Book Review: Ha-Joon Chang and Ilene Grabel, Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual and Gerard Strange, Towards a New Political Economy of Development: States and Regions in the Post-Neoliberal World
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929916676954 |
| Author | Alexander Brand |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsInternational Relations |
100 Political Studies Review 15 (1)
tackles the mission in Kosovo by looking at the
variety of external actors involved and the ration-
ale behind their approach. One of the book’s
strongest points can arguably be found in its
grounded critique of the strategies of actors
including the European Union Rule of Law
Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), the United Nations
Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the
International Civilian Office (ICO).
The critique is framed within a neo-
institutionalist theoretical framework, outlined
in chapter 1, which puts a premium on the need
for strong political institutions to support suc-
cessful transitions towards ‘mature natural
states’ (p. 24). Capussela uses the case of
Kosovo to prove that dominant elites work to
hinder the transformation of social orders, sug-
gesting that this causes problems of accounta-
bility, transparency and impartiality (p. 22).
While state-building, especially in its early
stages, should focus on preventing dominant
elites from capturing the state, the author
argues that this was not the priority in the case
of Kosovo.
The remainder of the book is dedicated
to showing how Western agendas have not
sufficiently focused on building de facto
independent and impartial institutions and
have, at times, adopted policies that have
opened up space for criminality and patrimo-
nialism (p. 112).
While Capussela’s critique of the limits of
foreign interventions is certainly poignant, a
core contradiction runs throughout the volume:
where the author suggests the necessity of
using state-building to effect change in the
social order of post-conflict societies like
Kosovo, this openly contradicts his cautioning
against top-down, heavy-handed interventions
(p. 59). Indeed, the author’s position on ‘local
ownership’ is at best nebulous. His critique of
the dominant elite role does not fully explain
how dominant elites come to be; his engage-
ment with local actors beyond the elites fails to
reflect on how the complexity of social rela-
tions might make it difficult to separate elites
and their practices from the rest of ‘the local’
that the author suggests engaging with (p. 30).
Nevertheless, the book presents a sharp cri-
tique of modes of intervention that have yet to
impact on either the social order or the domi-
nance of certain groups in society. While
Kosovo is symptomatic of this, with further
research into the non-linear socio-political pro-
cesses that comprise social orders, Capussela’s
framework can be extended to reveal more
about the impact of external actors on the
endogenous processes of change of other post-
conflict societies.
Elisa Randazzo
(University College London)
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929916672958
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Reclaiming Development: An Alternative
Economic Policy Manual by Ha-Joon Chang
and Ilene Grabel. London: Zed Books, 2014.
224pp., £12.99 (p/b), ISBN 9781780325590
Towards a New Political Economy of
Development: States and Regions in the
Post-Neoliberal World by Gerard Strange.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 254pp.,
£65.00 (h/b), ISBN 9781137277367
Global power transitions as well as the havoc
wreaked by the global financial crisis are
thought to contribute to the opening of new
thinking and policy spaces. This is all the more
true for development ‘beyond neoliberalism’.
Both books under review contribute to this
debate even though they build their respective
cases differently.
Ha-Joon Chang and Irene Grabel’s
Reclaiming Development is a re-issue of their
book published a decade ago, complemented
with an excellent foreword by Robert H Wade
and a new preface. As the name of the series
in which the book has been included now
(‘critique influence change’) suggests, the
authors aim at offering a compelling critique of
neoliberalism in development. Obviously, they
also seek to influence how a wider (not just an
expert) audience thinks about development
matters. Consequently, they have largely
refrained from academic jargon, presenting an
accessible account. Finally, what they have in
mind is to contribute to further pushing for a
change away from failed ideas and policies.
Hence, ‘reclaiming development’ is meant to
finally deconstruct and scrap neoliberalism
now that this seems politically achievable.
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