What’s the big idea? The big question is whether the broad based gains in improvement in human well-being that many believe are the normative objective of development are best achieved through “national development” or through a focus on specific, targeted, programs. I argue that “national development” is the proper focus of development as the four-fold functional transformation of national development (economic, political, administrative, and social) is necessary and sufficient to high levels of human well-being.
“Promoting Millennium Development Ideals: The Risks of Defining Development Down.” Working Paper Series rwp13-033, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government. (also CGD working paper 338) 2013. (with Charles Kenny). This argues that national development is the empirical most important and reliable way to produce gains in human well-being and that “low bar” goals (kinky development) produce limited gains in limited places.
Turns out development does bring development. CGD blog September 2016. This shows the very, amazingly, tight relationship across countries between an omnibus measure of human well-being (the Social Progress Index) and measures of national development (GDP per capita (economy), WGI government effectiveness (administration), and polity (POLITY IV measure of democracy).
The new global goals spell the end of kinky development. Blog from October 2015. I argue the new SDGs, while derided by many for being overambitious were the developing world’s reaction and rejection of the “low bar” kinky vision of development represented by the MDGs.
In 2014 I gave the Kapuscinki Lecture at the Metropolitan University in Prague. The title was “The Dangerous Seduction of Kinky Development“.
This is of course a big debate within development. Nancy Birdsall, former President of Center for Global Development, has long been promoting the “middle class” as indispensable to development, which obviously rules out an excessive focus on the kinky/low bar.