Bringing Economic and Political Power Back In: A Call for Re-Politicising Development Research

Dimitrios Zikos () and Ulrich Wurzel
Additional contact information
Dimitrios Zikos: Faculty of Economics and Law, HTW-Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Treskowallee 8, 10318 Berlin, Germany
Ulrich Wurzel: Faculty of Economics and Law, HTW-Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Treskowallee 8, 10318 Berlin, Germany

Economies, 2023, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-23

Abstract: In the mainstream development debate during recent years, among others, there have been two influential camps opposing each other. The first one identifies the environmental context, the “natural” variable, as the ultimate cause that determines the socio-economic development trajectory of a society. The second influential approach argues that “the social” variable (i.e., political institutions) and not “the natural” variable is the sphere in which to look for the main explanatory variables for developmental outcomes. In this paper, we argue that although each approach has its own merits, they equally fail to address hot issues in the realm of economic development. They give an incomplete cause-and-effect picture of the ongoing, complex and vital-for-development processes, and they are equally incapable of identifying plausible explanatory variables regarding developmental successes and failures. Our aim is not to discredit the valuable body of work on either of these approaches, but instead to spark a discussion that would enable more creative, inter- and multidisciplinary research into the missing causal links between the propositions of key authors representing the aforementioned approaches and the fallacies that need to be addressed. Our position is that this is the only path that can lead to a meaningful synthesis capable of paving the way for a breakthrough in development economics and sustainable development studies.

Keywords: economic development; political institutions; environmental factors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E F I J O Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/11/3/93/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/11/3/93/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jecomi:v:11:y:2023:i:3:p:93-:d:1096837

Access Statistics for this article

Economies is currently edited by Ms. Hongyan Zhang

More articles in Economies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().