Views on how to bring about economic devlopment have undergone a marked change in recent years with influential economists (Johnson, Bauer, Lal, Little and Balassa) creating a veritable counter-revolution in theory and policy for developing countries. They highlight the failure of development planning, the need to liberalize most restrictions on merkets and insist that governments have failed to intervene with good effect in the process of economic change.

The counter-revolution is now having a powerful impact on Western governemnts. Dilemmas of Development attempts to separate out the elements of common sense in this new appraoch to development policy from some of its more ideological extravagances. It is written in a non-technical style.