Constructing National Development Strategies

(3 Credits)

This course examines the challenges and opportunities of national development in the 21st century, as faced by high-level government officials and heads of state as well as nationally associations and organizations (from business, labor, civil society). The course is divided into two parts. The first lays the groundwork for subsequent discussions. This groundwork includes debates about the role in development policy of capabilities (human, collective, and productive); inequality including its relationship to labor and the environment, redistribution and predistribution; the “return of industrial policy” (Industry 4.0, digital development, and the rise of artificial intelligence); economic and social upgrading promotion of labor and environmental standards; challenges of premature de-industrialization and the middle-income trap; and political regime dynamics. In the second part we will take a deeper dive into particular policy challenges and approaches in these same issues areas, with special attention to the role of A.I. as complex of general and special-purpose tools that may be considered variously for purposes such promotion (competitiveness), regulation (anti-bias, anti-discrimination), use in the public sector, and improvements in economic and social policymaking and implementation. Both parts of the course will be set against the backdrop of contemporary challenges emerging in the first third of the 21st century regarding, among others: the reconfiguration of globalization and global value chains (e.g., pressures for nearshoring and for digitalization); trade wars and shifting geopolitics; current structural trends shaping patterns of within-country and cross-country inequality; and shifting paradigms in thinking about the nexus among economic development, social policy (broadly conceived), and patters of policymaking and governance. The course will highlight country and regional examples from regions such as East and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America to illustrate and probe further. Students will interact with various policy-relevant data tools widely used to chart and track progress and conduct comparisons.