The Politics of Development

While development actors will often reference ‘political constraints’ or a ‘lack of political will’ in development processes, everything about development, really, is political. Politics is not an add-on, or a discrete academic angle on development, but rather, fundamental to the way economic development happens, and to how it affects different actors and groups in what is at times somewhat crudely referred to as ‘developing countries’. 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. Working from this understanding, political science, and in particular the comparative political economy of development has developed a substantial set of interrelated discussions in recent decades, that have both extended existing theoretical and methodological models and made new contributions. This section is designed to attract and bring together current cutting-edge research done in this area today. It is structured in separate theoretical and practical discussions that nonetheless speak closely to each other through their theoretical approaches, questions, puzzles, and case contexts. The section seeks to bring together contributions with a wide variety of methodological approaches, including both qualitative and quantitative methods. While development research often operates interdisciplinarity, and much of the work presented here will have been developed by teams and projects that span different disciplines and approaches, this project is explicitly political and explicitly comparative, encouraging projects to highlight these connections in their contributions. It aims to bring into conversation both well-established and junior researchers in this field and across institutions, seeking to further develop and embed these conversations within the ECPR more widely.