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Barriers to Development Printable Version PRINTABLE VERSION
by Yasmine Fakhry, Egypt Jun 11, 2003
Culture  
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Barriers to development

Why is Great Britain more developed than Angola, or the United States than Colombia ? The very simple answer, since it is basically a truism, is that the level and pace of economic development are lower the greater are the barriers to economic progress and transformation in a country, and more rapid the fewer and less intractable are those obstacles. The challenge for the development analyst is thus to attempt to identify the most significant barriers to development in each country and to formulate effective measures, including public policy, that can begin to undo, remove or at least minimize the effects of these obstacles to progress that slow or thwart the development process.



Barriers to change and development can be either internal or external to a country.



1 Potential internal barriers to development Some examples of possible internal barriers that tend to block change and thus thwart economic growth and development are (a) inequalities in the existing distribution of land ownership; for most countries, wealth distribution is intimately related to the nature and power of class relations in society and control over economic resources and the political sphere, as well; (b) the level and efficiency of infrastructural development (roads, electricity, water, communication services, port facilities and so on); (c) the role and level of development of organized banking and lending activities and of equity (stock) and other financial markets and financial intermediaries; (d) an ineffective or underdeveloped educational system, including both relatively low levels of general literacy and an imbalance between allocations of financing to lower and higher education; (e) prevailing ideological concepts and their impact on thinking and behaviour, including the influence of religious thinking, the accepted role of women and ethnic or religious minorities, the prevailing economic orthodoxy, and so on; (f) the initial endowment of natural resources of a nation; (g) the role of the state, that is, the power and nature of the influence of government, including the degree of political freedom and the strength of democratic processes; (h) the extent and importance of political corruption and patronage and the impact of these on public policies and on economic behaviour of those governed; (i) the existence of substantial ‘market failures’, in which market signals are not fully, completely, or accurately transmitted to economic agents, thus distorting resource allocation, production decisions, spending patterns, and so on.



2 Potential external barriers to development Examples of possible external barriers to development include (a) multinational or transformational corporation; (b) the international division of labour and the prevailing patterns of international trade (e.g., primary commodity exporting countries versus manufactured-good exporting countries), including the operation of the organized institutional structure of the international trade system, the effects of the World Trade Organization’s negotiations and of regional trading arrangements, such ‘as the European Union (EU) or the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); (c) the functioning of international financial institutions, including not only the international private commercial banks, but also the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF); (d) the influence of the geopolitical and strategic interests of larger economic powers vis-`a-vis smaller and weaker economic entities; and (e) the economic policies (on interest rates, for example, or on tariffs or non-tariff barriers) of more developed nations on the global economic system, and so on.

This very general division into internal and external barriers is meant only to be suggestive in a general way of the types of barriers to progress that can confront individual countries. For any specific nation, be it India or Thailand, Cote d’Ivoire or Somalia, Bolivia or Guyana, the list of possible internal and external obstacles can only be a guide toward the identification and detailed specification of the unique particulars of the barriers actually operating to thwart progress in that country. For every nation, the identification of the barriers to change, and then the specifics of how each obstacle acts as a restraint on progress, need to be clearly and analytically defined so that the nature of the remedy is also made more apparent.



The relative weight of external versus internal barriers should not be considered a constant in any particular situation. The influence of internal and external barriers can and will alter in importance over time and as a consequence of unique situations particular to specific countries and even regions within nations. The relative influence of internal and external barriers cannot be presumed a priori but must be studied and understood in each specific and changing circumstance. What we can state with confidence is that where barriers to change, be they internal or external, are not terribly powerful, progress tends to be more rapid, whilst development will be less vigorous where the barriers to change exert a more powerful adverse influence.





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Comments


Simon Moss | Jun 11th, 2003
Great overview of the situation! completely agree that these are the main issues that influence what and development takes place. Mossy

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