Development Models in Muslim Contexts

This book gains great relevance in the context of the recent Arab spring where democratic uprisings by the people have sought to bring about meaningful socio-economic changes which entail an engagement with different models of development including the Chinese one. Robert Springborg, the editor of this volume, is to be commended for covering uncharted territory. There are many works on the issue of development of individual Muslim countries but there has been inadequate scholarship on the prospects of development for the Muslim world as a whole with specific reference to the Chinese experience. This volume includes contributions of scholars from different disciplines who have examined development in its complexity and appreciated the intricacies involved in the process of development.

The book is organized in three parts with three chapters each. All of the three parts of the book have a specific theme and the specific aspects of the theme are discussed in the chapters of that part. The first part explores the Chinese model in detail and investigates the prospects of exporting this model. William Thrust argues whether it is even meaningful to talk of a Chinese model in the same vein as the ‘Washington’ consensus because the Chinese never proposed an explicit model of development in the same manner as the US did. He proposes that the Chinese model is similar to the famous ‘East Asian Model’ with two additions: its refusal to allow pluralist politics and its dependence on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).