Going beyond the "politics of development": Institutions, interests, and ideas

Abstract

Everything about development is political. Politics is not an add-on, or a discrete academic angle on development, but rather, the way development happens. Explicitly recognising this encourages us to analyse development through the lens of contestation, and wards off the risk of adopting overly technical approaches to what are fundamentally political challenges. Yet too often, this realisation has not led to new breakthroughs, either in terms of academic analysis or the transformation of aid programmes to "think and work politically". This panel considers new approaches to understanding the dynamics that shape the politics of development, and how they might enable a fresh lens on some of most pressing development challenges facing the world today, from ending poverty, to safeguarding human rights and reducing corruption. It seeks to advance an understanding of the politics of development as a process of contestation shaped by formal structures and informal rules or institutions, being contested by more (or less) rational actors with competing power and interests, driven by underpinning ideas about what is right and fair. It will present a ‘global’ approach that dismantles North-South binaries and emphasises the "connected politics" that shape the practices of international, national, and sub-national actors in development.

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