By Ian Scoones
When Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, stood on the Davos stage and proclaimed that the current moment is not one of transition but one of rupture, everyone seemed to agree. But what new ways of thinking are needed to navigate this momentous rupture when geopolitical realignment, radical responses to climate change and new economic relations must emerge? Into this heady mix comes the idea of ‘development’, a perspective that emerged in the post-colonial period of the liberal, rules-based order, which is now seemingly gone. How then should ‘development’ be reimagined for a new world?
Much of the history of ‘development’ since the peak of technocratic modernisation ideas in the 1960s has been one of failed attempts at control. Large-scale interventions – huge irrigation schemes, vast forest plantations, massive infrastructure projects – frequently failed to serve the people that they were supposed to benefit. Although ‘high modernist’ development has been widely critiqued, its echoes are still found today, whether in China’s Belt and Road initiative or the many investments in ‘green energy’ infrastructures across the world. Justified in different ways, what characterises these efforts is the assumption that development must produce stability and so the capacity to manage and control, eliminating complexity and uncertainty in the process. Yet too often such development interventions fail, being upset by uncertain contexts while ignoring the contingencies of local people and places.
In a recent ‘insights’ essay in World Development, extending ideas in my 2024 book Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World, I argue that “A rethinking of development is necessary because the top-down, controlling version of development has not improved our capacities to address the major challenges of our time, including climate change.” Instead, we need to embrace complexity, and so uncertainty – where we don’t know what the future will hold. The liberal state-market-society consensus of ‘development’ that sought stability, predictability and technocratic control is no longer fit-for-purpose.
Right-wing populism a result of “development” failure?
Not only do such top-down approaches fail, but they also have political consequences. An important effect of the failures of liberal development over many decades has been that populist – often authoritarian – voices take hold, offering to ‘take back control’ in the name of ‘the people.’ Presenting misinformation, sometimes conspiracy theories, to justify their positions, authoritarian politics can be imposed in the absence of an effective alternative. How then can the political terrain be redefined to resist such moves? In the essay, I argue that:
The default is often to argue for the reconstruction of liberal democratic values and strong state-based, expert-led institutions with greater electoral appeal. A more effective, efficient liberal state, supported by markets and with strong evidence-based expertise, is supposed to come to the rescue. But we have to acknowledge that such approaches to statecraft and knowledge-making have failed, and in the face of accelerating, intersecting uncertainties – what some parse as ‘the polycrisis’ – are likely to fail more frequently.
Rather than reclaiming an idealised liberal technocratic past, a more radical rethinking encompassing a politics of uncertainty is needed, I argue. Here inclusive, democratic deliberation on uncertain knowledges, generating diverse pathways of change, is central. What does this imply?
Take climate change, perhaps the greatest challenge we collectively face. We know that climate change is happening, but not the details of where, with what impacts, affecting whom. Developments in global climate science have improved our understandings, but we cannot predict what will happen with precision. This requires a different approach to policy-making – both preparedness planning and response – that involves diverse people in deliberating on actions in the face of deep knowledge uncertainties. Scientists, local government officials, civil society partners and local people must come together to develop ways forward. The climate scepticism of the right-wing populists can be rejected by wider public engagement and concrete, practical actions, rather than expecting people to respond to urgent appeals from a liberal technocratic policy elite.
Policies not as plans, but as frameworks
Policies should not dictate precise plans that never work but instead offer a framework within which different people can deliberate, experiment, improvise and innovate, creating new solutions along the way that can be shared and expanded. The big challenges of today – whether around climate, biodiversity, global health, humanitarian response or economic policy – require a different approach; for sure informed by accredited expertise but also incorporating diverse other knowledges and experiences.
This is what Yuen Yuen Ang calls ‘directed improvisation’, an approach used by Chinese state policymaking in the reform era, resulting in massive reductions in poverty and economic growth across a vast and very diverse nation. No single plan can work, but a multitude of improvised responses can, while directed by overarching objectives and frameworks. Accepting the knowledges, capacities and agency of mid-level bureaucrats, project officials and local leaders allows a different approach to building resilient development in the face of intersecting uncertainties.
As I argue in the World Development essay, “Instead of returning to an idealised past, therefore, a new democratic politics is needed that engages with complexity and uncertainty… This requires us to go beyond narrow expert-led elite institutions that once defined liberal development towards new approaches, where adaptive improvisation and deliberation around uncertain futures is central.”
This is not easy. It genuinely is a rupture in ways of thinking and acting, with major implications for how expert institutions, states, UN agencies, development NGOs and others reimagine themselves. This will involve facilitating, shaping, sharing and exchanging, rather than implementing standardised projects, defining precise policies and exerting control through planning and management. This has consequences for how funding is deployed, how institutions are structured and the type of skills and aptitudes that are needed for a new era of ‘development’; all requiring fundamental rethinking for an increasingly turbulent world.
Ian Scoones is professor at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton
Image: Mayastar Lavi under a creative commons licence on Flickr
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of the EADI Debating Development Blog or the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes