Development theories, old and new and their implications for human rights1

Abstract

The current world economic, ecological and political crises, deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, challenge conventional thinking on human rights and development. The assumption that human rights are based on a theory of development as the constant expansion of the economic pie through a state-run process of economic and social wellbeing has never been more challenged than now. Real wealth of the world may be shrinking rather than expanding as economic and social wellbeing is increasingly undermined for the most vulnerable populations of the world suffering from a global pandemic and from autocratic and populist regimes. This chapter analyzes the inherited challenges of global governance to the realization of development and the implications for human rights, beginning with a critique of development theories and then examining the emergence of non-hegemonic approaches, primarily in the Global South. Challenging economic theory based on ceaseless accumulation, consumption, and destruction of resources, the rise of counter-hegemonic forces in the Third World offers an opportunity to reinvent development theory. The chapter concludes by proposing transformative geopolitics of human rights and development that can shift the focus of development from the nation-state to individuals and communities.