutions that make development possible. Yet, instead of expanding the range of institutional strategies explored, the most prominent policy consequence of this “institutional turn” has been the rise of “institutional monocropping”: the imposition of blueprints based on idealized versions of Anglo-American institutions, the applicability of which is presumed to transcend national circumstances and cultures. The disappointing results of monocropping suggest taking the institutional turn in a direction that would increase, rather than diminish, local input and experimentation. The examples of Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Kerala, India, reinforce Amartya Sen’s idea that “public discussion and exchange” should be at the heart of any trajectory of institutional change, and flag potential gains from strategies of “deliberative development” which rely on popular deliberation to set goals and allocate collective goods.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abers, Rebecca. 2000.Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots Politics in Brazil. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner.
Adelman, Irma and Cynthia Taft Morris. 1973.Economic Growth and Social Equity in Developing Countries. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Aghion, P. and P. Howitt. 1999.Endogenous Growth Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Arrighi, Giovanni, Beverly Silver, and Benjamin Brewer. 2003. “Industrial Convergence, Globalization, and the Persistence of the North-South Divide”.Studies in Comparative International Development 38, 1: 3–31.
Arrow, Kenneth. 1951.Social Choice and Individual Values. New York: Wiley.
—. 1963.Social Choice and Individual Values. Second Edition. New York: Wiley.
Arthur, W. Brian. 1990. “Positive Feedbacks in the Economy”Scientific American (February): 92–9.
—. 1994.Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy Ann Arbor, MD: University of Michigan Press.
Baierle, Sergio. 2001. “OP ao Thermidor” Porto Alegre, Brazil: unpublished ms.
Bardhan, Pranab. 1989. “The New Institutional Economics and Development Theory: A Brief Critical Assessment”,World Development 17, 9: 1389–95.
—. 2001. “Deliberative Conflicts, Collective Action, and Institutional Economics” pp. 269–300 in Meier and Stiglitz (eds.)Frontiers of Development Economics. New York. Oxford University Press.
Barro, Robert. 1997.The Determinants of Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Benhabib, Seyla. 1996.Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Biaocchi, Gianpaolo. 2003a.Radicals in Power: The Workers Party and Experiments in Urban Democracy in Brazil. London: Zed.
—. 2003b. “Participation, Activism and Politics: The Porto Alegre Experiment and Deliberative Democratic Theory”. pp. 47–84 in Fung and Wright’sDeepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance London: Verso.
—. 2001.From Militance to Citizenship: The Workers Party, Civil Society, and the Politics of Participatory Governance in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Ph.D. Dissertation, Dept. of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI.
Blomstrom, Magnus, Robert Lipsey and Mario Zejan. 1996. “Is Fixed Investment the Key to Economic Growth?”Quarterly Journal of Economics 111, 1: 269–76.
Bonham, James and William Rehg. 1997.Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Branson, William H and Carl Jayarajah. 1995. “Evaluating the Impacts of Policy Adjustment”International Monetary Fund Seminar Series 1 [January].
Chang, Ha-Joon. 2002.Kicking Away the Ladder: Policies and Institutions for Development in Historical Perspective. London: Athem Press.
Chang, Ha-Joon and Peter Evans. Forthcoming. “The Role of Institutions in Economic Change.” InReimagining Growth: Institutions, Development, and Society. Gary Dymski, ed. Northhampton, MA: Edgar Elgard.
Chenery, H., M. S. Ahluwalia, et al. 1979.Redistribution with Growth: Policies to Improve Income Distribution in Developing Countries in the Context of Economic Growth. Oxford University Press, London.
Clarke, George. 1996. “More evidence on Income Distribution and Growth”.Journal of Development Economics. 47(August): 403–27.
Cohen, Joshua and Joel Rogers. 1995.Associations and Democracy. London: Verso.
Deininger, K. and L. Squire. 1998. “New Ways of Looking At Old Issues: Inequality and Growth”.Journal of Development Economics 57, 2: 259–87.
DeLong, Bradford and Lawrence Summers. 1993. “Equipment Investment and Economic Growth”Quarterly Journal of Economics 106(2) [May]: 445–502.
Domar, Evsey. 1946. “Capital Expansion, Rate of Growth, and Employment”.Econometrica 14 (April): 137–47.
—. 1957.Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Easterly, William. 2001a.The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Easterly, William. 2001b. “The Failure of Development”.Financial Times July 4: 13.
Elster, Jon. 1998.Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Evans, P. forthcoming. “The Challenges of the ‘Institutional Turn’: Interdisciplinary Opportunities in Development Theory”, inThe Economic Sociology of Capitalist Institutions, eds. Victor Nee and Richard Swedberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
—. 2003. “Além da “Monocultura Institucional”: Instituiçōes. capacidade e o desenvolvimento deliberativo.”Sociologias. Porto Alegre 5 [9 Jan–Jun]: 20–63.
