ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: “Peaceful Coexistence” and “contradictions of the development in industrial societies”: François Perroux’s original perspectives on Development Economics and International Political Economy in the 1950s
Author: Cunha Alexandre
The paper reflects on the economic ideas developed by François Perroux in the context of rearrangements in the international political and economic level in the post-World War Two. The main concern is in explaining how Perroux’s reflection on the European states within this political and economic context shapes a deeply original thinking with implications for the fields of development economics as well as international political economy. One of the central dimensions of the political and economic reorganization of Europe in the post war is precisely the basis for the process of economic integration of the continent, first with the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and finally with the configuration of the European Economic Community (EEC) with the Treaty of Rome in 1957. This context of the 1950s was a decisive moment in Perroux’s personnel reflection, stimulating the production of a critical and provocative work on the process of integration that contains an unique reflection on the economic development and international economic relations rooted in the application of his domination effect analysis focused on the disparities and inequalities between nations. This is presented in his books L’Europe sans rivages (1954) and La coexistence pacifique (1958). And it is exactly this perspective that would be unfolded for beyond the European continent in an analysis of the “underdeveloped” world in books such as L'économie des jeunes nations (1962). It is within this framework of a “dynamics of inequality” applied to the international context that is possible to characterize the originality of his visions on economic development. But it also includes a connection with his humanistic perspective, already well developed in his work during the 1940s, and that is also part of his long continued effort in reintroducing human agent in all its implications in general equilibrium. The present paper is dedicated to organizing this set of issues, dispersed in different parts of his extensive work, in order to offer a reflection on the originality of the contribution of Perroux during the 1950s to the fields of economic development and international economic relations.
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