Global Development: Will It Ever Succeed?

The United Nations’ Summit on the Millennium Development Goals in September 2010 once again put the issue of development to the forefront. There was a strong push for advancing the development agenda in the early 1970s on the part of the Non-Aligned Movement; yet, during the Cold War, the dynamics of superpower politics dominated the issue of development. Likewise, politics continued largely to dominate the development agenda over the past two decades. This article builds on the theoretical framework of British historian Eric Hobsbawm and American political scientist Immanuel Wallerstein. Their work has identified certain structural constraints that can explain general failures in the advancement of global development, in particular, in the areas of investment and trade. A way to overcome these constraints is to shift towards the utilization of global partnerships as argued for in Antonio Gramsci’s “hegemony theory.”