—. 1996. “State-Society Synergy: Government Action and Social Capital in Development.” Special section ofWorld Development 24, 6.
—. 1995.Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Fedozzi, Luciano. 1997.Orcamento Participativo: Reflexões sobre a experiência de Porto Alegre. Porto Alegre: Tomo Editorial.
Ferguson, James. 1994.The Anti-Politics Machine: Development. Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Fishlow, Albert. 1995. “Inequality, Poverty and Growth: Where Do We Stand?” Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics. Washington D.C.: World Bank.
Fligstein, Neil. 2001.The Architecture of Markets: An Economic Sociology of Capitalist Societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Franke, Richard W. and Barbara H. Chasin. 1989.Kerala: Radical Reform As Development in an Indian State. San Francisco, CA: The Institute For Food and Development Policy: Food First Development Report No. 6 (October).
Fung, Archon and Erik Wright. 2003.Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance. London: Verso.
Genro, Tarso and Ubiratan de Souza. 1997.Orcamento Participativo: A experiencia de Porto Alegre. Porto Alegre: Fundação Perseu Abramo.
Goldfrank, Benjamin. 2001. “Deepening Democracy Through Citizen Participation? A Comparative Analysis of Three Cities,” American Political Science Association, Annual Meeting, August 2001.
Grief, Avner. 1994. “Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: Historical and Theoretical Reflections on Collectivist and Individualist Societies.”Journal of Political Economy 102, 5: 912–50.
Gutman, Amy and Dennis Thompson. 1996.Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Habermas, Jurgen. 1962.The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. T. Burger and F. Lawrence, trans. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
—. 1989.The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
—. 1991.The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Heller, Patrick. 1999.The Labor of Development: Workers and the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala, India. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
—. 2000. “Degrees of Democracy: Some Comparative Lessons from India.”World Politics 52: 484–519.
—. 2001. “Moving the State: The Politics of Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South Africa and Porto Alegre.”Politics and Society 29, 1: 131–63.
Hirschman, Albert. 1981.Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hodgson, G. 1988.Economics and Institution. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
Hoff, Karla and Joseph Stiglitz. 2001. “Modern Economic Theory and Development” pp. 389–460 in Meier & Stiglitz’sFrontiers of Development Economics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Houtzager, Peter and Mick Moore. 2003.Changing Paths: The New Politics of Inclusion. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Isaac, Thomas TM and Richard Franke, 2000.Local Democracy and Development: People’s Campaign for Decentralized Planning in Kerala. New Delhi: Left Word Books.
Isaac, Thomas TM and Patrick Heller. 2003. “Decentralization, Democracy and Development: The People’s Campaign for Decentralized Planning in Kerala.” pp. 86–118 in Fung and Wright.Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory governance. London: Verso.
Jorgenson, D.W., F. Gallop and B. Fraumeni. 1987.Productivity and U.S. Economic Growth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kanbur, Ravi and Lyn Squire. 2001. “The Evolution of Thinking about Poverty: Exploring the Interactions,” Pp. 183–226 in Meier and Stiglitz.Frontiers of Development Economics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kapur, Devesh. 1997. The New Conditionalities of the International Financial Institutions.International Monetary and Financial Issues for the 1990s. vol. VIII. New York and Geneva: United Nations publication, sales no. E.97.II.D.5.
Kapur, Devesh. 2000. “Risk and Reward: Agency, Contracts, and the Expansion of IMF Conditionality.” Paper prepared for workshop on the Political Economy of International Monetary and Financial Institutions.
Kapur, Devesh and Richard Webb. 2000. “Governance-related Conditionalities of the International Financial Institutions.” G-24 Discussion Paper no. 6. United Nations: New York and Geneva [http://www.g24.org/g24-dp6.pdf]
Kilick, Tony. 1995.IMF Programmes in Developing Countries. London: Routledge. Kim, J and L
Lau. 1994. “The Sources of Economic Growth of the East Asian Newly Industrialized Countries,”Journal of Japanese and International Economies 8: 235–71.
Kim, J. and L Lau. 1995. “The Role of Human Capital in the Economic Growth of the East Asian Newly Industrialized Countries.”Asian Pacific Economic Review 1: 259–92.
King, Robert G., and Ross Levine. 1994. “Capital Fundamentalism, Economic Development, and Economic Growth.” Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy 40: 259–92.
Kremer, Michael. 1993. “The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development,”Quarterly Journal of Economics 108 (August): 551–75.
Landa, D. and E.B. Kapstein. 2001. “Review Article: Inequality, Growth and Democracy.”World Politics 53, 1: 264–96.
