Can we Synthesise Different Development Theories?

Different ideas of 'development' provide different recommendations for socio-political action. Because of this self-evident fact, an attempt is made to bring together antagonistic systems of understanding of 'development' from an evolutionary perspective in a discursive manner, ultimately to gain greater acceptance for the resulting basic strategies in different camps. Attitudes that are either optimistic or critical regarding the chances of 'development' (so-called 'preanalytic visions') are described on the basis of (i) literature (Section 2) and (ii) data (Section 3) and the resulting recommendations for action are compared with each other.