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A Morphology Of Liberalism, Development And Trusteeship: Some Implications For South East Asia, Trevor Parfitt

Asian Review

This paper will apply Freeden's morphological approach to the analysis of liberalism and development to explore the centrality of trusteeship (as defi ned by Cowen and Shenton) in both modes of thought. There is an intellectual kinship between development as an idea and liberalism in that both emerged from a Western Enlightenment context that emphasized progress and the prospects for human development through the growing influence of rationalism and the application of scientific method to human endeavor. Both development thinking and liberalism bear the imprint of these influences, one of them being that of trusteeship. The morphological approach will be …