The challenges facing humanity today—environmental degradation, climate change, energy crisis, care crisis, structural reproduction of inequalities, violence, demographic transitions, unprotected migration, and other major global problems, exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic—demand the contribution of all of society, grounded in an ethic of life and solidarity. The need to reverse negative trends such as the extreme concentration of capital is imminent. In 2021, it was estimated that the richest 10% own 65 times more wealth than the poorest half of the population in the least unequal regions of the world, and 100 times more in the most unequal regions. (Chancel, et al. 2022).

According to forecasts made in early 2022, the number of people living in poverty would increase by more than 60 million compared to 2019, due, among other causes, to the loss of 137 million jobs compared to pre-pandemic levels (Raschid, 2022). In Latin America, during the first quarter of 2022, the employment rate for women was 23% lower than that for men, and the youth employment rate was almost 21% lower than that for adults (Maurizio, 2022). According to global statistics, the sixth mass extinction of species is underway, with a 68% decline in vertebrate populations, the loss of half of the world's coral reefs, and other species facing extinction, including half a million insects. This has repercussions for food security, access to water, habitat safety and well-being, climate change mitigation, and more (WWF, 2020).

In academic, governmental, union, political, and activist spaces, among others, these challenges are reflected upon as critical issues of development, leading to different positions: advocacy, reinvention, and even denial of development. The truth is that, in its name, a diversity of policies, strategies, plans, programs, and projects have been designed and implemented, with divergent content and contrasting results: from high human development indices in some societies to the underdevelopment dynamics that the peoples of Latin America continue to experience, subject to the conditions of globalized production, as discussed in the Working Group on Caribbean Critical Thought on Race and Racism; or the dehumanizing acceleration, commodification, Westernization, and health dependency as discussed in the Working Group on International Health and Health Sovereignty; or the plundering of common goods and the coloniality of territories as problematized by the Working Group on Territorialities in Dispute and Re-existence. Despite the existence of a well-founded Latin American critical thought that avoids including development in its debates, it retains a central importance on the agendas of international organizations, national governments, social organizations, and academia. For this reason, the debate on this topic cannot be considered exhausted.

This proposal attempts to problematize the views on development held by different subjects, in particular how they connect it with social justice, equality, sustainability, systemic crises, as well as what conditions would foster a dialogue - if it were possible - between subjects as diverse as governments, academia, social movements, non-governmental organizations, political parties, among others, to translate these visions into public policies.

Over the past decade, numerous calls for dialogue have been made for peace processes in Colombia, between the Chavista government and the opposition in Venezuela, and between the Ecuadorian government and COANIE; as well as environmental dialogues for the defense of peoples and nature, dialogues of civilizations for global balance, dialogues on food systems, the right to the city, addressing structural racism, overcoming multiple crises, care work, water and sanitation in rural areas, sustainability, policies for social equality, and international migration, among others. However, these dialogues have not always resulted in effective policies aimed at genuine social transformation, policies that have taken into account the demands of the diverse groups that make up our societies and alternative proposals for how we should develop.

Given the ineffectiveness of traditional policies addressing poverty and inequality as structural obstacles to development, or the lack of social policies focused on migration, the Working Group "What Development? Academia-Politics Dialogue" identified the need to promote alternative approaches and methodologies in the development of policies at different scales, particularly those aimed at different social groups: returnees, migrants and their families, asylum seekers and refugees, impoverished people, people in situations of multiple vulnerability, and people affected by intersectional inequalities, among others.

This entailed a critical review of the ways of engaging in dialogue, beginning with those who promoted the proposal. In the case of academia, missions have been assumed such as overcoming the coloniality of knowledge (de Sousa, 2010); the integration of knowledge for a greater explanatory, interpretive, and transformative capacity regarding realities and problems that, according to Morin (1999), are increasingly transversal, multidimensional, transnational, global, and planetary; the capacity for constructive dialogue with politics; the dialogue of knowledge among different disciplines, with other forms of knowledge—popular, artistic, religious, and other beliefs—diverse cultures, and dissimilar actors; always with the aspiration that such exchange be characterized by horizontality, recognition, and respect.

In the action research of the aforementioned Working Group, as in others, progress was observed in the promotion, organization, and implementation of dialogue spaces between 2020 and 2022, with politically relevant results. Examples include the design of municipal plans for Quetzaltenango and Huehuetenango that incorporate the right to migrate in Guatemala (Palma and Dardón, 2022); the design of the policy for addressing situations of vulnerability and the macro-program for human development, equity, and social justice in Cuba (Fundora and Zabala, 2022); and the design of the Comprehensive Affirmative Approach of the Program against Racism and Racial Discrimination in Cuba (Espina et al., 2021), among others. However, the challenge remains to generate dialogues that contribute to more comprehensive and systemic changes, revolutionizing conceptions and models of development. Hence the need to articulate different spaces for dialogue, subjects, agendas, and policies, for an influence that promotes multidimensional transformations in accordance with more emancipatory paradigms.

It is in this context that a challenge is assumed: How to promote dialogues (actors, methodologies, agendas) that go from changing specific policies to transforming the set of public policies, and at the same time contribute to transforming development models?

This proposal, in line with CLACSO's objectives, aims to contribute to promoting sustainable policies in economic, social, and environmental terms; to link social research with public policies and other transformative actions self-organized by social groups; to contribute to debates on these issues; and to train diverse stakeholders. Several working groups have contributed to this topic. The distinctive feature of this proposal is its multi-stakeholder and multi-level dialogue, which will generate policies that are coordinated and have an impact on dominant development paradigms.

