The International Development Studies (IDS) program is designed for those students who wish to take advantage of the resources available at McGill to pursue an interdisciplinary program of study focusing on the problems of the developing countries. IDS Students will follow one of the following streams: (1) Economic Development and Living Standards: Courses in this stream revolve around the factors contributing to sustained economic growth, the trade-offs associated with different ways of achieving it, and the distributional issues development inevitably raises. More generally, this stream is also concerned with understanding what "development" actually entails in different contexts. (2) States and Governance: The courses in this stream focus on how political institutions shape developmental processes. (3) Culture and Society: The courses in this stream focus on how the social structures, history, and culture of populations affect developmental processes. (4) Environment and Agricultural Resources: Within development studies, the environment has long been recognized as a vital determinant of development. This stream highlights the delicate balance that must be attained between humans and their environments to make possible sustainable livelihoods.

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