Developmental Erasure: Political Blame, Institutional Hollowing, and the Developmental Reset in Developing Countries

Development is inherently cumulative, yet political governance in many developing countries remains highly discontinuous. Changes of governments are frequently accompanied by narratives portraying predecessors as responsible for inherited economic, institutional, administrative, and social problems. Legitimate accountability requires investigation of corruption, policy failure, and misuse of public resources. A different phenomenon emerges, however, when successor governments systematically delegitimize, abandon, dismantle, replace, or devalue inherited developmental institutions, projects, programs, and achievements primarily because of their association with a previous political order. This article conceptualizes this phenomenon as developmental erasure and develops Developmental Erasure Theory ( DET ) as a framework for analyzing it. DET extends the author's earlier Democratic Formalism Theory ( DFT ) from democratic institutions to development governance. Whereas DFT explains how democratic institutions may formally survive while their substantive qualities deteriorate, DET proposes that development may similarly continue in formal terms while accumulated developmental substance is progressively hollowed out. Drawing on comparative evidence from Ghana and Peru and contemporary evidence from Bangladesh, the article examines political blame, achievement delegitimization, institutional discontinuity, resource erosion, project abandonment, administrative memory loss, citizen suffering, and declining public trust. It distinguishes legitimate reform from politically motivated developmental erasure and proposes a Developmental Erasure Cycle through which political transition can generate blame, delegitimization, institutional distancing, developmental discontinuity, material deterioration, and eventual narrative confirmation. The article argues that developing countries may remain trapped not only because resources are inadequate but also because political systems repeatedly interrupt the continuity through which resources become cumulative developmental capacity. It concludes by proposing policy mechanisms for protecting public value, institutional memory, project continuity, and democratic accountability across political transitions.