The Developmental State Is Dead—Long Live Social Capital?

At the same time that the World Bank appears to be going through a process of replacing the Washington consensus with the Post-Washington consensus, the notion of social capital is coming to the fore both in development studies and social science more generally. These developments are closely connected to one another analytically: they are liable to stake out a new development agenda based on new Keynesianism and social capital in place of state versus the market; and they reflect more generally the growing influence of mainstream economics over other social sciences.