Developmental Politics beyond the Neoliberal Era

Abstract

This closing chapter offers the opportunity to reflect more broadly, without losing sight of what has gone before, on some issues raised by the prospects for developmental politics in an era that continues to be dominated by neoliberalism. As a start, consider that over the past two decades, two concepts have dominated the social sciences and even influenced popular discourse: globalisation and neoliberalism. Each has been subject to critical scrutiny, as well as careless and self-serving application that can view whatever happens through a dual, almost tautological prism. Outcomes are interpreted as confirming the relentless dictates of either globalisation or neoliberalism, and awkward counterexamples, however successful, are dismissed as merely temporary resistance to their inevitable triumph . But by virtue of more careful scholarship, as case studies and evidence gather over time, the complexities and heterogeneities of our experiences suggest that simple nostrums around these two explanatory catch-alls are questionable. Indeed, for some, the very concepts of globalisation and neoliberalism are so riddled with inconsistent and even incoherent conceptual interpretations and empirical narratives that they need to be discarded.