What is the nature and extent of historical awareness in the development discourse? Does the development discourse learn from history, including its own? Set in the contexts of aging development institutions and a changing geopolitical climate, this paper provides one account through a historiographical survey of 136 journal articles across 10 leading development journals. It uncovers a substantial body of works, which offer descriptive histories, derivative lessons, and historiographical critiques. Altogether, they evidence two modes in which the development discourse attempts to learn from history. The first lies in the proactive use of external histories as empirical evidence for a variety of development issues. This is the predominant mode exhibited in the survey. A second mode lies in the use of internal histories of the development discourse, itself. Here, the survey finds a number of noteworthy but largely disparate efforts. This suggests a relative dearth in historiographical selfconsciousness for a narrow but influential segment of the development discourse. A number of consequences are considered, ultimately responding to the legitimacy, efficacy, and sustainability of development action. In sum, our survey finds that the mainstream development journal discourse is adept at learning from external histories, but not necessarily from its own. Evidence, however, suggests that it can. A case is made for why it must.
Set amidst growing global challenges and great power politics, this article asks how middle powers might best promote global collective action. Adopting a historical approach, it explores four case studies on middle power multilateralism in (1) post-1974 UN New International Economic Order; (2) post-1989 Bretton Woods institutions; (3) post-1992 European Union expansion; and (4) post-2003 UN South-South cooperation. These inform a policy framework and an ensuing alternative termed "resilient multilateralism." Adopting a foreign policy standpoint, this alternative entails principles on context specificity, complementarity, consensus building, and non-confrontation. By opening space for global action, it offers a timely approach to countering future shocks and coordination failures-whether wrought through nature or through hands of our own.
This article asks how the concept of resilience has been used in development studies. Set amidst the rise of resilience in sustainable development, it offers insights for scholars and policymakers, alike. Sampling 419 journal articles from 2017 to 2022, it uses Kuhnian paradigms to analyse development knowledge production on resilience. This produces three key findings. First is the absence of a coherent resilience paradigm (with shared definitions, problems and methods) in development studies. Second is its use, instead, by incumbent development paradigms in piecemeal fashion to extend and/or repackage pre‐existing arguments. Third are ensuing possibilities for resilience as both a rallying call and siren song in sustainable development. Ultimately, resilience‐based research and policy discourses open vital space for collective action across interdisciplinary and international divides. However, a lack of critical awareness of its non‐uniform use can produce more harm than help. If the language of resilience is to advance collective prospects for development cooperation and climate action, then it will help to know precisely what we each are talking about.
analysis and policy advice with the aim of promoting sustainable and equitable development. The Institute began operations in 1985 in Helsinki, Finland, as the first research and training centre of the United Nations University. Today it is a unique blend of think tank, research institute, and UN agency-providing a range of services from policy advice to governments as well as freely available original research.The Institute is funded through income from an endowment fund with additional contributions to its work programme from Finland and Sweden, as well as earmarked contributions for specific projects from a variety of donors.
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