The discrediting of traditional development economics that has lately taken place, and to which Hirschman made reference, is undoubtedly due to the resurgence of neoclassical economics in recent years
As Hirschman (1981) rightly notes, 'the claim of development economics to stand as a separate body of economic analysis and policy derived intellectual legitimacy and nurture from the prior success and parallel features of the Keynesian Revolution' (1981: 7). The neo-classical resurgence against Keynesian economics was to some extent paralleled by the neoclassical recovery in the field of economic development. The market, it was argued, has the many virtues that standard neoclassical analysis has done so much to analyse, and state intervention could be harmful in just the way suggested by that perspective.