THEORETICAL ISSUES IN DEVELOPMENT: ADOPTING THE NARRATIVE OF DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION

Abstract

In 1995, the World Summit on Social Development that took place in Copenhagen (Denmark) addressed three (3) core issues; Eradication of Poverty, Promotion of full employment and fostering Social Integration. These issues have been at the front-burner in the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Yet poverty, unemployment and inequality loom large especially in the developing world. Several development theories like modernization theory, dependency theory, etc have been applied in the developing countries to eradicate these three enemies of development but to no avail. It is obvious however, that developing countries are beset by institutional, political and economic rigidity. It is high time therefore, we adopted the narrative of Development Administration. Development administration is about projects, programmes, policies and ideas which are focused on the development of a nation with the point of view of socio-economic and socio-political development of society in general .Development Administration has a model that contains a rejection of status quo, rooting for change and getting results. False paradigm model brings us closer to understanding the reason for our continuous underdevelopment which is caused by faulty and inappropriate advice provided by western policy makers and scholars. In this study, we examined the entire framework of development administration vis a vis the eradication of poverty, unemployment and enhancing social integration. The study is theoretical hence there was no use of primary data. We found that it was high time developing countries invented an indigeneous approach akin to our peculiarities to make our development more people- centered and result oriented.