Debates in International Development

Debates in International Development Lawrence Haddad Development Studies Association & Institute of Development Studies

Debates
Living with greater uncertainty or temporary crisis or long wave cycles?
Aid is dead, long live aid?
Growth is necessary or merely sometimes helpful?
The end of geography and income in defining international development?
Is citizen-led monitoring desirable and can it work?
Implications for development research

Living with greater uncertainty, temporary crisis or long wave cycles?
Emergence of China and India – growing fast and very big  unprecedented – governance, economic, military uncertainties
Interconnectedness—strong, fluid and fast
Financial contagion, pandemics, Iran
Climate  introducing threshold effects, irreversibilities, framing of development
Will resilience become the predominant paradigm? Diversity, aggregation of niches, versus specialisation?
Or merely capitalism as usual—creative destruction will make it all right and technology will comfortably solve environmental crisis?
Or Kondratieff long wave (25 year) cycles?
spring (exponential growth)
summer (levelling off)
autumn (plateau and consumption orientation, debt build up)
winter (depression, debt no longer sustainable)

Aid is dead. Long Live aid?
Development is mostly defined by non-”Development” actors
Ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs
Militaries, Diplomats, Terror networks
Religions, Faith movements
Businesses
China – many lessons for development
Tax income > aid > resource income – legitimacy of governments
But, Aid has done some good things: schooling, immunisations, pro-poor technology, MDGs. Although very difficult to document impacts.
Aid is stickier that other sources of income in a crisis
Need to begin talking about exits from Aid

Growth – necessary for development or merely sometimes helpful?
Poverty-Growth elasticity declining globally?
Growth failing to “lift the curse” of undernutrition in India
Growth-Environmental tradeoffs more sharp than ever before
But
Wide variation in poverty-growth elasticities by nation
Growth is closely correlated to happiness, below a certain threshold
Growth is more political than ever
More dependent on collective action
Growth diagnostics

The end of geography and income in defining international development?
International Development  Global Development
Global nature of problems and solutions
Find your own way
Kicking way the ladder
South does not have a monopoly on problems and the North does not have a monopoly on solutions?
CCT
Participatory budgeting
Social audits
Or Bottom Billion?
Development is about those trapped in poverty

Can citizens play a bigger role in accountability?
Monitoring of outcomes
Hunger outcomes
Monitoring of markets
Asymmetries, externalities, missing
Monitoring of governments
Rights
Monitoring of aid
Farmer feedback
Monitoring of opinion
Afrobarometer
But
How to get a balanced scorecard of voices?
Methodologies
Manipulation and instability?

Implications for Development Research
Engage the unusual and usual suspects
Go beyond aid
Go beyond “development”
Develop co-constructed multi-sited perspectives
Location of perspective matters
Geography of thought
Peer relationships
Balance engagement and detachment
Be aware of researcher bias
Make it explicit
There are many good researchable issues out there!

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Debates in International Development

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