Kicking Away the Ladder. Development Strategy in Historical Perspective

Notes

Chapter 1. Introduction: How did the Rich Countries Really Become Rich?

1

So in addition to the conventional ‘economic conditionalities’ attached to multilateral and bilateral financial assistance to developing countries, we now have ‘governance-related conditionalities’ (see Kapur and Webber 2000).

2

Williamson 1990 is the classic statement of this. For some recent criticisms see Stiglitz 2001a; Ocampo 2001.

3

Bhagwati 1985, p. 22, n. 10.

4

National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade 1997, p. 1.

5

The book was translated in the USA as early as 1856 (Henderson 1983, p. 214), reflecting the then close intellectual affinity between the USA and Germany as the two centres of ‘nationalistic’ economics (also see Dorfman 1955; Balabkins 1988; Hodgson 2001). However, its British translation, the version that I have used for this book, did not appear until 1885, reflecting the dominance of free trade doctrine in Britain during the middle of the nineteenth century.

6

They are also interesting for the amazing degree of sophistication in understanding the role of public policy and institutions in economic development. For example, List states: ‘However industrious, thrifty, inventive, and intelligent individual citizens might be, they could not make up for the lack of free institutions. History also teaches that individuals derive the greater part of their productive powers from the social institutions and conditions under which they are placed’ (p. 107).

7

List 1885, p. 39.

8

He then goes on to argue: ‘This policy was pursued with greater or lesser, with speedier or more tardy success, just in proportion as the measures adopted were more or less judiciously adapted to the object in view, and applied and pursued with more or less energy and perseverance’ (p. 111).

9

List 1885, pp. 295-6.

10

List 1885, p. 99.

11

Smith 1937 (1776), pp. 347-8.

12

List 1885, pp. 99-100.

13

Polanyi 1957 (1944); Shonfield (1965). It is also found in certain strands in Marxism – for example, in Marx’s theory of history rather than in his labour theory of value.

14

Wagner’s Law states that there is a natural tendency for the relative size of the government to grow with the development of human society.

15

See Balabkins 1988, chapter 6; Tribe 1995; Hodgson 2001.

16

Marshall, Principles of Economics, 8th edition, p. 768; as cited in Hutchison, 1988, p.529.

17

Balabkins 1988, chapter 6; Hodgson 2001; Dorfman 1955. Balabkins cites a survey conducted in 1906 that shows that half of the Americans who studied social sciences in Europe studied in Germany (1988, p. 95).

18

Balabkins 1988, p. 95; Conkin 1980, p. 311.