This article begins to examine the history of economic and social ideas launched or nurtured by the United Nations (UN). In 1999, the United Nations Intellectual History Project was initiated, to analyse the UN as an intellectual actor, and to shed light on the role of the UN system in creating knowledge and in influencing international policy‐making: this article is based on the first five books and the oral histories from that Project. The starting point is that ideas may be the most important legacy of the UN for human rights, economic and social development, as well as for peace and security. For the authors, this ‘intellectual history’ provides a way to explore the origins of particular ideas; trace their course within institutions, scholarship, and discourse; and in some cases evaluate the impact of ideas on policy and action.

This article is in two parts. The first part reviews the evolving development theory of the last sixty years and deduces its implications for development aid. The observed changes in development thinking explain in no small measure the amazing shifts in, and accumulations of, aid priorities. The second part moves from theory to practice by looking into the lessons that can be learned from a concrete development success story and reviewing the present situation of development aid, touching on several points made in Jan Pronk's article published in this journal recently (Pronk, 2001). DEVELOPMENT THEORY AND DEVELOPMENT AID CONSEQUENCESWhen development aid started some fifty years ago, the early writers on the subject of development tried to clarify the delicate balance between income, savings, investment and output required to maintain stable growth and full employment. W. Arthur Lewis stressed in his Theory of Economic Growth (Lewis, 1955) that the decisive step in the development process is a 'rise in the rate of productive investment from, say, 5 per cent or less to over 10 per cent of national income'.A number of theorists focused on the difficult questions of how to start economic growth in backward areas, and how -once started-to nurture it. Igniting a process of industrialization became a central concern to these authors whose work has been labelled by catchphrases: 'big push' for Rosenstein-Rodan, 'balanced growth' for Nurkse, 'unbalanced growth' for Hirschman, 'growth poles' for Perroux, 'take off' for Rostow and 'great spurt' for Gerschenkron.Rosenstein-Rodan was probably the first 'modern' development economist. As early as 1943 he argued that investment decisions are interdependent and that -at early stages of development -investment projects are often too risky for individual investors. He came out in favour of the 'big push' development strategy, involving government planning to co-ordinate and provide incentives for simultaneous investment in several complementary industries that would increase both production and the size of the Development and Change 33(2): 247-260 (

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