This book examines how a society that is trapped in stagnation might initiate and sustain economic and political development. In this context, progress requires the reform of existing arrangements, along with the complementary evolution of informal institutions. It involves enhancing state capacity, balancing broad avenues for political input, and limiting concentrated private and public power. This juggling act can only be accomplished by resolving collective-action problems (CAPs), which arise when individuals pursue interests that generate undesirable outcomes for society at large. Merging and extending key perspectives on CAPs, inequality, and development, this book constructs a flexible framework to investigate these complex issues. By probing four basic hypotheses related to knowledge production, distribution, power, and innovation, William D. Ferguson offers an analytical foundation for comparing and evaluating approaches to development policy. Navigating the theoretical terrain that lies between simplistic hierarchies of causality and idiosyncratic case studies, this book promises an analytical lens for examining the interactions between inequality and development. Scholars and researchers across economic development and political economy will find it to be a highly useful guide.

A theoretical framework for analyzing the complex relationship of education, growth, and income distribution. The dominant role played by the state in the financing, regulation, and provision of primary and secondary education reflects the widely-held belief that education is necessary for personal and societal well-being. The economic organization of education depends on political as well as market mechanisms to resolve issues that arise because of contrasting views on such matters as income inequality, social mobility, and diversity. This book provides the theoretical framework necessary for understanding the political economy of education—the complex relationship of education, economic growth, and income distribution—and for formulating effective policies to improve the financing and provision of education. The relatively simple models developed illustrate the use of analytical tools for understanding central policy issues. After offering a historical overview of the development of public education and a review of current econometric evidence on education, growth, and income distribution, the authors lay the theoretical groundwork for the main body of analysis. First they develop a basic static model of how political decisions determine education spending; then they extend this model dynamically. Applying this framework to a comparison of education financing under different regimes, the authors explore fiscal decentralization; individual choice between public and private schooling, including the use of education vouchers to combine public financing of education with private provision; and the social dimension of education—its role in state-building, the traditional "melting pot" that promotes cohesion in a culturally diverse society.

This book examines SEZs from a political economy perspective, both to dissect the incentives of governments, zone developers, and exporters, and to uncover both the hidden costs and untapped potential of zone policies. Costs include misallocated resources, the encouragement of rent-seeking, and distraction of policy-makers from more effective reforms. However, the zones also have several unappreciated benefits. They can change the politics of a country, by generating a transition from a system of rent-seeking to one of liberalized open markets. In revealing the hidden promise of SEZs, this book shows how the SEZ model of development can succeed in the future.

Those studying development often address the impact of government policies, but rarely the politics that generate these policies. A culmination of several decades of work by Robert Bates, among the most respected comparativists in political science, this compact volume seeks to rectify that omission. Bates addresses the political origins of prosperity and security and uncovers the root causes of under-development. Without the state there can be no development, but those who are endowed with the power of the state often use its power to appropriate the wealth and property of those they rule. When do those with power use it to safeguard rather than to despoil? Bates explores this question by analyzing motivations behind the behaviour of governments in the developing world, drawing on historical and anthropological insights, game theory, and his own field research in developing nations.

The author examines new development strategies in the context of globalisation and the crisis of the Washington Consensus. Critiquing both protectionism and the free market he points to the influence and evolution of Keynesian ideas for the management and stabilisation of development in an era marked by the unravelling of neoliberal prosperity.

Drawing together leading scholars, the book provides a revealing new map of the US political economy in cross-national perspective.