ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how one might engage in the associated empirics, the data and tools seem inadequate to engage in such exercises at such an aggregate level. It also focuses on the many low and low middle income countries (L/LMICs) that have not sustained high enough economic growth rates to catch up in a meaningful way and hence are not considered part of the convergence club. The chapter aims to define effective government since that is needed for policy implementation whatever the economic development approach adopted for catch-up growth. Individual motivations are complex, but that notwithstanding, the catch-up growth process demonstrates that individual functioning in civil society, bureaucracies and businesses is allied with the national project of delivering quality. Basic human needs/human development are alternative approaches privileging different preconditions. The body of scholarship referred to as new developmentalist represents a careful and painstaking empirical demonstration that the developmentalist vision has resulted in catch-up growth.
