Bauer’s famous anti-aid critique relied on generality rather than earlier empirical work

Evidence

But Bauer did not become well-known because of these works, nor did he refer to them later when arguing against state-directed development aid. Instead, he became famous as a critic of overseas aid in a series of essays and books published from the 1960s to the 1980s whose generality and sheer repetition belies the careful argument of his earlier work. Like Jewkes, the forcefulness of his critique of state and economy is inversely proportional to its substantive merits. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 411

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader historiography of how neoliberal development economists gained influence despite weak empirical backing — relevant to this volume’s theme of the network forming through polemic rather than scholarship.