ABSTRACT
Analyses of the progress of developing countries and their trade in the 1980s frequently rested on an odd dichotomy of views. Each country’s own trade policy, and in particular ‘trade liberalisation’, took central importance, while the policies of its trading partners were treated as, at worst, secondary problems. This approach was part of a more general shift towards treating developing countries as responsible for their own success or failure. In the 1950s and 196Os, it was argued that they depended on the nature of the advanced industrial economies, perhaps on active policies on their part, but certainly on their economic performance. In the 197Os, while the policy interpretations started to change, aggregate international models, both formal and implicit, preserved this dependency. Frequently, their growth was directly constrained by imports, which in turn depended entirely on exogenously determined exports and capital inflows. A more historical approach suggested that there might be times when there were insuperable natural or social or other obstacles to their development. This last interpretation can be reconciled with the 1980s emphasis on how countries themselves act if the way in which they respond to external conditions, whether by policy or by economic changes, is brought into the central focus, and if external conditions are analysed in more detail.
