Development Studies Definitions for Midterm:
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s): Private development agency usually geared to
financial, educational, empowerment, skill provision, and development training assistance, with
varying political impact, and sometimes unaccountable policy influence.
Commodity Chains: A series of linkages between sites involved in producing part of an overall
product for sale on the market.
Development Project: An organized strategy of national economic growth, including an
international system of alliances and assistance established within the competitive and
militarized terms of the Cold War.
Globalization Project: An emerging vision of the world and its resources as a globally
organized and managed free trade/free enterprise economy pursued by a largely unaccountable
political and economic elite.
Colonial Division of Labour: Specialization between a colony and its metropolitan colonizing
country, exchanging primary products for manufactured goods, respectively.
First World: The Western Capitalist nations of the post-World War 2 world.
Second World: Designation for those countries belonging to the socialist bloc led by the Soviet
Union in the postwar period.
Third World: A designation for that set of countries belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement
and/or the ex-colonies.
“Modernization” Theory:
“Dependency” Analysis:
“World-Systems” Analysis:
The Development State: A centralized bureaucratic state inherited from colonial rule committed
to managing national economic growth.
Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI): A strategy of protecting domestic industry
through tariff and other barriers pursued initially to overcome the specializing effects of the
colonial division of labor.
Development Alliance: A multiclass coalition created by states through provision of patronage
and social services to support rapid industrialization.
Marshall Plan: A project of financial aid and exports credits organized by the United States to
reconstruct postwar Europe and Japan.
Bretton Woods program: The founding site of the international economic system established in
1944, to disperse long-term World Bank development project loans and short-term International
monetary Fund monies to correct national imbalances of payments.
World Bank: Official title is International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)
formed in 1944 to channel public funds into large development projects, including infrastructural
and energy loans cash cropping, and more recently extractive reserve projects; key debt manager
via structural adjustment and governance conditions.
International Monetary Fund (IMF): Fund established under the Bretton Woods agreement of
1944 to correct balance of payments difficulties; more recently an agent of structural adjustment.
Technology Transfer: The transfer of modern technologies to developing regions.
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM):
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT):
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD):
Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs):
Public Law 480 Program (PL-480):
Green Revolution:
Export-Oriented Industrialization (EOI):
World Factory: The organization of TNC production across globally dispersed sites serviced by
a global labor force.
Maquiladoras: A production zone established on the U.S/Mexican border to assemble imported
components with Mexican labour for export.
Global Assembly Lines: Dispersal of production processes across sites of relatively low-skilled
(feminized) labour predominantly in the global south.
New International Division of Labour (NIDL): The growing specialization of some regions of
the Third World in manufacturing for export.
Lean Production: the rationalization of production arrangements, combining information
technologies, craft work, and sweatshop labour, to supplement stable cores of workers with
temporary labour outsourcing, to establish highly flexible arrangements for changing inventory
needs.
“World Farm”:
Second Green Revolution:
New Agricultural Countries (NACs): Those middle-income Third World countries pursuing
agro-industrialization and agro-exporting.
Flexible Production: Organization of production systems based on small and relatively
unspecialized multi-tasking work forces allowing rapid response to changing market needs.
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC): A cartel of Third World oilproducing countries from the Middle East and North Africa as well as Indonesia Ecuador and
Venezuela.
New International Economic Order (NIEO): A failed initiative pursued by the G-77 countries
in 1974 to reform the organization and management of the world economy along more equal and
representative lines.
Group of Seven (G-7): A solidarity grouping of Third World states formed in the mid-1960’s,
overlapping with the NonAligned Movement, now numbering more than 120 states.
Debt Regime: A set of rules established by the IMF and the World Bank as conditions to be
implemented by indebted nations for further loans and debt rescheduling.
Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP): the reallocation of economic resources by a state,
typically under conditions laid down by the Bretton Woods institutions to pursue efficiency in
the global economy by shrinking government expenditure, reducing wages, removing barriers to
investment and trade, and devaluing the national currency.
Privatization: Selling off public property such as national transport systems public, services and
state-owned energy companies.
Washington Consensus: A set of neo-liberal economic policies (trade and financial
liberalization, privatization, and macro stability of the world economy) uniting multilateral
institutions, representatives of the U.S state, and associated G-7 countries that enable corporate
globalization.
World Economic Forum: Organization representing political financial and corporate elites of
the global North, meeting annually in Davos, Switzerland, to monitor and manage the global
economy.
World Social Forum: Diverse forum of NGO`s and global social justice movements that meets
annually as counterpart to the World Economic Forum, usually in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to
progressively realize the slogan: `another world is possible`
Global Governance:
Global Managers: A group of powerful bureaucrats and officials in the Bretton Woods
institutions, and the WTO executives, in the transnational corporations and banks, and the
bureaucratic elite, administering other FTA`s and global ecology.
Comparative Advantage: A theorem about how countries specialize in producing and trading
what they excel in, relatively, by virtue of their human and natural resources.
Neoliberalism: A philosophy positing an individual instinct for economic self-interest, justifying
elevation of market principles as the organizing principle of society, where private interest
trumps the public good.
Intellectual property rights: Rights to monopolize (in 20 year patents) inventions stemming
from scientific discovery usually undertaken by corporate bodies.
Biopiracy: A representation of the patenting of biological processes associated with the
extraction and insertion of genes in existing organisms, obtaining a monopoly over the use of
that genetic resource through genetic modification.
NAFTA: North American Free Trade Agreement. Agreement signed in 1994 between Canada
the United States and Mexico.
European Union: Established in 1992, as a union of fifteen Western European states excluding
Norway and Switzerland, the EU seeks to integrate their economies, promoting cooperation and
policy coordination, with the Euro as common currency.
Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation: Conference founded in 1989 on the initiative of
Australia; comprises of Australia, comprises the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea,
Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and the six ASEAN countries (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia,
the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore.)
Central American Free Trade Agreement:
Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative:
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: Plans for economic and political restructuring prepared by
states in partnership with the development agencies, as a way of extending a participatory
principle to legitimize the practice of structural adjustment, which lost credibility in the 1990`s.
Acronyms:
AGRA
AoA
APEC
BAIR
BIP
CAFTA
CBD
CEDAW
CGIAR
COMECON
ECA
ECLA
EOI
EPZ
EU
EurepGAP
FAO
FDI
FLO
FTA
FTAA
GAD
GATS
GATT
GDI
GDL
GDP
GEF
GEM
GNH
GNP
GPI
HIPC
HYV
ICT
IFI
IMF
IPR
LDC
MDG`s
NAC
NAFTA
NAM
NEPAD
NGO
NIC
NIDL
NIEO
NTE
OAU
OECD
PRSP
SAL
SAP
SEZ
TFN
TIE
TNB
TNC
TPN
TRIMs
TRIPs
UNCED
UNCTAD
UNDP
UNEP
WEF
WHO
WID
WSF
WTO