ABSTRACT
Most economic models do no t explicitly incorpora te the 's tate ' or the 'government' into their analyses. Instead, this entity is viewed as a deus ex machina which plans and directs economic policy according to notions of efficiency growth, distributional justice, and so on, that form the central concepts of the models. Unfortunately, the same naive thinking permeates a good deal of public policy analysis. This is the case, for example, with i ssues of d e v e l o p m e n t a n d u n d e r d e v e l o p m e n t . H e r e , a t t e n t i o n is concent ra ted on ' technical, ' or ' economic , ' solut ions, while taking for granted, either implicitly or explicitly, the existence of the political will necessary to implement them.
