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3 |
The Changing State and Meaning of the "Developing World" |
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The changes in the world since the Harvard Report was written
in the early 1980s have not only broken down the old division
of First, Second and Third Worlds; they have shaken the division
of the world into "developed" and "developing" countries that
has been a fundamental basis of international relations since
World War II. The U.S. ambassador gave a vivid expression of
changed views when he said bluntly at the 1990 special session
of the UN General Assembly on International Economic Co-operation
that his country did not wish to continue the development debates
of the last three decades and had only agreed to participate
in the Special Session with "a great deal of reserve and
with very considerable scepticism" [UN Development Forum
May-June 1990, pp.1,17]. The U.S. is not alone among the
rich countries in this fatigue with the classic conceptions
of mutual responsibility between developed and developing countries.
Since the 1970s, enthusiasm for development assistance has declined
and a readiness appeared to criticise mismanagement and abuses
of human rights in the developing countries, replacing earlier
indulgence for them. |
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The developing countries have been less disposed to abandon
the familiar basic conceptions but have had to face a breakdown
of the simple classification of developed and developing countries.
This breakdown began in earnest with the explosion of oil prices
in 1973, and the emergence of very rich but still underdeveloped
countries. The East Asian tiger cubs began rapid growth in that
decade and brought new faith in open, export-oriented economies,
a faith that the popularity of Thatcherite-Reaganite doctrines
in the Western world amplified during the 1980s. By the late
1980s, the authors of the IBRD's World Development Reports and
economists like Paul Krugman had to have four or five subclassifications
of what had previously been simply "developing" countries. They
had to recognise quite different records of economic growth
and different relationships to the world economy. |
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The differential records of success, stagnation and
decline across world regions have become more pronounced, with
East and South East Asia rising impressively, South Asia growing
only modestly, Africa in alarming decline, and Latin America
struggling through debt burdens to a recent upward turn. On
the other hand, a growing uniformity of economic ideology
has become evident, with socialism in discredit and its
past consequences reversed in privatisations as doctrines of
open market economies became triumphant. As usual, there have
been disputes over the importance of public policy in determining
the differences in economic progress, with the weight of criticism
falling on governments that restricted the play of market forces.
But the much studied record of East Asian successes shows no
simple correlation between laissez-faire governmental policies
and these successes. The result has been groping for explanations
in such things as a "Confucian mentality", the "East Asian developmental
state" of some political economists, or even in the moralising
of Prime Minister Mahatir or Lee Kuan Yew. |
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The impact of this newly complicated picture of development
and the "developing world" has been felt within this Commission.
We have heard reflections on the differential progress of Muslim
countries and those in or touched by the Confucian traditions.
It seems fair to assume that such reflections are not idiosyncratic
to our membership, and express ideas that are now widely present
in Muslim countries. But until very recently Pakistan's record
of economic growth has been better than that of non-Muslim South
Asia neighbours, and some of the South East Asian stars are
predominately Muslim countries. But the disquieting thought
that many Muslim countries are making slow progress out of poverty
not simply because they share the common difficulties of underdevelopment
but because their heritage is not as helpful as some other heritages
-and these definitely not Western -may now be growing among
Muslims. It may point to an enlivened interest in analysis
of the distinctive development problems of Muslim societies.
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In a broader view, such considerations are an example of the
interplay of culture and development which has won increasing
attention among those who try to puzzle out what causes some
nations to prosper while others flounder. There once was a time
when there was strong faith in general theories of economic
development applicable to all poor nations. By the 1980s, the
existence of a distinctive economics for the developing countries
was disputed and its "statist" heritage denounced by the head
of USAID and by World Bank economists. When the Harvard Report
was written, its authors were conscious of difficult unsolved
problems of development policy and management; hence one of
the Harvard Committee's major recommendations. The triumph of
free-market orthodoxies since 1983 has not yet provided universal
solutions to development problems, as differential successes
and failures show. The Commission has been impressed that these
problems of finding the way to better lives and national futures
in the developing countries remain among the most challenging
questions facing humanity. |
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Service to the developing nations and their generic problems
has been a cardinal aim of AKU. We must ask if the growing
variety in developing countries and changing attitudes toward
them should change AKU's declared vocation toward them in the
future. We think not, both for ethical and intellectual reasons.
Despite a remarkable record of progress over the years since
everyone began to talk about "development", there remain a billion
human beings in dehumanising poverty, and these people are overwhelmingly
in the developing countries. The World Bank can open its 1993
Development Report with a reminder that "Over the past forty
years life expectancy has improved more than during the entire
previous span of human history", but then must go on to doleful
recitation of preventable deaths in the developing countries.
Parts of the developing world may be climbing rapidly toward
international middleclass standards, but in the stretch of geography
from South East Asia to Africa that must remain of particular
interest to AKU, 2020 will not see the end of "absolute" poverty
and the ills that go with it. |
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The ethical impulse to maintain AKU's commitment to the
"generic problems of development" is reinforced by the intellectual
challenges sketched above. There have been successes in
development but understanding how it occurs and how best it
is fostered has not become easier. It remains full of intellectual
challenges for AKU as an institution devoted to higher education
and research. |
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As we shall emphasise in Section V below where we review AKU's
position in the network of Aga Khan institutions, the impact
of AKU's work on problems of development will be amplified if
it can continue to work with international assistance programmes.
Looking to the future, we must worry if the rather sour postures
toward development assistance in the U.S., Germany, and other
countries presage early and sharp decline. In a paper for a
USAID sponsored conference in 1992, Mr. Sutton concluded that
the U.S. and other foreign aid programmes would be maintained,
at least for the decade of the 1990s. ["The World of the 90s"
pp.16 ff.] The reasons he saw were essentially two : (1) the
political and security uses of foreign aid; (2) the eleemosynary
disposition that has always been significant motivation in development
assistance and continues in response to disasters and extreme
deprivation. The Third World instabilities that brought the
Gulf War in 1992, and that have brought Rwandan massacres and
North Korean tensions as these lines are written show little
prospect of diminishing. They seem to assure continuing commitments
of the rich countries to foreign aid support despite reluctant
citizenries and legislators. What the forms and quality of that
support may be will be important to the prospects of future
resources for AKU's programmes and we will return to the subject
when we look at these prospects. [Section VIII below] |
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