Since the 1950s many different theories and development concepts have been addressed to countries with development potential. Many of them competed in terms of assumptions and conclusions on social and economic issues. Theories that held for some time the status of mainstream theory were attacked by competing approaches to development. Hence, successively created theoretical constructions have lost their dominant position and have been replaced by others. It should be emphasized that this process of surrendering successively created theories and models of development followed parallel with the evolution of the meaning of the term of development as well as the approach to the essence of its realization in the nomenclature of economics. Since the 20th century world governments have tried to develop the world's poor countries. They wanted to increase national income, lift poor people out of poverty by finding solution to improve their quality of living. However, there were different ideas how to best develop poor countries. Theory of modernisation stresses the development is unidirectional, progressive, gradual and irreversible. It results from the endogenous factors and determinants of each national economy, thus directing individual societies to the next stages of development. The school of modernization was created by economists from the USA and the countries of Western Europe. This points to the europocentrism of this school of thinking about the development or underdevelopment of backward and / or developing countries. This school presented a natural, evolutionary way of economic development, which is strengthened by capitalism, accumulation, private entrepreneurship and industry. Hence the chance to overcome underdevelopment by backward countries by taking the example of high-developed countries.
The theory of dependency has been introduced as a theory of development that improves Modernisation Theory. The theory baced on the totality of society and social system periphery, which shows the differences between imperialistic and poor countries. Dependency Theory proves these differences by concentrating on regions and structural conditions in different nation states. The theory has revolutionary aspect of social change but Its representatives do not demonstrate the exact result of classical Marxism or Leninism in their evaluation of development and underdevelopment. The subject of research into dependencies is the state and dynamics of the economy and society of developing countries in historical terms. They deny that poor countries should follow the path of development of rich countries. They reject the notion that commercial, capital and technological integration of the periphery with world capitalism is a decisive factor stimulating social, political and economic development. In their view, dependent countries lack the capacity for autonomous self-reliant development and can only grow as a result of the growth of developed countries. Peripheral development is structurally deformed and is in fact underdeveloped. Development is a type of deformed socioeconomic structure that has arisen from the integration of developing countries into the global economic system. According to the theory of world system theory, migration is a natural consequence of the development of capitalism. As mineral resources are depleted in rich countries, and as the cost of home-grown labor increases, companies are starting to look for mineral resources and lower labor costs abroad. This leads to capital migration to poor countries, which simultaneously markets outlets for products from rich countries, and simultaneously triggers migration of the population in the opposite direction. The conceptual basis of the theory of the world system was made in the 1970s by Wallerstein (1974), an attempt to group countries of different levels of development into concentric circles. World Systems Theory uses different levels of quantitative analysis but recognize that there is no set of processes that is adequate to all economies. Globalisation uses a global mechanism of integration with particular stress on the area of economic transactions. The model focus on development whose feature is the spread of capitalism around the world. Instead of the economic, financial and political ties, globalization scholars prove that the main modern elements for development interpretation are the cultural relations between nations. They belive that one of the most important factors is the growing flexibility of technology to connect people around the world. As mentioned above, the theories have common tendency to whittle the problems of development in poor countries. The theories bece more on social, cultural preconditions and prevailing authority relations. They normally fail to consider if governments have an opportunity or political will to implement new assumptions. Lewis Preston (a former president of the World Bank ) said: “Development Theory by itself has little value unless it is applied, unless it translates into results, and unless it improves people’s livesâ€Â¹. The end of the 20th century was a period of great criticism of the concept of development that prevailed over the past decades. As a result of instrumental approach, territorial communities have become the object and not the subject of development. This applies in particular to the inhabitants of underdeveloped regions who are passive spectators of development that are or are being implemented according to the objectivised rules. Deprived of the ability to determine the conditions of their own lives, they have become the subject of social control by the country, international organization or corporations. Criticism refers both to development understood as a social, economic process and development as a task for the state authorities. Post-development theorists could be perceived as uncompromising. Wolfgang Sachs's said that development hidden agenda was "nothing else than the Westernization of the world†or that “the Other‟ has vanished with developmentâ€. Scientists point two groups of factors responsible for Africa’s being in the periphery of the world economy: internal and external. The internal can be related with poor managment, corruption and lack of clear vision in public policies. The external may be associated with something that Sally Matthews calls “post-World War II development†and defines as “the theories and practices which have since the 1950s been associated with the term „developmentâ€.
