Power Imbalances and Development Knowledge
Prepared as part of a North-South Institute (Ottawa) project, this paper discusses the reform of the international development architecture within an analytical framework of power imbalances and development knowledge hierarchies. It argues for a context-specific and locally driven approach to development, with the knowledge empowerment of the South playing a central role. Hierarchies should be inverted so that the international development architecture becomes South-driven and North-supported. Development cooperation should recognize diversity, accept policy heterodoxy, and be oriented to support endogenous Southern capabilities in development knowledge.
One of major issues to be addressed is the unequal possession of resources/financial capital between the North and the South. This could become a framework to explain the existing power imbalance between the North and the South in which the former still exerts more power to influence and even dominate the latter. The North has more resources or financial capital from which development aid begins, it makes them more powerful in dictating their knowledge and setting their agenda for the South.