This report evaluates the significance of a heterodox development economics conference held in Cape Town, South Africa in December 2007. To place this event in proper context, it gives a snapshot overview of heterodox economics, which is basically a plural movement against the monopoly of free‐market fundamentalist thinking in economics. However, this anti‐orthodox economics trend is defined more in terms of what it opposes instead of a positive alternative set of development proposals. Despite this weakness, there seems to have been a wider reach and deepening of heterodox scholarship among a new generation of African development thinkers. The Annual Conference on Development and Change (ACDC) is making two crucial contributions to this movement. It provides a space to exchange, critically debate and craft alternatives to mainstream theory, methodologies and policies. Secondly, it facilitates the networking between African scholars of the 21st century and their counterparts across the global South and North.
A dozen young African development scholars joined their counterparts mainly from Latin America and Asia in a conference promoting heterodox thinking in development. This conference took place from 9 to 12 December in Cape Town, South Africa. Three days of the conference were closed sessions, except for two fascinating and lively plenary debates which took place on separate evenings. The last day, hosted by the Economics Department at the University of the Western Cape, was attended by a cross section of lower tier state officials, academics, graduate students and other role players in South Africa's development policy debates.
Granted, a mere forty scholars at an international conference is a relatively small number when compared to an academic event of this stature. What needs to be kept in mind though is that this event was different from your traditional conference. In contrast to typical conferences, this event, under the rubric Annual Conference on Development and Change (ACDC),1 was somewhat unique in terms of organisation and purpose. Participants in ACDC are normally members of ‘heterodox economics networks’ but in the early stages of establishing their scholarly influence in a discipline without space for alternative voices and insights which counter the mainstream orthodoxy. It is very hard for a resourcepoor young scholar in the third world to establish a formidable presence, at the intellectual and policy levels, in such an exclusionary one‐size‐fits‐all milieu. With its own meager resources, ACDC could therefore fully‐fund only a limited number of participants based on a competitive model. Financial constraints simply ruled out inviting a bigger pool of participants from nearly 60 proposals received.
For the first time in its three years of existence, the ACDC steering committee (its chief decision‐making body comprising 6 academic peers) was compelled to turn down more than a third of the proposals they had received, all rigorous and cutting‐edge in terms of theory, methodology and policy relevance. Compared to the previous two conferences, the South African edition of ACDC undoubtedly attracted much wider interest which signifies the growing relevance of ACDC and heterodox development thinking in a broader sense. At the previous two conferences ‐ India in 2005 and Brazil in 2006 ‐ the due dates for proposal submissions had to be extended. The numbers of young scholars eager and bold enough to align themselves to alternatives to mainstream orthodox economics are evidently growing at a steady but impressive pace. This search for and willingness to embrace alternatives to the mainstream orthodoxy is in response to the credibility crisis of neo‐liberal policies in practice. But the break with the hegemonic orthodoxy is more about scientific principles than raw bitterness and anger. It is a booming courageousness grounded in profoundly questioning and rethinking of modern socioeconomic development in both the global South and North.
Heterodox Revolt in Economic Development Discourse
Arguably the most insightful indicator of the significance of the 2007 Annual Conference on Development and Change is the content of the papers and debates. Before casting the spotlight on this aspect, it will be appropriate at this moment to say a bit more about its larger context. The following contextual question deserves special attention: What is the research and policy agenda of heterodox (development) economics? One part of the answer points to the theoretical and methodological foundations of heterodox development scholarship. The other part of the answer is to give some credible evidence on the real‐life strength of the heterodox movement in economics, a knowledge‐gap which stretches far beyond this brief report.
