For example, there is confusion as to what these terms developmental social work actually mean in practice and this has limited its application (Patel and Hochfeld, 2012). The terms social development, developmental social welfare and developmental social work are very familiar in social work hence confusing practitioners. According to a study by Patel & Hochfeld (2012) in an attempt to explain what developmental social work and social work mean, respondents idetified key concepts that influence their understanding of developmental social work such as empowerment; capacity building development; and participation. These are concepts that match established social work conventions in that they are commonly used in individual and community empowerment practice. However, other aspects of developmental social work such as high impact interventions, generalist interventions, economic development, and broad human rights promotion and advocacy, were cited less frequently by the respondents.
Development is a normative concept due to which there is a constant tussle in conceptually defining development. There are different models of development parse but it has been increasingly equated to economic development and wrongly paralleled to economic growth. In strictly economic terms, development has conventionally meant a sustained annual increase in GNP (or GDP) at rates that vary from 5 percent to 7 percent or more (Kapila, 2013). Till the 1960’s the term economic development was used as a synonym to economic growth; where the latter meant increase in per capita GNP in real terms (adjusted to inflation). According to the economic historian Kindleberger, “Whereas economic growth merely refers to a rise in output, economic development
Modernization theory assumes that all countries could follow the same path to development and that the kind development that industrialized Western countries have is desirable (Little et al., 2014). Despite its Eurocentric nature, the modernization theory offers some objective measures regarding the benefits of following a development pathway, such as better standards of living and improved life expectancy (Little et al., 2014). Dependency theory, on the other hand, assumes that low-income countries are passively letting themselves exploited (Little et al., 2014). The rise of the garment industry in Bangladesh after the initial Daewoo investment illustrates that economic imperialism has many unintended consequences; knowledge leaks and spillover effects mean that the hinterland may kickstart its own economic growth using the knowledge, skills, and assets provided by the metropolis (Easterly, 2002). However, it provides important insights regarding power relationships between countries as they engage in trade.
The concept of development emerged after World War II, especially in the early 1950s, when economic and social scientists began to divide countries in terms of their economic structure, their development and their standard of living and living in different countries, developing countries and developed countries (Goodland 6). According to Robert’s historical evidence, economic development which tends to develop production and increase national and individual incomes, that is, increase wealth, and social development: which aims at raising the standard of social life in terms of health, education, living standards and services
Global development has always been a key goal for renowned economists, theories and models have been created so we can begin to understand how as a people we can begin to progress and evolve economically for business purposes. After world war two the economic world has been majorly dominated by four key economic theories: first and foremost is the linear stages-of-growth model which focuses on how third world economies can use national savings and investments to progress. secondly is the theory of structural change, the main focus point of this theory is very similar to the theory of linear stages, however this theory differs as it tends to focus more on precise resource allocation prioritising developed countries when being applied. There
In this sense, authoritarianism has its own advantage as it can draw and execute policy beneficial to economic development without facing the objection from citizens. State can then make policy which are less favourable to citizens but beneficial to economic development, for example, country may adopt an economic contractionary policy in order to save enough money for future investment. Although the policy cause decrease in demand and have negative
Political decentralisation policies are also designed to devolve electoral capacities to sub-national actors. Regarding the consequences of each type of decentralisation, Falleti (2004) expected administrative decentralisation to have either a positive or negative impact on the autonomy of sub-national executives. If administrative decentralisation improves local and state bureaucracies, fosters training of local officials, or facilitates learning through the practice of delivering new responsibilities, it will likely increase the organisational capacities of sub-national governments. Nevertheless, if administrative decentralisation takes place without the transfer of funds, this reform may decrease the autonomy of sub-national officials, who will be more dependent on subsequent national fiscal transfers or sub-national debt for the delivery of public
But even if there was a positive effect of democracy on growth, it would be spurious to neglect the relevance of other elements that could have been proved to cause growth, including human capital, diffusion of knowledge and institutions (inclusive vs extractive ones). Democracy is, therefore, not the ultimate cause of development but rather a small piece of the big puzzle that has captured the interest of economists for decades: the wealth of
My master thesis, “Can the welfare state be the future of the Global economy” supervised by Dr. Kapás, engendered my interest in this area. Now I am willing to continue my academic career with Ph.D. and do deep research on this topic. The relationship between state and market has been an object for analysis since classical economists. One of the main challenges is to explore advantages and disadvantages of any scale of correlation between them. Government intervention and a majority of state ownership, as some of the chief characteristics of a welfare state, can be main drivers of prosperity, but these features should be in harmony with free market tools, as in Sweden case.
According to Escobar (1995), the expansion of developmentalism came about from the inaugural speech of the United States of America’s President Harry Truman in 1949 who strongly believes that the USA and Europe should assist the underdeveloped countries in solving their problems, hence achieve development. However, Escobar (1995) goes on further to share that the thought was embraced by those in power and was also underscored by a group of experts who were working with the United Nations at the time. It is works of scholars such as Arturo Escobar that has contributed immensely to subsequent critiques of the phenomena of development. Prosser (2010) in her contributions to the discussions surrounding the school of thought of development cited Escobar (1995) and Matthews (2004) that the term of development was taken to mean a social change or transformation that will better the lives of people in a specific society. According to Matthews (2004), post-development theorists had a different view of development as being obsolete and that it did more harm than good as Piertese (2000) quoted Latouche (1993) as referring to development as westernization.