The rise & fall of development theory / Colin Leys.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. Development Theory. 1. The Rise and Fall of Development Theory. 2. Underdevelopment and Dependency: Critical Notes. 3. Samuel Huntington and the End of Classical Modernization Theory. 4. Rational Choice or Hobson's Choice? The 'New Political Economy' as Development Theory -- II. Development Theory and Africa. 5. African Economic Development in Theory and Practice. 6. The State and the Crisis of Simple Commodity Production in Africa. 7. Learning from the Kenya Debate. 8. African Capitalists and Development. 9. Development Theory and the African Tragedy.

This book is a 'stock-taking' of development theory at the end of the twentieth century. It argues that the assumptions on which development theory has rested since the 1950s no longer hold. The ex-colonial 'third world' for which development theory was originally developed has fractured into increasingly diverse regions, while the end of the post-war regime of regulated international trade and capital movements has drastically curtailed the scope for state economic intervention. A much broader-based, more historical and more explicitly political theoretical effort is now called for.