Description
The institutional framework of international politics with the nation-state at its core has shaped development thinking through the assumption of the state as the representation of a social totality that defines its interests and benefits from its policies. This premise has been somewhat shielded from the influence of a rich literature has been dedicated to discussing the class policies and colonial legacies that shape the construction of a nation. I argue that taking the colonial legacies of nationalism and statehood to their conclusions entails an impossibility of conceiving the state as an agent for development in any sense that does not reproduce its colonial foundations. I demonstrate this by drawing briefly from the Brazilian experience of state-formation, analysing how it shaped the foundations for its developmentalist policies throughout the 20th century, and how colonial violence continues to play a fundamental role in current development policies under Lula.