Li, Hongyi and H. Zou. 1998. “Income Inequality is Not Harmful for Growth: Theory and Evidence.”Review of Development Economics 2, 3: 318–24.
Lijphart, Arend. 1999.Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in 36 Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lin, Kenneth S. and Hsiu-Yun Lee. 1999. “Can Capital Fundamentalism be Revived? A General Equilibrium Approach to Growth Accounting.” pp. 77–105. In G. Ranis et al. (eds.),The Political Economy of Comparative Development into the 21 st Century. Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgard.
Lipton, M. 1993. “Land Reform as Commenced Business: The Evidence Against Stopping.”World Development, 21, 4: 641–57.
Lucas, Robert E. 1988. “On the Mechanics of Economic Development.”Journal of Monetary Economics 22 (July): 3–42.
MacAdam, D., S. Tarrow and C. Tilly. 2001.Dynamics of Contention. New York/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mansbridge, Jane. 1990. “Democracy and Common Interests.”Social Alternatives, 8, 4: 20–5.
Meier, Gerald, and James Rauch. 2000.Leading Issues in Economic Development [Seventh Edition] New York: Oxford University Press.
Meier, Gerald and Joseph Stiglitz. 2001.Frontiers of Development Economics. New York: Oxford University Press [World Bank].
Meyer, John. 2003. “Globalization, National Culture, and the Future of the World Polity” Wei Lun Lecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (28 November)
—. 2000. “Globalization: Sources, and Effects on National States and Societies.”International Sociology, 15, 2: 235–50.
Narayan, Deepa. 1994.The Contribution of People’s Participation: Evidence from 121 Rural Water Supply Projects. Environmentally Sustainable Development Occasion Paper Series, no. 1. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.
—. 2000.Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us? New York: Oxford University Press.
Noorbakhsh, Farhad and Alberto Paloni. 2001. Human Capital and FDI Inflows to Developing Countries: New Empirical Evidence.World Development. 29, 9: 1593–1610.
North, Douglass C. 1981.Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: Norton.
— 1986. “The New Institutional Economics.”Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 142: 230–37.
—. 1990.Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
O’Donnell, Guillermo, “On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist Countries.”World Development, 21, 8 (1993): 1355–69.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990.Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York: Cambridge University Press.
—. 1995. “Incentives, rules of the game, and development,” inProceedings of the World Bank Annual Conference on Development Economics 1995. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.
—. 2001. “Decentralization and Development: The New Panacea.” InChallenges to Democracy: Ideas, Involvement and Institutions (The PSA Yearbook 2000), ed. Keith Dowding, James Hughes, and Helen Margetts, 237–56. New York: Palgrave Publishers.
Persson T and Tabellini G. 1994. “Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?”American Economic Review, 84: 600–21.
Pierson, Paul. 1997. “Path Dependence, Increasing Returns and the Study of Politics” Working Paper #7, Program for the Study of Germany and Europe, Harvard University. Cambridge, MA.
Pistor, Katharina. 2000. “The Standardization of Law and Its Effect on Developing Economies” [G-24 Working Paper] New York: United Nations/UNCTAD.
Pozzobono, Regina. 1998.Porto Alegre: Os Desafios da Gestão Democratica. São Paulo: Instituto Polis.
Przeworski, Adam et al. 2000.Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-being in the World 1950–1990. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Przeworski, Adam and Fernando Limongi, 1993. “Political regimes and economic growth”Journal of Economic Perspectives, 7, 3: 51–70
Putnam, Robert. 1993.Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
—. 2000.Bowling Alone: The collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Qian, Yingyi. 2003. “How Reform Worked in China” pp. 297–333 inIn Search of Prosperity: Analytic Narratives on Economic Growth. Dani Rodrik, ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ravallion, Martin. 1998. “Does Aggregation Hide the Harmful Effects of Inequality on Growth?”Economic Letters 61: 73–7.
Rodrik, Dani (ed.). 2003.In Search of Prosperity: Analytic Narratives on Economic Growth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rodrik, Dani. (ed.). 1999a. “Institutions for High-Quality Growth: What Are They and How to Acquire Them” Paper presented at IMF conference on Second-Generation Reforms, Washington D.C. 8–9 November.
— (ed.). 1999b.The New Global Economy and Developing Countries: Making Openness Work. [Policy Essay no 24] Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Rodrik, Dani and Ethan Kaplan. “Did the Malaysian Capital Controls Work?” Forthcoming in NBER conference volume.
Romer, Paul M. 1986. “Increasing Returns and Long Run Growth.”Journal of Political Economy 94 (October): 1002–37.
— 1990. “Endogenous Technological Change”Journal of Political Economy 98: S71–102.
