Today's date:
 
Fall 1996
• POST GLOBALIZATION
• COMMENTARIES 2001-2007
• MADE IN CHINA
• THE TWO SOULS OF TURKEY
• THE NEW GLOBAL CINEMA
• MAKING GLOBALIZATION WORK
• DE-GLOBALIZE THE JIHAD
• THE THIRD WAVE'S THIRD WAY
• PLANET OF SLUMS
• THE GLOBAL IDEOLOGY
     OF FEAR
• THE OTHER
• POST-NATIONAL
    LITERATURE
• COLLAPSE OR MASSIVE
    CHANGE?
• THE RISE AND FALL OF
    AMERICA'S SOFT POWER
• THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION
• PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
• THE HEADSCARF CONTROVERSY
• SCULPTURE AND THE
     NEW SCIENCE
• BIOTECH AND THE
     NEW BABEL
• WAR THROUGH THE
     BACK DOOR
• ANTIAMERICANISM
• THE RISING SOFT POWER
     OF CHINA & INDIA
• THE BUSH DOCTRINE
• FAIRNESS IN A FRAGILE
    WORLD
• AMERICA'S MIGHT
• ISLAM IN THE 21ST CENTURY
• ANTIGLOBOS
• HOT PEACE
• MODUS VIVENDI
• LOOKING NORTH
• FROM WELL HAVING TO
     WELL BEING
• POST-HUMAN HISTORY
• GLOBAPHOBIA
• THE GLOBAL MIND
• AFTER KOSOVO
• FROM VIETNAM TO KOSOVO
• DEGLOBALIZATION?
• THE RISE OF THE MEDIA-
    INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
• BOOM [NUCLEAR] AND
    [BUST] ECONOMIC IN ASIA
• BEYOND CAPITALISM
• ASIAN CRISIS
• CHINA: THE ASIAN
     RENAISSANCE
• SLOW IS BEAUTIFUL
• ECLIPSE OF THE BIG
    PICTURE
• AFTER THE END OF
    HISTORY
• THE EAST IS RED AGAIN
• HALF-A-HEGEMON
• THIRD WAVE TERRORISM
• HEIMAT
• Fall 1987
• Winter 1987
• Spring 1986
• Fall-Winter '84-'85
• Spring 1984


Freedom Favors Development

Amartya Sen is the author of this piece. This piece is an update and revised version of a paper, "Freedoms and Needs" that originally appeared in The New Republic.

Harvard - Something of a "general theory" of the relationship between political liberty and economic prosperity has been articulated in recent years by that unlikely theorist Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore. He is not alone in praising the supposed advantages of "the hard state" in promoting economic development literature. Even the sagacious Gunnar Myrdal's extensive skepticism, in Asian Drama, of what he called "the soft state" has sometimes been interpreted (rather unfairly to Myrdal) as a celebration of political toughness in the cause of good economics.

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