Neo‐classical thinkers have established a monopoly over the reproduction and dissemination of economic ideas. Their methods of reasoning dominate not only leading academic journals and textbooks but also development policies, policy making institutions and processes. Economics training at every top university around the world remain firmly embedded within this narrow intellectual framework. Through this indoctrination of new generations of economics students it effectively assures its longevity far into the unforeseeable future. And universities across Africa like elsewhere in the developing world have been emulating this model despite the failure of neoclassical theory to chart a pathway out of underdevelopment and misery.2 Moreover, neo‐classical economics has invaded other social sciences, rapidly spreading its imperial reign over the conceptual and methodological tools that were once upon a time unique to these ‘independent intellectual domains’.3
Heterodox economists are resisting and trying to roll‐back the dominance of neoclassical thinking in economics. They have launched a three‐pronged opposition to the monopoly of neo‐classical thinking in economics. At the theoretical level, they are countering the hegemony of methodological individualism, market fundamentalism and deductive reasoning. At the empirical level, they oppose the exclusive use of a narrow set of econometric and rigid mathematical techniques to generate credible research findings. At the policy level, they reject the neo‐liberal counter‐reforms in which the state is gleefully promoting corporate welfare at the expense of pro‐poor social policies. What is unmistakably shaping the agenda of this heterodox revolt in modern economics, its unifying axis, is opposing a set of ideas and practices rather than advancing a singular platform of alternatives. But as the emerging research on heterodox scholarship shows, its chief contribution lies in promoting pluralist and trans‐disciplinary research on socio‐economic policies instead of the there‐is‐no‐alternative doctrine.4
With the accelerated spread in antimainstream thinking in economics since the early 1990s, a growing number of heterodox formations also emerged in different parts of the world. Some of these formations are formal academic associations, but the most frequent and common way of organizing within this activistintellectual community is through fairly loose networks. And the networks usually embrace economists, other social scientists as well as grassroots anti‐neoliberal activists. Within the same network, some may identify themselves as post‐Keynesians, feminists, Marxists and so forth. ACDC, for example, is itself a network of networks. Its participants come mainly but not exclusively from the Cambridge Programme for Rethinking Developing Economics (CAPORDE), the Gender and Macroeconomics International Working Group (GEM‐IWG) and the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs). Although these are all international networks, with members in a vast number of countries, it makes sense from a logistical view to base the nerve‐centre in a specific country.
In Africa, for instance, CODESRIA which operates from Dakar in Senegal is perhaps the best‐known, oldest and most active association at the frontier of promoting a heterodox orientation in the social sciences. How many companion associations exist alongside it across the continent, how sustainable are they and what influence do they exert in the policy arena? Based on the available information, it is basically impossible to answer these questions for the moment. In this context, it is probably not entirely wrong to conclude that the picture of the state of heterodox thinking across Africa is at best sketchy and incomplete. A fuller and more coherent picture of the actual state of country and continental formations involved in this rethinking of the twenty‐first century development agenda is likely to emerge only after a lengthy period of painstaking research.
Development Policy as Thematic Thrust
It is against the background of this uneven and slow progress in heterodox development activities that the contribution and significance of ACDC need to be assessed. A reliable gauge of its contribution would be the big themes around which the debates pivoted. In my view, the numerous country‐specific and crosscountry comparative case studies all fitted well into the overarching theme and about three sub‐themes. Looking at the ACDC in Cape Town as a whole, development policy was undoubtedly its overarching thematic thrust. At a microlevel, each paper fell into one or some combination of the following sub‐themes: long‐run structural and growth trends, globalization and developing countries, and the social and ecological dimensions of development.
All the papers and debates stressed the centrality of pro‐poor development policies, a criterion for paper selection to which the steering committee gave top priority in the call for papers. With this heavy emphasis on development policy, it was rather unsurprising why the spotlight fell on the role of the state in socio‐economic development. For relative to other institutions, the state continues to be the chief agency designing and implementing development policies (seen as ‘good governance’). This is the case whether the policies entrench and protect the interests of powerful corporations or militant social movements of the poor. Speaker after speaker closely examined in whose interest states in poor countries and the policies they enact really work, particularly ‘developmental states’. Given the astounding resurrection of the developmental state debate in South Africa's popular discourse, this discussion had an immediate and direct practical relevance. What was specifically underscored was the vital role of a 'developmental class' to spearhead such a state and the development process in general. But it was never clarified which social grouping within poor countries in the modern era is best qualified to play this leading role.
