Decolonizing development economics: A critique of the late neoclassical reason

Abstract

In this paper, we scrutinize contemporary development economics to render visible the colonial impulses that lead to forms of silencing and disavowal of economic differences in ontological and epistemological terms. As decolonizing economies and decolonizing economics are interwoven, we open our discussion with a history of decolonization efforts at the level of the political economy to form a background for the discussion of the ontological and epistemological issues on the coloniality of development economics. We then first engage with neoclassical economics and its antecedents in classical political economy—the orthodox and hegemonic stream in the discipline of economics—highlighting how its individualistic and mechanistic nature implicates the discipline with the coloniality of knowledge production, and second, unpack the current state of mainstream development economics after the late neoclassical turn (incorporating to standard economic models the problems emanating from market failures, cognitive biases, and multiple equilibria) in the discipline by focusing on two of its prominent research agendas: new institutional economics of development divergence, and the poor economics of development. Finally, we formulate some perspectives for decolonial development economics.