Critical transformations and global development: materials for a new analytical framework

This paper addresses the disconnection between current analyses of global development and 21st-century developmental realities. It argues for a reworking of the development sciences on the basis of ‘transformation analysis’, attending, in particular, to those phases in longer-term social change that it characterizes as periods of ‘critical transformation’. Taking ‘the global’ seriously as an analytical category, it argues for an innovative development science capable of application in both the ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ worlds, and thus of yielding more appropriate practical and policy guidance. The paper briefly explores the empirical utility of transformation analysis by attention to the recent development histories of Hungary and Malaysia.