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What makes some countries rich and others poor, and what makes some poor countries grow and develop fast and others grow slowly or even stagnate? Most importantly, what can be done to improve the well-being of the worlds poor? The puzzle of development, the growth of per capita incomes and the transformation of social and political systems, is undoubtedly the most important question in political economy and political science. In the words of the Nobel-prize winner Robert E. Lucas, ‘once one starts to think about [economic growth], it is hard to think about anything else’. In this class we will start thinking and discussing the process of economic development, focusing on the interplay between politics and development. Over the years, scholars that studied economic growth and development offered dozens of hypotheses on how to improve the well-being in the world, ranging from foreign aid, education, population control, policy reforms and debt relief. Recently, a large number of scholars acknowledged that we should focus on political institutions as the primary cause of economic development. However, which institutions are the most important? In this class we intend to examine critically the debate on the determinants of economic development, from the perspective of political scientists and practitioners of international development. We will especially focus on the effects of political institutions on growth and development. This class is designed for MA students who are not economists and who are interested in the politics of development, and it covers the basic principles, theories and comparative methods used for understanding the process of international development. The first section of the course focuses on theoretical approaches for the study of development, the overview of development in historical perspective and debate on the importance of institutions versus geography. The second section of the course discusses the interplay between political institutions and the process of economic development.
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