Donors and Disciplines Meet the Political Economy of Development

The Contested Evolution of Political Settlements Analysis

Bibliographic Data

ID7165357
AuthorsPritish Behuria (0000-0003-3743-2045, Pritish Behuria is the corresponding author () and is affiliated with the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, England M13 9PL, UK., corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume25
Issue2
Pages79-102
Publication date2025-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueProgress in Development Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9934 • E-ISSN: 1477-027X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/14649934251322274
OpenAlexW4408824176
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited134

Over the last two decades, political settlements analysis (PSA) have been widely published in academic journals and been influential in development programming. This article is based on a review of 75 peer-reviewed publications employing PSA across social science journals. In line with existing research, it identifies two schools of PSA research. First, an ‘originalist’ approach that aims to expand the historical materialist and structuralist roots of PSA, initially developed by Mushtaq Khan. Second, ‘revisionist’ approaches, which dissent from Mushtaq Khan’s original work while aligning with mainstream approaches to varying degrees. Such ‘revisionist’ approaches are not entirely unified and show both dissent from and alignment with dominant New Institutional Economics and Good Governance approaches. Building on Michael Polanyi’s analysis of how scholarly communities are captured by incentives to both show dissent from existing scholarly work and show alignment with dominant framings, this article evaluates how such tensions have evolved within the PSA literature. PSA is an example of an approach that was originally established in opposition to neoclassical economics. However, revisionist PSA approaches have brought more popular interpretations of PSA in line with mainstream understandings, hoping to build a consensus, while the structuralist roots of PSA have been obfuscated

Economics · Economy · Geography · Human settlement · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · International Development and Aid · Law · Natural Resources and Economic Development · Religion, Society, and Development