ABSTRACT

The changes in emphasis which took place in development approaches in the post-1960s period were informed both by the experience of past policies as well as by changing economic and political conditions. To understand these changes of emphasis, therefore, it is necessary to view them against a background of interrelated forces and contextual conditions. A number of political issues which emerged in the 1970s also fuelled the search for new, more appropriate development paths and influenced the articulation of the form of these paths. A significant exception to this pattern has been the economic performance of a group of developing countries called the Newly Industrializing Countries, or NICs. The policy of international lending agencies at any point in time reflects the varying influences as well as the interests of the lending agency itself. The economic crisis in the developed countries reinforced an emerging critique of existing regional policy based on the modernization paradigm.