{"id":318699,"date":"2026-07-27T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=318699"},"modified":"2026-07-27T12:58:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T11:58:14","slug":"to-imagine-a-new-development-theory-from-the-global-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/07\/to-imagine-a-new-development-theory-from-the-global-south\/","title":{"rendered":"To Imagine a New Development Theory from the Global South"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Attributed to Jacopo de\u2019 Barbari (Italy), Portrait of Fra Luca Pacioli with a Pupil, 1495\u20131500<\/p><\/div>\n

The Global North\u2019s prescriptions for development, including the IMF\u2019s tired dogmas, have failed. It is time for a new development theory rooted in the experiences of the Global South.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

16 Jul 2026\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0In 2015, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published a paper<\/a> by the influential economist Robert H. Wade titled \u2018The Role of Industrial Policy in Developing Countries\u2019. Wade argued that virtually all successful attempts at late industrialisation (such as in Japan and South Korea) used interventionist state policies to foster industrial development and technological upgrading. In 2024, almost a decade later, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) released its flagship report<\/a> \u2018Turning Challenges into Sustainable Solutions: The New Era of Industrial Policy\u2019, which made the case that industrial policy is a key instrument for sustainable development. Between the publication of Wade\u2019s article in 2015 and the UNIDO report in 2024, the global context had changed significantly. China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), announced<\/a> in 2013had become a major source of infrastructure and industrial investment: between 2013 and 2024, cumulative BRI engagement reached $1.175 trillion, and in 2024 alone, preliminary data showed about 340 BRI deals across 87 countries. Much of this engagement took the form of construction contracts, including in transport and energy infrastructure, both of which remain foundations of industrial development.<\/p>\n

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) could not deny the importance of industrial policy but would not endorse Wade\u2019s paper or UNIDO\u2019s report. The IMF\u2019s hesitancy appears in the titles of recent blog posts such as \u2018Industrial Policy Can Lift Productivity \u2013 but Comes With Risks and Trade-Offs<\/a>\u2019 (2025) and \u2018Industrial Policy Is Adapting to Crises, but Remains Hard to Implement Effectively<\/a>\u2019 (2026). From the IMF\u2019s standpoint, the recipe for the future remains wedded to a failed past which insisted that privatisation and deregulation would provide the pathway to development. This is despite the fact that IMF research itself shows<\/a> that states of the Global North, which control the organisation, make greater use of industrial policy than those of the Global South. Yet across central banks and multilateral institutions, a tired establishment of policy analysts \u2013 shaped by brain capture<\/a>, the narrowing of thought through IMF orthodoxy \u2013 stifled the debate that the UNIDO flagship report should have provoked.<\/p>\n

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Art created by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, 2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Across much of the Global South, however, the old certainties of IMF dogmas have evaporated as the organisation\u2019s austerity model has lost credibility. But what replaces it remains uncertain. Political parties have won elections by challenging this austerity-led model and promising alternatives. Yet some of these governments have failed to articulate a genuine alternative and have found themselves pulled back towards the IMF, as in Sri Lanka, which continued its IMF programme, and Senegal, which entered renewed talks after its arrangement was suspended.<\/p>\n

This dilemma \u2013 the loss of credibility of the IMF model but the absence of an alternative \u2013 sits at the centre of the latest issue of Wenhua Zongheng<\/em>. Titled \u2018Building a New Development Theory from the Global South<\/a>\u2019, the issue asks a deceptively simple question: if the theories that governed development for the last century have failed, where will new theories come from? The title\u2019s preposition matters: from<\/em>, not fo<\/em>r. This is not a theory made elsewhere and imposed on the Global South but one that emerges from the experiments of its peoples.<\/p>\n

Development theories do more than explain the world. They shape political expectations by establishing what governments and social institutions believe is possible. They emerge from our imagination of the future and, in turn, influence how societies pursue that future. In the issue\u2019s opening essay, Tsinghua University\u2019s Qin Beichen and Jing Jun argue that theories help establish the horizon of political action. When a society loses the ability to imagine its road forward, it becomes trapped within inherited structures, even when those structures no longer function. That is the deeper crisis of our era. Across much of the world, there is a widespread inability to envision the future. Political discourse oscillates between nostalgia for a vanished past and fear of impending catastrophe. The future, as we showed in dossier no. 100<\/a>, appears either as a continuation of present inequalities or as a succession of crises. What is missing is a compelling developmental imagination that puts human need ahead of austerity.<\/p>\n

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Mai Trung Thu\u031b\u0301 (Vietnam), \u0110o\u0323c sa\u0301ch<\/em> (Reading), 1964.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

To recover our imagination of theories and models of development requires a return to some fundamental questions, such as:<\/p>\n