The Origins of Developmentalist Theory

James M. Cypher

International Journal of Political Economy, 2014, vol. 43, issue 4, 15-32

Abstract: Celso Furtado, a creator of Latin American structuralist political economy, was riveted on the construction of a viable national development project for Brazil. As a sophisticated advocate for structural change, he represented forward-looking reformism based in a pragmatic analysis of underdevelopment—“the” underlying condition of peripheral nations. The objective of this article is to offer both a synthesis and an evaluation of his contributions to the political economy of development economics. The hypothesis of this article is that Furtado’s methodological/analytical stance—in particular, (1) his dynamic, historically contextualized, approach and (2) his tendency to center development on technological capacity—merits broader acceptance and greater acclaim. An ancillary hypothesis maintains that, whereas Furtado’s work paralleled that of early U.S. institutionalism (particularly that of Veblen), he and his followers have thus far missed an important opportunity to explore the complementarities and synergies that might have been forged to renovate the Furtadian developmentalist perspective.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08911916.2014.1002700 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:mes:ijpoec:v:43:y:2014:i:4:p:15-32

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MIJP20

DOI: 10.1080/08911916.2014.1002700

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().