Economic development has never been a purely technocratic exercise. While it is often framed in the language of growth rates, productivity, infrastructure, and investment flows, development is also deeply political. In recent decades, this political dimension has increasingly taken the form of “performance” which is the staging, measurement, communication, and symbolic demonstration of economic progress. Governments today are judged not only by what they deliver materially, but by how convincingly they perform development through metrics, narratives, rankings, flagship projects, and carefully curated success stories. This politics of performance has reshaped how economic development is designed, implemented, and perceived, with significant consequences for policy priorities and social outcomes.
At its core, the politics of performance reflects a shift from outcomes to appearances. Development is no longer evaluated solely by long-term structural transformation, such as industrial upgrading, broad-based income growth, or reductions in inequality, but by short-term, visible indicators that can be showcased to voters, investors, and international institutions. Gross domestic product growth, ease-of-doing-business rankings, infrastructure megaprojects, and startup ecosystems become proxies for progress, regardless of whether they translate into durable improvements in living standards. Performance, in this sense, is not deception per se; it is a strategic simplification of complex realities into legible signals that can be politically mobilized.
This emphasis on performance is partly driven by globalization. In a world of mobile capital and intense intergovernmental competition, states feel compelled to market themselves as “investment-ready” and “reform-oriented.” International benchmarks produced by multilateral organizations and private consultancies exert powerful disciplining effects. Governments adapt their policies to improve scores rather than to address local economic constraints. Regulatory reforms may be designed to signal openness rather than to enhance enforcement capacity. Industrial zones may be announced with fanfare while skills development and supplier linkages lag behind. The performance of reform becomes as important as reform itself.
Domestic politics reinforces this dynamic. Electoral cycles reward policies that generate visible, short-term gains over those whose benefits accrue gradually. A new airport terminal, a high-speed rail line, or a technology park offers a tangible symbol of competence and ambition. In contrast, investments in early childhood education, institutional capacity, or rural productivity, though often more impactful in the long run, lack the same performative appeal. Political leaders therefore rationally prioritize projects that can be photographed, inaugurated, and branded. Economic development becomes a stage on which political legitimacy is enacted.
The politics of performance also shapes how success and failure are narrated. When development is framed as a performance, setbacks are attributed to external shocks global downturns, pandemics, geopolitical tensions while successes are personalized and politicized. Leaders present themselves as CEOs of the national economy, claiming credit for growth while distancing themselves from distributional consequences. Inequality, informality, and precarity are often reframed as transitional costs rather than structural features of the development model. This narrative management sustains the legitimacy of policies that may disproportionately benefit elites or urban centers.
However, the performative turn in economic development carries significant risks. First, it encourages policy mimicry. Governments replicate “best practices” from other contexts not because they are appropriate, but because they are recognizable and rewarded by external audiences. Silicon Valley-style innovation hubs, fintech sandboxes, and smart cities proliferate even where basic manufacturing or agricultural productivity remains stagnant. This leads to what might be called “isomorphic development”: economies that look modern on paper but lack deep productive capabilities.
Second, performance politics can crowd out accountability. When success is measured by headline indicators, policymakers face fewer incentives to engage with underlying constraints such as weak state capacity, fragmented labor markets, or unequal access to finance. Data itself becomes politicized. Statistical revisions, selective reporting, and indicator gaming are not anomalies but predictable responses to high-stakes performance pressures. Citizens are left to navigate a gap between official narratives of progress and their lived economic experiences, eroding trust in institutions.
Third, the focus on performance often marginalizes distributional concerns. Growth that is spatially or socially uneven can still be performed as national success. Rising GDP coexists with stagnant wages, youth unemployment, or regional decline, yet the performance remains intact as long as aggregate indicators improve. This disconnect fuels political polarization and populist backlash. When large segments of society feel excluded from the celebrated story of development, they become receptive to narratives that challenge both economic orthodoxy and democratic norms.
Yet it would be misleading to dismiss performance altogether as hollow or manipulative. Performance is an intrinsic feature of politics. Symbolism, signaling, and narrative are unavoidable tools of governance. Moreover, performance can be productive when aligned with substantive reform. Clear targets, transparent metrics, and public commitments can discipline bureaucracies and coordinate expectations. East Asian developmental states, for example, used performance benchmarks not as substitutes for policy, but as instruments to enforce learning, export discipline, and industrial upgrading. The issue is not performance per se, but performance divorced from structural transformation.
The challenge, therefore, is to reclaim performance as a means rather than an end. This requires rethinking what is measured and showcased. Instead of privileging aggregate growth alone, governments could emphasize indicators related to job quality, productivity dispersion, regional convergence, and social mobility. Instead of celebrating isolated megaprojects, they could perform success through credible institutional reforms, such as improvements in tax capacity, regulatory enforcement, or public service delivery. Such performances may be less spectacular, but they are more honest reflections of developmental progress.
It also requires longer political time horizons. Economic development is inherently intertemporal, yet performance politics compresses time into election cycles and quarterly reports. Building cross-party consensus around core development strategies, industrial policy, human capital formation, climate transition, can reduce the pressure to constantly perform novelty. In this sense, institutional stability is itself a form of performance: a signal that development is a collective project rather than a personal achievement.
Ultimately, the politics of performance reveals a deeper tension in modern governance: the need to make complex economic processes visible and legitimate without reducing them to empty spectacle. Economic development must be seen to be working, but it must also work. Bridging this gap is one of the central political challenges of our time. If performance continues to substitute for substance, development will remain fragile and contested. If, however, performance is harnessed to illuminate genuine transformation, it can become a powerful ally of inclusive and sustainable growth.
