Development Strategies In The Second Half Of The 20th Century

The contemporary economic and social crisis of the world system is not the first in this century. Therefore, it is useful to remind the years after 'Black Friday' 1929 with respects to the consequences for strategies and trajectories of economic growth and development in the world, particularly because after a long and conflict-ridden period (World War II; emergence of the competing Soviet bloc) a restructured and successful "western" international system emerged. The globalisation of the western "fordist" model of market and democracy and the regulating institutions of Bretton Woods, i.e., the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (World Bank). Since that decisive period more than 60 years ago, the world experienced at least five development strategies, all of them attempting to find answers on historical challenges. In the following sections these strategies briefly will be discussed: (1) Import substituting strategies since the '30s, (2) developmentism performed by the nation state in the ' 50s, (3) late industrialization based on external savings by using foreign loans since the '60s, (4) neoliberal structural adjustment strategies imposed on many Third World countries by the "monsters of Washington" (Enzensberger) in the '80s, and last but not least, (5) contemporary strategies of outward looking systemic competitiveness in the '90s.