Uncovering Complexity in the Policy Mix for Sustainability Transitions

The primary purpose of this introductory chapter is to raise a question about why the development of the Third World has evolved over the past five decades in a direction that deviates from the developmental path assumed by the orthodox economic schools of thought. The underlying background to this question is that economic growth; normative ideas of equitable, inclusive, and sustainable development; and technological innovation are interacted to jointly shape a country's process of development, which can be contextualised under three broad problems: (1) complexity of the inequality and growth interactions, (2) normative force of sustainability for national development, and (3) radical technological progress in linking between the two development dimensions mentioned in (1) and (2). Synthesising the aforementioned into one core overarching framework, this book employs a mixed methods approach to benefit from greater scope from a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods in the context of a single study—through linking economic growth, inequality, sustainability, and technological innovation in a historical and normative process of development