At present, the prospects for developing countries seem bleaker than ever. As general stagnation continues, with short-lived spurts of growth in the industrialized world, export opportunities for the Third World are significantly reduced. This, combined with the rising cost of imports and a reduction la investment flows, is putting unbearable pressures on weak debt-ridden economies. At the same time, the electronics revolution seems to have
widened the technological gap to unbreachable proportions.
This article will present an alternative view. It will argue that the world is experiencing
a structural crisis, during which, in spite of the obvious difficulties, there would be greater
— rather than lesser — scope for a major positive change in development prospects.
The argument is based on a somewhat Schumpeterian
(1)
interpretation of the so-called
Kondratiev long waves (2).
The explanation proposed here for the recurrence of cycles of about 50 years’ duration in economic growth, attributes a central role to the diffusion of successive technological revolutions, representing a quantum jump in potential productivity for all or most of the economy. The reason for the long wave pattern would be that, to yield its full growth potential, each of these “techno-economic paradigms” — as we shall call them — requires a fundamental restructuring of the socio- institutional framework, on the national and international levels. The resulting social and institutional
transformations then determine the general shape of economic development, or the “mode of growth” of the next long wave. A Kondratiev wave is thus defined here as the rise and fall of a mode of growth and each crisis as the painful transition from one mode of growth to the next.
The present period is seen as one such transition. The mode of growth that led to the boom of the 1950s and 1960s has run its course. The world must now make the transition from a set of social and institutional arrangements, shaped by the characteristics — and fostering the full deployment — of a constellation of mass production technologies based on low-cost oil, to another capable of fruitful and appropriate interaction with a new system of flexible technologies, based on low-cost electronics.
This means that extrapolations from the past or from the turbulent present are misleading. If and when a new upswing is unleashed in the world economy, it is likely to be framed by a set of national and international institutions, which will differ as much from those of the l950s and 1960s as these differed from the prevailing conditions in the “Belle Epoque” at the turn of the century. It also means that the present is precisely the period of creation of those future conditions and that all social actors, including the deve loping countries, can and should take an active part in that complex — and obviously conflict ridden — trial-and-error process.
To undertake this task successfully however, it is essential to identify the new range of the possible. The deeper the understanding of the potentialities and limitations of the new “techno-economic paradigm”, the greater the scope for shaping it imaginatively and effectively through innovative action in the social and institutional spheres. Section 2 of this paper will introduce the concept of “techno-economic paradigms” and present an outline of the long wave argument
3
. This theoretical framework is a necessary prerequisite for understanding the relevance of the discussions that follow. Section 3 undertakes the analysis of the defining features of the presently diffusing microelectronics
paradigm, touching upon some of the questions it raises for development strategies. Section 4 is a brief exploration into the challenges and opportunities facing the developing countries in the present transition. As a whole, the article is intended as food for thought. The reader will find no statistics; references will be sparse, though hundreds could be given; examples will be provided only when they seem indispensable to illustrate an idea rather than to prove it. This is fully intentional. The paper is conceived mainly as a contribution for opening new paths in development thinking. As the argument evolves, it will become increasingly clear that we are making a case for defining the present period as a time for informed
speculation and bold experimentation. |
