Development as Zombieconomics in the Age of Neoliberalism

Development economics is currently dominated by an orthodoxy that is totally intolerant of alternatives and depends upon seeing both economy and society as based upon the incidence of market and institutional imperfections. This is characterised as ‘zombieconomics’ as it feeds in a reductionist and parasitical fashion on more widely cast and methodologically opposed methods, especially those associated traditionally with development studies and the old or classic development economics. This paper explains how this situation came about in the light of the evolution of economics more generally, and explores how development economics has become Americanised, more influential within development studies, policy- rather than critically oriented, and subject to an agenda increasingly set by the World Bank. It concludes by pointing to the challenges and the opportunities open to development studies as neoliberalism experiences a profound crisis to which the new development economics can only offer partial and piecemeal responses.