According to post-development theorists, economyas propeller of development is social construct. ‘Alternative development’ projects aren’t persuasive for post-development theorists. They trust that every idea which tries to soften the hard assumptions of development (for example: ‘sustainable development’) just tries to fix something, that should be completly destroyed and rebuild from the very beginning. I would like to present few evidences of the fall of the ideology of development, as post-development theorists believe. First of all there were a fake assumption that Western societies are standard (en example of well developed state) and reached a peak of human possibilities, as evidenced by the environmental problems (too intensive use of limited natural resources and air pollution). The geopolitical change associated with the disintegration of the bloc system has led to the fact that Truman's 1949 idea of converting colonial states to the path of liberalism and democracy with the strong support of the United States has become obsolete. As well the economical gap between the rich and the poor countries is getting bigger. Wolfgang Sachs writes: “in 1960, the Northern countries were 20 times richer than the Southern, in 1980 46 timesâ€. The idea of development itself was misguided. The idea of development has led to a decline in creativity and no search for alternative development paths labelled by economic growth and industrialization of the West. Sally Matthews notes that even though Africa was included in the development agenda, it was still impoverished. Moreover, what is worth noting, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only area where the trend of growing life expectancy reversed in 1990-95. Changes in social awareness and attitudes have intensified as the effects of environmental pollution in industrialized countries have become more and more visible. Growing concern about this situation and the widespread exploitation of natural resources, uncontrolled, regional demographic and urbanization processes, and potential disruptions of future global economic development have created the need for a global strategy to address these threats. Sustainable development strives to meet the material needs and to equalize economic growth in different regions of the globe. Economic development is no longer an end in itself, but becomes an instrument, among other things. In the fight against poverty. At the same time it must take into account the reduction of negative environmental impact, among others. Through the development of innovation, the introduction of new business models aimed at cost reduction. The goal of sustainable development is good quality of life for all people, both the present generation and the next. People all over the world have the right to have tools and opportunities to shape their own future and self-fulfillment. Access to water and energy, education, work, health care at an appropriate level, preservation of cultural and social diversity should be one of the measures of development. Sustainable development can only be achieved by people living at the right level, in a sense of security, and in the impact on their environment. Natural and cultural resources on a global and local scale are depleted, non-renewable or limited in self-reproducing capacity. At the same time, they are the basis of economic and social growth. The goal of sustainable development is to halt degradation of the environment, preserve the environment, and rational use of it by increasing efficiency through new technologies, the use of renewable energy sources. A significant UN document – The World Summit on Sustainable Development Johannesburg 2002 – is an appeal for further realization of Agenda 21. Chapter IV (devoted to the protection and management of material resources for economic and social development) addresses environmental issues directly. The remaining chapters, designed to work for humanity in the coming years, treat poverty alleviation, care for human health in the context of economic progress, change in unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, geographical sustainability (North-South opposition) and economic ( The problem of the so-called third world) in the age of globalization, and of the institutional framework necessary to change the way we think about the future of humanity. This proves that the idea of sustainable development attempts to appear as an alternative to the current developmental path of humanity, which closes up in the neo-liberal globalization of the past 200 years, a new comprehensive socio-economic project of human development. The post-development critique represents a variety of trends, such as conservative anti-modernization and neo-colonial opposition to state intervention. However, it is possible to overcome them without adopting an extreme post-modernist position, rejecting the value of regional development trajectories and bringing them to parallel narratives. An important characteristic of alternative development strategies in public policy in relation to regions areas is the choice of major approaches for supporting development: the Top-down and the Bottom-up approach. The choice of approach determines the shape of intervention mechanisms and in fiuences the effectiveness of the implemented policy. Bottom-up development plans are projects that are planned and controlled by local communities to help their periphery area. They are not expensive because they use smaller, more specific technology, which the local people will have to pay for. Because the project is on a smaller scale compared to a top-down project, the environmental damage is often much less. Economic growth and sustainability are not mutually exclusive and can be fostered by innovation to which rural entrepreneurs, farmers, and foresters must have access and which may concern technologies, practices, processes, social and organisational matters, and be research driven or based on interactive bottom-up approaches. The bottom-up approach in Europe has been successful, for example, through the village renewal method and community initiative Leader I and Leader II. Top-down approaches are defined centrally and are directed at and across lower (local) levels. They rely on the mechanism of intervention for problems, target groups or areas. However, I argue that a more versatile evaluation of proposals for sharing national efforts also needs to take account of their procedural equity. Top-down proposals frequently provide less clarity than bottom-up proposals on how procedural equity could be assured. Accordingly, a hybrid approach combining elements of top-down and bottom-up proposals may be better suited to advancing both substantive and procedural values simultaneously.