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The search for policy autonomy in the south - universalism, social learning and the role of regionalism
Girvan, Norman
Girvan, Norman
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"This paper argues the need for the South to secure greater autonomy in development policy making and discusses some factors involved in achieving this. It utilizes a political economy analysis in the historical context of decolonization and contemporary globalization. Part I suggests that, in the 1950s, the new subdiscipline of development economics made a significant contribution to policy autonomy in the global South by legitimizing the principle that their economies should be understood within their own terms and by providing justification for policies that built up its industrial capabilities. Southern institutions and the United Nations (UN) system also supported a great wave indigenous empirical research and theorizing in the developing world. However, as argued in Part II, the marginalization of development economics and its policies in the 1980s resulted in a marked discontinuity in the accumulation of policy experience in much of the South and the squandering of much of intellectual capital developed in the earlier period. Neoclassical economics and neoliberal policies ruled out the notion of an economics sui generis for the developing countries. Nonetheless, developments since the late 1990s have shown that the triumphalism was premature, as global social movements, financial crises, contradictions in the World Trade Organization (WTO) process and the shifting political climate in the South have served to undermine the Washington consensus and have re-opened space for academic enquiry and policy experimentation in the South and North."(pg iii)
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2005-10
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With permission of the license/copyright holder