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COLIN LEYS, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory. London: Currey, 1996, 205 pp., L35.00, ISBN 0 253 21016 X (hard covers), L12.95, ISBN 0 85255 350 1 (paperback).
This collection of essays is a critical appraisal of the contributions from the main schools of development thinking: modernisation theory; dependency theory; and the dominant neo-liberal economics and its related perspective, the so-called new political economy. The theoretical evaluations are illustrated by examples from Africa, the author's own region of speciality, where industrialisation has stubbornly lagged behind other parts of the Third World. The essays can be read separately as excellent critical synopses of existing literature on development theory and African capitalism. But Leys's main purpose is to explain the 'fall' of `development theory', that is, the increasing irrelevance of the conceptual foundations that informed development practice during the 1960s and 1970s in the face of the neo-liberal revolution. Characterised by its unbounded faith in the market, neo-liberalism represents the dominant stream of development policy thinking today. The flip side of the neo-liberal ascendancy is the tendency of 'radical' writers to reject the comprehensive theorising (Marxism and dependency theory) to which they once ardently subscribed, in favour of `micro-foundational studies' and `mini-narratives'. Leys criticises neo-liberal prescriptions for their part in deepening the crisis of Africa and argues that any effective radical alternative must transcend the emphasis on the specific and be rooted in a political economic analysis that is also consistent with the trend towards globalisation.
It is globalisation which Leys holds responsible for the erosion of development theory's material foundations, namely the weakening of the capacity of national governments to manage their economies effectively for national priorities. In...