Poorer countries have in fact raised incomes, health and schooling by developing

The argument

Those who reject the false-promise view argue that the question is empirical and that the record answers it. Within living memory, countries that were among the poorest in the world have industrialised, moved from exporting raw materials to exporting manufactures and then to higher-value production, and lifted very large populations out of subsistence. On this account the measures that matter most to people living in poverty, such as how many children survive infancy, how long adults live, whether girls are schooled and whether households have electricity and clean water, have improved markedly across most of the poorer world, not only in the few countries usually named as success stories. The second move is to explain the failures without conceding the structure. Where development has stalled, proponents argue, the causes are identifiable and local: war, predatory government, dependence on a single commodity, or policy that protected incumbents rather than building capability. Those are reasons particular countries have not developed, not reasons countries cannot. A structural ceiling would bind everyone equally; what the record shows instead is wide divergence among countries facing the same trade rules and the same lenders, which is what one expects when outcomes turn substantially on domestic institutions and choices. Proponents accept that the international order is unfair and that trade rules, debt terms and intellectual property arrangements deserve the criticism they receive. Their claim is that unfairness is not impossibility. Calling development a false promise, they argue, draws the wrong lesson from real injustice: it concedes that the gains already achieved were illusory, and it discourages the industrial policy, public investment and openness to trade that produced them.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who hold the promise false reply that the cases cited are few and were exceptional in ways that cannot be repeated: they industrialised in a period of expanding world demand, with access to rich markets extended for strategic reasons, and under policies that current trade rules would now prohibit. On this account a handful of passages through the gate does not show the gate is open, and improvements in survival and schooling are real but compatible with permanent subordination in the world economy. The claim at issue, they argue, is convergence, and on convergence the gap between the richest and poorest countries remains wide.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The countries usually cited are few and industrialised under conditions that no longer obtain, with expanding world demand and preferential market access granted for strategic reasons, so they are poor evidence of a path open to all. [Rejecting P2] Improvements in survival, schooling and water supply are real but are consistent with remaining permanently subordinate in the world economy, which is what the opposing position actually asserts. [Rejecting P3] Divergence among countries facing the same rules is also what one expects if only a limited number of places in higher-value production is available, so the evidence does not discriminate between domestic policy and structural constraint. [Rejecting C] The conclusion answers a weaker question than the one asked: whether some countries can develop, rather than whether convergence is available to developing countries generally.