Center for Ideas and Society

This is the Humanist Achievement Lecture for 2003. An attempt is made, first, to link the end of the European imperial system and the process of decolonization at the end of the Second World War to the growth of development economics as a separate sub-discipline within economics. Attention then shifts to a second political upheaval, namely, the sudden collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and this is linked to the emergence of the economics of transition as another sub-discipline. As a participant in the two intellectual revolutions, I try to convey the sense of excitement that greeted them and the nature of some of the debates that ensued. At the end of the lecture it is suggested that a third revolution beckons us, a revolution that challenges the sovereignty of states and holds out a promise of global democracy and institutions of global governance.