Dr Kathleen Meagher

This course is compulsory on the MRes/PhD in International Development. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course integrates the concepts and perspectives of a range of disciplines to consider: major trends of development and change in modern history and interpretations of them in the social sciences; contemporary economic and social theory and their bearing on the policy and practice of development. In more detail: concepts of 'development' and historical evolution of paradigms of development thinking and policy. Role of states and markets in development/underdevelopment. Colonial legacies and path dependencies. State resilience and fragility. Political economy of growth, poverty and freedom.

20 hours of lectures and 20 hours of seminars in the MT.

Students will attend the Michaelmas Term lectures for DV400 and an associated weekly seminar for research students only.

Students will be expected to produce 2 presentations in the MT.

The following are recommended basic readings for the course:

A. Kohli, State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery (Cambridge, 2004)

A Sen, Development as Freedom (Anchor, 1999)

D. North, J.J.Wallis, B.R.Weingast: Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, (Cambridge 2009)

HJ Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (Anthem, 2002)

D Rodrik. One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth (Princeton University Press, 2008)

P.Collier The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Oxford, 2007)

S.Chari and S.Corbridge (eds.) The Development Reader (Routledge, 2008)

W.Easterly The White Man's Burden: Why The West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done so Much Ill and So Little Good (Oxford, 2006)

J.Ferguson The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development', Depoliticisation and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990)

M. Jerven, Poor Numbers: How we are misled about African development statistics and what to do about it (Cornell, 2013)

Essay (100%, 5000 words) in January.