CEIL   02670
CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS E INVESTIGACIONES LABORALES
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
The Second Development Decade: ECLAC, ILO and UN economic development programmes for the 1970s
Autor/es:
NICOLÁS DVOSKIN
Lugar:
Los Angeles
Reunión:
Conferencia; Youngs Scholars Initiative North America Convening; 2019
Institución organizadora:
Young Scholars Initiative - Institute for New Economic Thinking
Resumen:
The history of economic thought usually takes into account the great minds, but when it analyzes the thinking of policy makers or agencies it usually focuses those that actually fulfilled their goals, or at least were able to pursue some policies. In this paper I analyze the history of a broken dream: the second development decade. Since the end of the 1960s we can observe a shift in the way economists analyze the problem of underdevelopment: they tend to discard the modernization theories that suggested that underdevelopment was quite an easy issue regarding low workforce productivity and embrace new theories, which pay attention to structural heterogeneity, lack of integration and, most importantly, social issues.This new ideas become the key framework of a worldwide consensus. In this sense, the role played by the major international organisations regarding both academic analysis and policy recommendations is huge. So huge, that during the late 60s the concept of "second development decade" is born. The first decade -the 60s- consisted of the abandonment of the comparative advantages theories and the adoption of modernization theories, which explained that an accelerated economic growth financed by foreign investment would be enough to solve every underdevelopment-related issue. The second decade -the 70s- would recognize the achievements of the first one, but would also criticize its lack of social perspective. The second development decade would be the decade of not only economic but social development as well. Congresses, conferences, textbooks, economic policy guidelines: the major organizations, such as ECLAC, ILO and ECOSOC, were fully dedicated to these issues. But in 1973 the world changed, and the second development decade was replaced by the neoliberal dreams. In this paper we show a study on the role of these agencies regarding the problems of underdevelopment towards this "second development decade".