This paper elaborates what is to be meant by politics here and goes on to suggest that the politics of growth and development is a special and difficult kind of politics, most dramatically reflected in what have come to be called developmental states. It suggests that only effective states and preferably development ones – whether democratic or not – are capable of elaborating the institutions which will establish poverty reducing growth and associated welfare regimes. But it also argues that building such states cannot be had to order and that their evolution will depend on the political processes that have everywhere and always established them. Current anti-statist and pro-market orthodoxies, though somewhat on the decline, and pro-democratic concerns, do not make building effective development states a straightforward matter. The paper concludes by suggesting that the challenge for donors is a difficult one, but that it is time to start thinking how they move into new areas of assistance and aid so as to be able to invest in, and support, the political processes which contribute towards the negotiated construction of effective developmental states.