The possibilities of development planning
Abstract
The starting point of this paper is a belief that
development planning in practice has achieved few of the
benefits that its advocates expected from it. Most reasons
given for this poor performance do not get to the source of
the problem, which is the naivety of the implicit model of
governmental decision-making incorporated in the planning
literature. More realistic views of politics and decision-making,
familiar in other social sciences and even other
branches of economics but largely ignored in development
economics, pose the questions whether planning, as it has
come to be understood, is feasible at all, and, even if
feasible, whether it could be an efficient instrument of
economic policy. Suggestions are made on what could be
rescued from the debris.