4Development: The re-balancing of economic powers.

The book review examines Gianni Vaggi updated map of the problem of development with an eye to Classical Political Economy. Vaggi’s book is not about any narrow notion of economic development. Development as such requires the re-balancing of economic powers, as the subtitle of the book reads. Sustainable development has become the key word in today’s discourse. Indeed would there be anybody today that is not in favor of sustainable development? The 1987 Brundtland and the 1990 UNDP Human Development Index have paved the way to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Agenda 2030 of 2015. The review highlights the importance for sustainable development strategy of concepts such as empowerment, ownership, power sharing, capacity building, which Vaggi sees within the notion of global partnership. These notions however are not self-explanatory and/or unproblematic. Besides, the reference to the SDGs and the official discourse of international organizations, primarily the United Nations, tends to dominate the entire reasoning about the rethinking of development. If sustainable development is a process of transformation how does it occur, and who is leading it? That undermines to an extent the reasoning on the rebalancing of the existing economic powers. As much as it is necessary it is not much clarified by referring to the SDGs and global partnership. Ultimately unconvincing this way of proceeding is not addressing the actual way in which the policies for development are operating.