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St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:189211
DOI 10.1007/s12116-009-9042-3
Eric Helleiner
Published online: 28 March 2009# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract What was the origin of the commitment of international institutions to promote economic development in poorer countries? A popular view in post-development scholarship has been that this international development project was born with Trumans Point Four program of 1949. This article suggests instead that it emerged for the first time in a significant way out of the Bretton Woods conference of 1944, with US-Latin American relations in the early 1940s acting as a key incubator for this innovation in international governance. This historical reinterpretation leads to a different view of the initial content of the international development project and the politics that generated it. It also challenges those who have downplayed the significance of the development content of the Bretton Woods negotiations.
Keywords International development . International institutions . Bretton Woods . Inter-American Bank . World Bank
What was the origin of the commitment of international institutions to promote economic development in poorer countries? An increasingly popular view within post-development scholarly circles is that this international development project was born with US President Harry Trumans January 1949 inauguration speech.1 In the speech, Truman announced his Point Four program to make modern scientific and technical knowledge available to poorer regions of the world: We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas (quoted in Rist 1997: 71). By declaring large sections of the world underdeveloped, Truman is deemed to have provided the cognitive base (Sachs 1992: 2) for wealthy countries
1See for example Escobar (1995), Rist (1997), Sachs (1990, 1992), Esteva (1992). In this article, I use the phrase international development project to refer to the project of assigning international institutions a role in the promotion of economic development in poorer countries. In focusing on economic development, I am restricting myself to policies aimed at boosting the standard of living in poorer countries. This was the main focus of international development discourse in the era I am studying. The meaning of international development has become wider and more diverse in more recent years.
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