— 1993a. “Two Strategies of Economic Development: Using Ideas and Producing Ideas” pp. 63–91 in Proceedings of the 1992 World Bank Annual Conference on Economic Development. World Bank: Washington, D.C.
— 1993b. “Idea Gaps and Object Gaps in Economic Development,”Journal of Monetary Economics 32: 543–73.
— 1994. “The Origins of Endogenous Growth”J. of Econ. Perspects. 8, 1: 3–22.
Rueschmeyer, Dietrich, Evelyne Stephens and John Stephens. 1992.Capitalist Development and Democracy. Cambridge, England: Polity Press and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 1998. “Participatory Budgeting in Porto Allegre: Toward a Redistributive Democracy,”Politics and Society 26, 4: 461–510.
Schneider, Aaron and Benjamin Goldfrank, 2001. “Budgets and Ballots in Brazil: Participatory Budgeting from the City to the State” paper presented at the American Political Science Association, Annual Meeting, August 2001.
Sen, Amartya. 1995. “Rationality and Social Choice,”American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 85: 1–24. [Presidential Address]
—. 1999a.Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
—. 1999b. “The Possibility of Social Choice,”American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 89: 349–78. [Nobel Lecture]
—. 2001. “What Development is About” in Meir and Stiglitz, 2001.Frontiers of Development Economics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Solow, Robert. 1957. “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function”Review of Economics and Statistics 39: 312–20.
Srinivasan, T.N. 1994. “Human Development: A New Paradigm or Reinvention of the Wheel”American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 84: 238–43.
Stewart, Frances. 2000. “Income Distribution and Development” Paper prepared for the UNCTAD X High Level Round Table on Trade and Development: Directions for the Twenty-first Century. Bangkok, Thailand.
Stewart, Frances and Severine Deneulin. 2003. “Amartya Sen’s Contribution to Development Thinking”Studies in Comparative International Development 37, 2: 61–70.
Streeten, Paul. 1994. “Human Development: Means and Ends”American Economic Review 84, 2: 232–7.
Streeten, P.P., S.J. Burki, et al. 1981.First Things First, Meeting Basic Human Needs in Developing Countries. New York: Oxford University Press.
Taylor, Charles. 1995. “Irreducible Social Goods.” pp. 127–45 InPhilosophical Arguments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tendler, Judith. 1997.Good Government in the Tropics. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Tharamangalam, Joseph. 1998. “The Perils of Development without Economic Growth: The Development Debacle of Kerala, India.”Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 30, 1.
Uphoff, Norman, John M. Cohen and Arthur Goldsmith. 1979. Feasibility and Application of Rural Development Participation: A State of the Art Paper. Ithaca: Rural Development Committee, Center for International Studies, Cornell University.
Uphoff, Norman. 1986. “Local Institutional Development: An Analytical Sourcebook with Cases.” West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press for Cornell University.
Van Arkadie, Brian and Raymond Mallon. 2003.Vietnam: A Transition Tiger? Canberra: Asia Pacific Press.
Wade, Robert. 2001a. “Showdown at the World Bank”New Left Review. January–February 7: 124–37.
— 2001b. “Making the World Development Report 2000: Attacking Poverty”World Development. 29, 8: 1435–41.
Woolcock, Michael. 1997. “Social Capital and Economic Development: Towards a Theoretical Synthesis and Policy Framework”Theory and Society 27, 1: 1–57.
World Bank (IBRD). 2000–2001World Development Report: Attacking Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press.
Young, Alwyn. 1995. “The Tyranny of Numbers: Confronting the Statistical Realities of the East Asian Growth Experience.”Quarterly Journal of Economics (August): 641–80.
Yusuf, Shahid and Joseph Stiglitz, 2001. “Development Issues: Settled and Open.” pp. 227–68. In Meier and Stiglitz,Frontiers of Development Economics. New York: Oxford University Press
Additional information
Peter Evans teaches in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Marjorie Meyer Eliaser Chair of International Studies. He is currently exploring the role of labor as a transnational social movement. His earlier research has focused on the role of the state in industrial development, an interest reflected in his bookEmbedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton University Press 1995). He is also interested in urban environmental issues, as indicated by the recent edited volume,Livable Cities: Urban Struggles for Livelihood and Sustainability (University of California Press 2002).
I would like to thank the editors, Atul Kohli, Dani Rodrik, and Anne Wetlerberg for their valuable comments and suggestions. Remaining analytical and empirical errors are, of course, my own. For an earlier effort (in Portugese) to make this argument, see Evans 2003.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Evans, P. Development as institutional change: The pitfalls of monocropping and the potentials of deliberation. St Comp Int Dev 38, 30–52 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02686327
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02686327