Divergence, big time to converging divergence: From international to global development?
In a new paper, published in the GDI Working Paper series, Rory Horner and David Hulme argue that the macro-scale map of development has shifted from “divergence, big time” to “converging divergence”, which consequently requires a shift from thinking of international development to global development.
The contemporary global map of development appears increasingly incompatible with any notion of a clear spatial demarcation between First and Third Worlds, “developed” and “developing”, or rich and poor, countries. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed in 2015, have a global focus that represents a universalisation of the challenge of development, a clear departure from the Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs) almost exclusive focus on developing countries. The World Bank declared in April 2016 that it will no longer distinguish between developed and developing countries in its annual World Development Indicators. Although increasingly widespread recognition exists that the distinction between “developed” and “developing” countries is no longer tenable, enormous inequality and unevenness persists, and to some extent is even augmented, under a new spatial configuration of development. What then is the new “map” of development?
The “old” focus of international development was based on addressing what Lant Pritchett referred to as “divergence, big time” – the major departure in terms of economic development between developed and developing countries across the 19th and 20th centuries. “Poor people” were assumed to be synchronous with “poor places”. Various critical scholars questioned this binary, yet it remained dominant. The developed/developing country divide persisted through the second half of the 20th century to such an extent that the MDGS, the major development framing exercise of the late 20th century, were almost completely set within this type of macro-geographical categorisation: they were a rich world product which set targets for poor countries. read more…
Inequality: policy bandwagon or a welcome shift?
The Global Development Institute recently held a workshop examining global inequalities, which brought together four of the Institute’s leading academics to grapple with various aspects of the ‘issue of the moment’. Two central questions were up for discussion:
- Why is inequality important as a conceptual and normative framework?
- Is the current interest in inequality in development a policy bandwagon or a welcome shift?
Prof Armando Barrientos began by remembering Sir Tony Atkinson and Derek Parfit, dearly missed colleagues who passed away in January, and both of whom contributed enormously to the academic landscape on inequality. Prof Barrientos noted that inequality is actually declining in low and middle income countries – and there is a need to look more closely at why that may be. He also pointed out that there is a tendency to assume that whoever demands inequality is in fact egalitarian. Prioritarianism may be the smarter way to go: the worse off people are, the more benefits they should receive. Yet, how those benefits might be delivered is unclear: proponents of global inequality reduction aren’t entirely sure how to achieve it. The best way we currently have through policy is through fiscal policy, specifically transfer systems. Nordic countries excel at this thanks to their progressive systems of transfer and taxation, but these (and personal income taxes in particular) do not exist in developing countries. Low and middle income countries, such as those in Latin America, that have managed to reduce inequality have not done so by altering the taxation system, but by reforming the expenditure system. So one solution may be to say: let’s not bother so much with how we collect taxes, and instead concern ourselves with how we spend it, and let’s spend it very progressively. read more…
The first year of the Global Development Institute
GDI Lecture Series: Development NGOs’ dependence on home government funding with Professor Lauchlan T. Munro
On Wednesday, 16 February, Professor Lauchlan T. Munro gave a lecture entitled ‘Too close for comfort, relatively speaking? Development NGOs’ dependence on home government funding in comparative perspective’ . You can listen to the lecture in full or watch the live stream below read more…
Climate change research based on Dhaka slum showcased at Rich Mix London
Dhaka is on the front lines of climate change, but what does that mean to the people living in its slums? Research into urban climate change resilience, led Dr Joanne Jordan to team up with the University of Dhaka to produce a Pot Gan, a form of interactive indigenous performance theatre, to encourage slum dwellers, researchers, practitioners and policy makers to reflect on the day to day realities of living with climate change in low-income settlements in Dhaka.
Dr. Joanne Jordan’s The Lived Experience of Climate Change project hit the road again recently to bring the stories from Dhaka slum dwellers to a standing room only crowd of 200 people at Rich Mix in east London.
True to the premise of the Pot Gan performances in Dhaka last year, the evening took on an interactive theme, with audience members actively engaging with the personal experiences of slum dwellers affected by climate change. read more…
GDI Lecture Series: Designing Interventions in Developing Water-Energy-Food Systems with Julien Harou
On Wednesday, 8 February, Professor Julien Harou, The University of Manchester gave a lecture entitled ‘Designing Interventions in Developing Water-Energy-Food Systems’. You can listen to the lecture in full or watch the live stream below read more…
Basic income beyond borders – a new mechanism for economic justice?
There’s been lots of discussion recently on the feasibility of introducing Universal Basic Incomes, so we were intrigued to hear that Laura Bannister and Sarah Methven, both Manchester alumni were running a conference to around the idea of doing this on a global, rather than national basis. Here’s their report back from the event last weekend:
Early afternoon last Saturday, the Deputy Mayor of Salford welcomed 130 people to the city’s oldest church for the sold-out first World Basic Income Conference.
The church sits among streets where centuries of boots have marched for workers’ rights, including the infamous ‘Battle of Bexley Square’, which inspired the best-selling novel and play Love on the Dole. This time people had gathered to discuss one of the world’s newest social justice demands. The conference was the first ever to examine proposals for a worldwide basic income, an idea which aims to fight extreme poverty and begin turning the tide on global inequality by directly redistributing money, proposed to begin at $10 per month for every adult and child worldwide. read more…
Free online courses on ‘Water Supply and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries’
Our colleagues in the Alliance Manchester Business School have launched two Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) on Water Supply and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries, taught by Professor Dale Whittington and Dr Duncan Thomas. The courses will also feature Professor Diana Mitlin of the Global Development Institute.
