ABSTRACT
This chapter considers partnership from the standpoint of economic development in history. Partnership is seen as the collaborative effort by which we can create the conditions to improve performance. The chapter discusses the factors that underlie good economic performance and addresses the conditions necessary to put those factors in place. The dispersal of knowledge is a function of the specialization and division of labor that underlie economic growth. Economists have tended to underplay the role that politics plays in economic performance. In reality, it is economics that is secondary to politics. The first requirement for better economic performance is a polity that establishes a set of economic rules that encourages the development of appropriate incentives. Paths that discourage incentives to produce and create tend to persist, once established; the institutional framework that engenders such paths can create entrenched interests that resist change.
