Conclusions and Implications

Abstract

Abstract This chapter summarizes the book’s key findings and discusses the theoretical and strategic implications that arise from these. It confirms that politics plays a critical role in shaping developmental processes and outcomes, argues that a ‘power domains’ analysis can offer greater traction on contemporary development puzzles than a narrowly institutionalist perspective, and delivers new, systematic insights into how this happens. We find that the capacity and commitment to promote development are shaped primarily by the nature of a country’s political settlement (its configuration of political and social power), and how this plays out in specific policy domains. We identify two successful developmental pathways: one involves a dominant ruling coalition with a strong developmental vision, which can be particularly effective where the configuration of social power presents an existential threat to the ruling coalition. The second occurs when the problematic tendencies emanating from competitive political settlements, including the generally short-term vision of ruling elites and the politicization of the public bureaucracy, are offset by the presence of strong and coherent coalitions within particular policy domains. The three main strategic implications that flow from our analysis suggest the importance of context (how a political settlement shapes potential development pathways and why interventions need to be attuned to this), capacity (whether the state can regulate capital and protect its citizens and the importance of supporting this), and coalitions (how progressive actors can advance the rights and interests of marginal groups and devise institutional fixes in difficult governance contexts, and why supporting reform coalitions matters).