Take-off and Breakdown: Vicissitudes of the Developing Countries

Economic science with all its severity of mien, is particularly vulnerable to the shifting winds of fashion: economic jargon, to begin with. In the aftermath of the Second World War, when interest was rekindled in international cooperation for economic development, the non-industrialised countries were labelled ‘poor countries’, reflecting a static, almost fatalistic vision of underdevelopment. Subsequently, as we moved on to an era of ‘dynamic pessimism’, the epithet was changed to ‘backward countries’ (which at least implied the possibility of rebound and advancement), and later to ‘underdeveloped and less developed countries’. More recently we have reached a phase of dynamic optimism, where the expression in vogue is ‘developing countries’. As social dynamics has also swept into fashion, we now talk about expectant countries, stirred by the revolution of rising expectations.