The Origins of Developmentalist Theory

Celso Furtado, a creator of Latin American structuralist political economy, was riveted on the construction of a viable national development project for Brazil. As a sophisticated advocate for structural change, he represented forward-looking reformism based in a pragmatic analysis of underdevelopment—“the” underlying condition of peripheral nations. The objective of this article is to offer both a synthesis and an evaluation of his contributions to the political economy of development economics. The hypothesis of this article is that Furtado’s methodological/analytical stance—in particular, (1) his dynamic, historically contextualized, approach and (2) his tendency to center development on technological capacity—merits broader acceptance and greater acclaim. An ancillary hypothesis maintains that, whereas Furtado’s work paralleled that of early U.S. institutionalism (particularly that of Veblen), he and his followers have thus far missed an important opportunity to explore the complementarities and synergies that might have been forged to renovate the Furtadian developmentalist perspective.