Are these MOOCs free to take?
Both MOOCs will be free of charge for all learners who enroll. There are no prerequisites; both MOOCs are open for enrolment by everyone.
Global decisions and local realities: what drives sustainability standards, and who benefits?
By Aarti Krishnan and Dr Judith Krauss, PhD Researchers at the Global Development Institute
In an era when sustainability has become a buzzword, two key questions arise regarding sustainability standards in global production networks: what drivers underlie the adoption of sustainability standards, and what benefits do they entail for local producers? Looking at both Northern firms and Southern actors, we explore these questions through the cases of fresh fruit and vegetables in Kenya and cocoa in Nicaragua in a research project now published as a discussion paper by the United Nations Forum on Sustainability Standards.
Despite the countries being 8,500 miles apart and farming very different crops, we found considerable parallels between Kenya and Nicaragua: the cocoa and fruit and vegetable markets are primarily buyer-driven and Northern firms delineate what needs to be done to be ‘sustainable’, while grassroots actors (such as farmers) have lower agency and less space to negotiate the terms of sustainability. Different private-sector, public-sector and civil-society stakeholders hold different priorities: their commercial, socio-economic and environmental drivers were so varied as to be partly incommensurable. Lead firms’ push for traceability so as to safeguard food safety for consumers in the Global North took priority over communities’ interests in terms of safeguarding the long-term environmental viability of their cultivation and their socio-economic livelihoods. read more…
The inequality circus: another year, another set of misleading numbers
Following on from Rory Horner’s review of Oxfam’s recent report ‘An economy for the 99%‘, Tanja Müller presents a different view. This post was first published on Tanja’s blog.
No doubt, global inequalities are a serious issue, and they are getting worse in many ways (even if not exclusively so). And, Oxfam seems to have decided a long time ago, it always pays to put a sensationalist twist backed up by numbers on things. Of course Oxfam is not alone here in this area of so-called ‘post-truth’ politics. Remember the Brexit campaign slogan that suggested the UK would send £350m a week to Brussels – and that this sum could in future be invested into the NHS? It later turned out, the ‘Brexiteers’ knew very well this claim was wrong but found it a useful propaganda devise, as it ‘got people talking’, and in this case voting.
The same attempt to grab attention by whatever means seems true for the now yearly ritual of an Oxfam report released shortly before the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos. A couple of years ago, the report made headlines with the claim that 85 people owned as much as the poorest half of the world’s population, this then dropped to 80 and subsequently to 62 people in 2016. In the recent Oxfam report it dropped to eight people. Certainly a number that will get people talking, this new catchphrase that the world’s eight richest billionaires have as much wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest.
For quite some time the way Oxfam comes up with its calculations – which are based on data from Forbes and the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report – have been heavily critiqued (some would say by people who have no interest in addressing the underlining problems of global inequalities, but I think that is a rather cheap shot). And indeed the numbers are quite controversial and often misleading, not least in terms of what is actually being measured and compared as wealth. Then there are those who point out that many of these super-rich in fact give vast percentages of their fortunes away to good causes. In doing so, they show civic responsibility and help make the world a better place in ways party politics can or does not do – while at the same time, one should say avoiding tax payments. I do not support this argument in any way as I have argued elsewhere, as it undermines democracy and any form of political accountability to recruit those who became rich through a system based on global exploitation and tax avoidance to fix the system. But does this justify the hyperbole in the way the state of global inequalities is being represented by Oxfam and the like?
Then there are those who think the controversy over data calculations does not really matter, as the important message is that inequality has reached highly unsustainable levels, and thus the yearly ritual of a new Oxfam catch-phrase headline is a welcome reminder of that state of affairs. Fair point in some ways, as argued thoughtfully by my colleague Rory Horner in a wider piece that reflects on a different economy.
But I beg to differ: language does matter, and so does hyperbole, and populism from the left or for a supposedly good cause is as destructive as populism form the right. It does destroy trust and the propensity to understand real-life problems based on facts, rather than on emotional appeals, and in doing so fosters the echo chamber of one’s own beliefs. In an interview an Oxfam spokesperson blames global inequalities for the rise in contemporary populism – but seems oblivious to the fact that the way its own message comes across is as populist and in many ways misleading.
Which begs the question, why does Oxfam continue to do this? One of its spokespeople told a German newspaper when queried about data calculations that the numbers in themselves did not matter, what was important was the scandal of inequality. But is there no other way to engage with that scandal and build a campaign around it than to use sensationalist numbers, however dodgy they may be? Of course there is, but that would be less flashy and not stick so easily, and ‘get people talking’ in the same way, presumably. Oxfam is, one should also say, by no means the only body who sees grave dangers in increasing global inequality – even publications like the Economist have issued warnings about it for some years now. Maybe, a cynic might suggest, it is the need to stand out in the crowd (and ensure its continued importance) that drives the annual Oxfam ritual? Slogans, in particular when based on imprecise facts, have hardly ever made the world a better, or indeed a more just place.
Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole.