Crossing Boundaries to Understand Change: Varieties of Developmental State Structures in Chile and Peru

Abstract

The writings of development economist Albert Hirschman provide both a prime source of concepts and an eclectic analytic framework for studying economic development. What types of development strategies exist and how do they come about? What is the role of “reform-mongers” and how significant for public choice are their perceptions of the social realm they inhabit? How do private interests and public action interact? What is the importance of individual passions and ideas for policy and statemaking? In what ways do organizations shape the behavior of their members, and how might the latter respond to the decline of the former? The late Albert Hirschman tackled these questions as few development economists do by crossing disciplinary boundaries and by constantly challenging existing theoretical paradigms, including his own. An enemy of the self-imposed straightjacket of disciplines for the study of social change, Hirschman trespassed from economics to politics and beyond. Skeptical of universal laws, our hero queried even the theories he himself had made. A proficient practitioner of observation-based social analysis, Hirschman contributed to theory and built on theory. However, in my opinion, the analytic framework and, more generally, the philosophy of knowledge that he decisively contributed to shaping were more important than the dozens of influential concepts, typologies, and theories that he produced.

I am thankful to Dietrich Rueschemeyer for comments on an early version and to Rosemary Thorp for conversations on the topic held over the years.