The history of development economics, since its inception, has been one of fads and intellectual bubbles. For decades, the U.S. government and international financial institutions have glommed on to a singular recipe for economic development, convinced that their latest, greatest idea would work. These have included the “Big Push” of massive public and private goods investments back in the 1960s and the neoliberal Washington Consensus that dominated post-Cold War thinking.

The terms used to describe the poorer countries of the world have also changed, from the Third World to emerging markets to the global south. But the faith among development economists that One Economics Recipe Will Rule Them All has persisted.

The history of development economics, since its inception, has been one of fads and intellectual bubbles. For decades, the U.S. government and international financial institutions have glommed on to a singular recipe for economic development, convinced that their latest, greatest idea would work. These have included the “Big Push” of massive public and private goods investments back in the 1960s and the neoliberal Washington Consensus that dominated post-Cold War thinking.

The terms used to describe the poorer countries of the world have also changed, from the Third World to emerging markets to the global south. But the faith among development economists that One Economics Recipe Will Rule Them All has persisted.

In the post-neoliberal moment of 2025, perhaps some epistemic humility is called for in the economics profession. There is now an elite consensus that the neoliberal model of economic development was far too cookie-cutter in its approach—but not much agreement on what comes next.

Perhaps then, the moment has come to return to a more contextual, country-specific approach. Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik has been a longtime fan of this concept, blasting development “big think,” arguing in 2007, “The best-designed policies are always contingent on local conditions, making use of preexisting advantages and seeking to overcome domestic constraints. That is why successful reforms often do not travel well.”

Rodrik has advocated for a return to the ideas of Albert O. Hirschman, one of the founders of development economics and the author of The Strategy of Economic Development, published in 1958. While Hirschman is celebrated for his myriad contributions to the social sciences, his ideas about development economics fell out of favor decades ago. Just before the 2008 financial crisis, Rodrik suggested that this was a mistake: “Hirschman looks less and less the maverick that he fancied himself to be. Conventional wisdom may finally be catching up with him.”

That assessment may have been premature in 2007, but in 2025, it seems trenchant. Hirschman was a big believer in eclecticism in development projects—an idea that resonates with recent social science trends acknowledging the role of complexity. Is it time for a Hirschmanesque approach to economic development? There are reasons to be optimistic —and also reasons to be skeptical.

While Hirschman has been celebrated in the public sphere, the economics profession holds a somewhat more muted view. As

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