Research under the sub‐theme long run structural and growth trends presented cutting‐edge work on growth models that are technically distinct from popular neo‐classical models. This groundbreaking body of research seeks to extend the traditions of Nicolas Kaldor and post‐Keynesian macroeconomics to understand the mechanics of the engines of growth. Facts and figures displayed contrasted sharply, for example, with optimistic neo‐classical accounts that today's high growth rates in Africa, driven by the boom in natural resource prices, can be sustained. Neo‐classical growth modelers are obsessed with averages and usually ignore the following critical questions: Who are the real beneficiaries of a surge in economic growth? How deeply is a growth cluster integrated into the wider local economy? How can the poor be fully integrated into a broad‐based growth process and go beyond the worn trickle‐down growth logic? Modern structural dynamics in African economies, like elsewhere in the developing world, consist of a mix of crisscrossing and puzzling trends. Whereas the observed de‐agrarianisation tendency seems to be much slower than projected, de‐industrialisation has definitely accelerated with enormous implications for the nature of urbanisation and rural development. According to fairly robust evidence, ‘informal and survivalist’ activities are expanding across all sectors, which contradicts neo‐classical predictions.
The sub‐theme on globalisation and developing nations covered the familiar topics of trade, capital flows and exchange rate dynamics. Neo‐liberal globalisation, especially the logic of its comparative advantage foundations and export‐oriented model, came in for some scathing critique. But the interrogation of the conceptual underpinnings of globalization got a much smaller space than examining hard evidence on the place of poorer countries in the global economy. By any acceptable measure, developing countries are deeply integrated into the modern networks of trade and financial flows, perhaps with the international flows of labour limited to highly‐skilled people. But the costs of this globalization of poor countries, such as heightened vulnerability to exchange rate and balance of payments of crises, seem to be grossly underestimated. This is what a few speakers taking stock of the outcomes of economic crises in poor countries after the East Asian crisis 10 years ago persuasively demonstrated. According to their findings, the devastating consequences of externally‐induced recessions are resilient, very resource intensive to reverse and take an extraordinary long time to completely wipe out. Inadequate attention was however given to south‐south integration, especially how cooperation among the powerhouse economies of the South (South Africa, Brazil, India and China) really promote higher living standards in the South.
A large number of papers under the subthemes mentioned above also addressed questions linked to the social and ecological consequences of development. For genuine indicators of socio‐economic development can hardly overlook its social and ecological dimensions. Although it is hard to disconnect these concerns from the process of economic development, several papers focused exclusively on human development, living standards and the environment. In fact, presentations in the one plenary session provoked stormy debates on the persistence and main drivers of unemployment, poverty and inequality in post‐apartheid South Africa. The thematic thrust in the second evening plenary was on gender and macroeconomics, with a tour de force input on radical feminism by Nilufer Cagatay, one of the leading heterodox development economists. There were fascinating exchanges of ideas on the sys temic drivers of asset inequality, such as the skewed distribution of land and knowledge‐based assets, and the healthcare crisis in Zimbabwe. One paper illustrated that the ongoing ecological damages and new risks of China's stellar industrial growth are undercounted by neo‐classical environmental models. But this is well known and it would have been much more interesting and useful to expose the ecological dangers accumulating behind China sucking in vast quantities of Africa's natural wealth.
Concluding Comment
The 2007 Cape Town edition of the ACDC was a small‐scale event in terms of the typical international academic conference. But as this critical assessment of ACDC 3 has shown, if it is viewed in the context of the larger heterodox movement in development, its contribution was very significant. Heterodox development thinking is naturally tapping into the popular disillusionment and indignation with the hegemonic neo‐classical development model. But more importantly, scholars working in this alternative framework are critically thinking through development proposal emerging from within its ranks.
The ACDC has been consolidating and pioneering high‐level rethinking of development economics and set a policyoriented research agenda for the 21st century. It has provided a space to exchange, critically debate and craft alternatives to mainstream theory, methodologies and policies. It has facilitated the networking between African scholars of the 21st century and their counterparts across the global South and North. The publication of its first volume of conference proceedings which was unveiled and celebrated at the Cape Town conference documents and displays the eminent scholarship emerging from this knowledge‐community. This book, entitled Globalization and Development ‐ A Handbook of New Perspectives, edited by Ashwini Desphande, the head of the ACDC steering committee, consists of a collection papers presented in India in 2005. Volumes for the other two conferences are in the pipeline.5