The existing theories on development are diverse. This polysemy has been reflected in the ways of grounding development models and actions for their implementation. Travela (2022: 197) problematizes this plasticity of the concept, with a reflection from Palacios (2018): “Could it be argued that development has become an empty signifier, which acquires meaning and identity within political discourse, allowing for an appropriation of discourse, recreating community, and becoming complete with content depending on the subject and the purpose of its use?”

Hence the competition among currents of thought within Latin America to envision future horizons from the perspectives of post-development, buen vivir (living well), and alternatives to development. But can we turn our backs on a category and phenomenon that continues to be part of discourses, agendas, and action plans by the most diverse actors in our territories? Is transformation possible only by constructing parallel narratives in a field rife with disputed meanings?

For over a decade, epistemologies from the Global South have called for a return to the vanguard in the field of categorization, not only by creating new perspectives or positioning discourses that had been rendered invisible for centuries in academic and political spaces, but also by constructing counter-hegemony from signifiers that hold strength and power in the daily lives of our societies. This is a task that requires courage, prudence, and perspicacity, but it is not impossible.

“For a long time, critical theory had words that were only used by critical theorists, thinkers of alternatives. We are talking about words like: socialism, communism, class struggles, reification, commodity fetishism, alienation; these were words of critical thought. In the last thirty years, critical theory has been losing all its nouns until it is now left with adjectives. (?) if conventional bourgeois theory speaks of development, we speak of democratic, sustainable, alternative development; if conventional theory speaks of human rights, we speak of collective, intercultural, radical human rights (?) Of course, nouns are not the property of bourgeois or conventional knowledge and thought (?)?” (Souza, 2010: 14 and 15).

In this Working Group's proposal, we want to take on the challenge of working with the category of "development," the meanings attributed to it by different social actors, and above all, the policies designed and implemented in its name. This is an area where the struggle over meaning takes concrete form, with repercussions for all aspects of life.

Development policy is defined by some authors as the "broad and complex set of policies and legislative and executive measures aimed at achieving specific goals that first limit and then break the chains of dependency. Development policy integrates, among others, social, educational, scientific-technological, cultural, investment, and technical and productive resource structuring policies. The purpose is the creation of a new society; hence, revolutionary transformations constitute social accumulation." (Bell and López, n.d.: 8 and 9).

This approach opens the door to new debates that we intend to develop within the framework of the Working Group. One key idea of ​​this perspective is the interconnection between different areas of public policy, aimed at subverting the dominant order. Other perspectives consider that this articulation is achieved through social policy in a more generic sense. “To think of social policy as an integral part of development means assuming that its projects, programs, and actions are a necessary, indispensable, and priority investment. It is to invert the equation in which social development arises naturally from economic growth, by removing social policy from its traditional position as subordinate to economic policy.” (Tavares, 2011: 72). Along these same lines, and emphasizing the existing interdependencies between social policy and development, Cuban authors point out: “Social policy is part of the development strategy and, at the same time, an effect of it.” (Espina and Valdés Paz, 2011: 14)

This policy integration exercise can be carried out by an academic team that articulates different proposals in a text, or it can be deployed in spaces of dialogue where multiple knowledge, interests, conceptions and experiences converge, allowing progress in a creative, liberating, and engaging way.

We maintain the premise that, in order to advance a conception of development and its operationalization and realization in a comprehensive development policy that truly has an inclusive and sustainable focus, and the emancipatory force demanded by Latin American critical thought, it is necessary to experiment with new types of dialogue that guarantee the effective participation of invisible, excluded, marginalized, or inferiorized groups; of different scientific communities; of governmental districts; and others. Hence the relevance of working with multi-stakeholder and multi-level dialogue.

Multi-stakeholder dialogue is understood as a process of building shared meanings from the identification and participation of key actors from different sectors (social, private, public) who are convened through various instances and/or mechanisms of research, periodic and institutionalized dialogue (direct consultations by face-to-face or virtual means, participatory tables, forums, others) to problematize issues, identify priorities, propose solutions (based on information, analysis and evidence) and make decisions based on putting common interests before particular ones with emphasis on the identification of needs of population groups that are in a situation of vulnerability.

Multilevel dialogue refers to the need for participation and institutional coherence at and between territorial and administrative levels in both the design and implementation of public policy in a country (depending on the country, different levels can be identified: national, departmental, municipal, and community). This participation includes inter-institutional dialogue (among various government institutions) and inter-sectoral dialogue (among public institutions (government), business and civil society organizations, and cooperation agencies).

This proposal, resulting from the experience of the Working Group What Development? Dialogue between academia and politics between 2019 and 2022, aims to respond to identified needs: to study the social and political contexts in Central America and the Caribbean, as a frame of reference around the analysis of development policies; as well as the need for critical reflection on the identification of "social subjects" in differentiated contexts, especially those who are in a vulnerable situation.

On the other hand, opportunities are also conceived in a way that multiplies progress and achievements:

? To strengthen the exchange of methodological experiences for the development of sustainable and inclusive development policies.

? To strengthen conceptual analysis in action research processes, social participation and participatory construction with a multilevel and multi-actor approach for sustainability and inclusion.

? To engage in dialogue with various Working Groups that include in their research, training and management processes the analysis of development policies (education, health, work, diversity, Afro-descendants, childhood and adolescence, migrants, disability, LGBTIQ+, others).