Revolution in Development uncovers the surprising influence of postrevolutionary Mexico on the twentieth century's most important international economic institutions. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico, the United States, and Great Britain, Christy Thornton meticulously traces how Mexican officials repeatedly rallied Third World leaders to campaign for representation in global organizations and redistribution through multilateral institutions. By decentering the United States and Europe in the history of global economic governance, Revolution in Development shows how Mexican economists, diplomats, and politicians fought for more than five decades to reform the rules and institutions of the global capitalist economy. In so doing, the book demonstrates, Mexican officials shaped not only their own domestic economic prospects but also the contours of the project of international development itself.

For decades, development economists believed that central planning, not economic freedom, was the key to economic growth in developing countries. In 1956 Gunnar Myrdal, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974, wrote, "The special advisers to underdeveloped countries who have taken the time and trouble to acquaint themselves with the problem all recommend central planning as the first condition of progress." While the argument that socialism is the key to growth in the developing world appears obviously unreasonable today -- given the collapse of command-and-control economies around the globe -- it was, when Myrdal wrote, the academic consensus. Only a few economists doubted such arguments and proposed alternatives. Foremost among them was Peter Bauer, author of such classics as The Economics of Under-Developed Countries and Dissent on Development. This book contains 20 essays, many of which were originally published in the Cato Journal, and a foreword by Václav Klaus, former prime minister of the Czech Republic.

Through case studies, expert interviews, firsthand anecdotes, images, and data analysis, Backdoor Revolution reveals the opportunities, challenges, and best practices of ADU development for homeowners, including costs, financing, design, zoning barriers, and regulatory loopholes.

The collapse of communism and the statist model of development planning has led to a revolution in development economics.