The school of thought was, in part, a reaction to the United States’ efforts to oppose national independence movements throughout Asia and Africa, which it framed as communist.
[3] Though initially the preserve of emerging economies in the Asia Pacific area, Latin America and Africa, the notion of developmentalism has resurfaced more recently in the developed world – notably in the economic planks of 'unorthodox' policy makers such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the United States.
[4] There are four main ideas that are integrated behind the theory of developmentalism: Tony Smith writes in his article Requiem or New Agenda for Third World Studies?
During the 1950s and 1960s, developmentalism in practice did much to promote prosperity in the Southern Cone (comprising parts of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay) and the Andean country of Chile.
By the Fifties, Argentina had the largest middle class in South America, while Uruguay had a literacy rate of 95% and provided free health care to all its citizens.
This way, societies can be discussed comparatively without the impediments associated with placing developmental disparities across nations in completely different categories of speech and thought.
This school of thought produced such works as Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils's Toward A General Theory of Action; Clifford Geertz's Old Societies and New States; and Donald L.M.
This view is elaborated on by Gabriel Almond, who asserts that the increasing number of developing countries that had turned to authoritarian regimes negated the optimism with which developmentalism had been embraced.
[12] In the wake of the 2008–2012 Great Recession, the notion of developmentalism has somehow started to resurface, this time amongst "populist" politicians in the developed world, in association with some degree of mercantilism.
[13] This unconventional use of the term is used to justify some degree of protectionism and industrial dirigisme e.g. in the context of Trumponomics in the United States:[13] "That [ideological] bravado endeared Donald Trump to millions of disenfranchised lower-middle-class voters across the Rust Belt and proved instrumental to his electoral victory in the fall [...] [He promised] to create 'millions of jobs' in America in the coming quarters.
They argue that developmentalist strategies have not generally worked in the past, leaving many countries, in fact, worse off than they were before they began state-controlled development.