Description
The roundtable discusses a textbook on the politics of development due to be published in 2024.
Everything about development is political. Politics is not an add-on, or a discrete academic angle on development, but rather, the way development happens. Explicitly recognising this encourages us to analyse development politically. This panel seeks to advance the analysis of the politics of development by exploring the political dynamics behind the everyday lived realities that prevent people from realising the resources, rights, and freedoms they need and value. We conceptualise the politics of development as a process of contesting alternative desired futures. Everywhere this happens, there are formal structures and informal rules or institutions in place, being contested by more (or less) rational actors with competing power and interests, driven by underpinning ideas about what is right and fair. The panel explores how these three ‘I’s of the politics of development can bring a fresh lens on some of most pressing development challenges facing the world today, showing that politics is not only an obstacle, but the way change happens.
