Economic Development: The History of an Idea (review)

BOOK REVIEWS James Lloyd Glucksman, editor Arndt, H.W., Economic Development ........................ 230 Ashby, T., The Bear in the Back Yard ...................... 232 Cheng, N., Life and Death in Shanghai ...................... 233 Dudden and Dynes, eds., The Fulbright Experience ............ 234 Englebert, P., La Révolution Burkinabé ...................... 235 Gress, D. , Peace and Survival ............................... 237 Hendrickson, D.C., The Future of American Strategy .......... 238 Hinrichsen, D. ed., World Resources 1987 .................... 240 Hyland, W.G., Mortal RivaL· ............................... 242 Joffe, E. , The Chinese Army after Mao ...................... 243 Parker, R.B. , North Africa ................................. 245 Porath, Y. , In Search of Arab Unity ......................... 246 Spector, L.S., Going Nuclear ............................... 247 Thomas, C, In Search of Security ........................... 249 Varas, ?., ed., Soviet-Latin American Relations .............. 250 229 230 SAIS REVIEW Economie Development: The History of an Idea. By H.W. Arndt. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987. 217 pp. $20.95/cloth. Reviewed by Scott Andrew Goidel, M.A. candidate, SAIS. With all the sources of division throughout the world— ideological conflicts, religious antagonisms, economic rivalries— it is difficult to find any nearly unanimous principles among nations. Perhaps the national objective of economic development, with its origins in the Western bias toward "material progress," comes the closest to achieving such unanimity. In his survey of the evolution of the ends of development theory, Economic Development: The History ofan Idea, H.W. Arndt traces its rise to prominence as a policy objective and explains how its meaning has shifted in its brief history since World War II. Since an idea, or rather its changing definition, must inevitably be a product of its time, Arndt does an effective job of weaving these evolving theories into their larger historical contexts. Arndt begins his story with "prehistory" — the time between the emergence of Western civilization and World War II. Finding the true starting point becomes something of a philosophical inquiry into what invention or new idea made Western civilization unique. A more appropriate point of departure for development historians, however, lies in the gradual shift from feudalism to the modern nation-state and to the revolutionary government agenda of encouraging production and guaranteeing its citizens' welfare. In the second half of the nineteenth century, as the rapid industrialization of the United States and a few European nations threatened to leave the others behind, a pervasive fear among countries, most notablyJapan, that such a disparity of power threatened their survival forced them into a policy of "reactive nationalism" as governments mobilized resources to catch up. It is in such unprecedented governmental activism , as well as in the writings of Sun Yat-sen and in the sheer ambitions of Lenin's long-range economic planning, that the author finds the seeds of postwar development thinking. During this period no attention was paid by the classical economists to the underdevelopment of Third World nations, and, if the indigenous populations' standards of living benefited from colonialism, such gains came about exclusively indirectly from the mother countries' exploitive interests. The end of World War II elevated concerns about the underdevelopment of the Third World to a prominent position in the international policy of developed countries. Fear of the spread of communism, the realization of the mobilization potential of a government-industry joint venture, and the establishment of various international economic organizations combined with humanitarian concerns to promote this crusade. At this time, economic growth, as measured by the somewhat illusory statistics of real gross national product per capita, became synonymous with economic development. Virtually all die prominent thinkers of the development problem attached caveats that increasing productive output faster than population would not be sufficient to turn around a backward economy without larger changes in the economic and social structures . These insights unfortunately failed to influence objectives, and debate BOOK REVIEWS 231 focused instead on means— capital formation, human capital, import substitution , and export policy. It was not until the late 1960s, with its social unrest and U.S. concern about domestic poverty, that development acquired the supplemental definition of "growth plus change." Attention now focused on the equity issues of the development problem. Robert S. McNamara, then president of the World Bank, and development theorists took this concern of inequality within developing nations one step further to a discussion...