Maybe this picking at too fine a detail in the reading, but I'll go for it anyway. "Development: The Market is Not Enough" argues for a very specific form of government influence in the market to create the infrastructures necessary for overall growth to take place. In order for a government to be successful at this, the authors argue that they must place themselves "above vested interests to help create the social and political infrastructure for economic growth" (FL, 400). This statement is, however, qualified further down the page when he says that governments should distance themselves not from interest groups in general but from "economic interest groups." I find this to be a peculiar idea. It seems that he is saying that only certain interests are legitimate, and that only certain interest groups should be successful. In his earlier section entitled "People Power" he praises the increasing success of "citizen's groups." Are these not simply special interest groups, which he claims the government should distance itself from. My problem with this section is not that he wishes economic interest groups had less power. Great benefits would likely arise from such a scenario. I also agree that more people should become more directly involved advancing their own interests at the government level. I am only critical because the authors seem to ignore the fact that the qualities they praise in the "citizens groups" are also exhibited by economic interest groups. They, like citizens groups, place an emphasis on "initiating and implementing plans, and in exercising control over their own lives." The real problem is that economic interest groups are just better at it. The authors speak of the citizens groups as though they are not also interest groups, and I simply don't see the difference. Politics is a game of competing interests, and "citizens groups" with honorable goals of limiting poverty and/or environmental damage
will quite simply have to learn to compete with economic interests. There is no other way to achieve balanced policy.