Sussex Development Lecture, 10 March, David Hulme

Learning from the Millennium Development GoalsDavid Hulme
Creating knowledge to end poverty

Introduction
MDGs – the world’s biggest promise
Complicated history – not planned
MDGs used to achieve many different aims
Strengthen UN credibility
Legitimizing the status quo (de-politicization)
Improve planning and financing of development
Motivating a “results-based” approach
Norm change – “ending global poverty”

MDG Summary
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

MDGs – HD meets RBM in an unfair world
The content of the MDGs is human development(5½out of 8)
But, a minimalist basic needs concept not human rights
The framing is results-based management – goal/target/indicator – a low trust concept
MDGs reflect the IPE of the Millennium – led by rich world with RBM for developing countries but not for rich countries (Goal 8)
MDG focus - ends not means - reflected lack of an international consensus

Contribution and Attribution
“The end of extreme poverty is at hand…the MDGs…are bold but achievable…a crucial mid-station on the path to ending poverty by 2025” (Sachs 2005)
“The setting of utopian goals means aid workers will focus efforts on infeasible tasks, instead of feasible tasks that will do some good” (Easterly 2006)
“The MDGs: ‘M’ for misunderstood” (Vandemoortele 2007)
“I do not believe in the MDGs. I think of them as a Major Distracting Gimmick” (Antrobus 2003)
Attribution paradox – achievement of MDGs mainly because of China and India - where MDGs have least influence/impact!

Understanding the MDGs as Norms
The MDGs were ‘as good as it gets’ in the international political economy of 2000/2001
I argue that the evidence indicates that they have been beneficial overall - but limited impact
The focus on selecting and using them for planning, financing and monitoring is misplaced…’lack of political will’
Analyse MDGs as a vehicle to promote the international social norm of “ending extreme poverty”…to create political will

International Norm Dynamics
Comparisons with abolition of slavery, end of apartheid, rules of war (Fukuda-Parr and Hulme)
Norms can spread across national populations and then countries – can stall and reverse
Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink’s model – 3 stages
Norm emergence, leading to a ‘tipping point’
Norm cascade, across countries
Norm internalization – the norm is applied

Finnemore and Sikkink

Stage I: Norm emergence and norm entrepreneurs
Norm change is driven by norm entrepreneurs with organizational platforms – examples
Jim Grant (ED, UNICEF) – orchestrated the Children’s Summit(1990) & internalisation
NafisSadik (ED, UNFPA) – managed the paradigm shift to reproductive health (emergence)
Clare Short/Utstein Group (cascade and internalisation), Ann Pettifor, Martin Khor, and others
Women’s movement – many norm entrepreneurs who highlighted role of gender inequality in poverty and shaped civil society contributions

MDGs and Norm entrepreneurs (cont.)
These norm entrepreneurs had diverse motivations, but had a commitment to ending poverty as an ethical imperative.
Many advocated a broad, human-centred development paradigm, drawing from basic needs, human development and feminist approaches
Together they drove the UN conference agenda

Message entrepreneurs
The drafting of the OECD International Development Targets (IDTs) in 1996 and the UN’s MDGs was undertaken by a different set of people: message entrepreneurs
These were institutionally embedded and they focused on organisationalgoals.
Message entrepreneurs have personal normative positions, but their primary function is to achieve consensus (a purpose of many intergovernmental organisations).

Message entrepreneurs (cont.)
In the drafting of the MDGs, these message entrepreneurs included:
James Michel and officials at DAC in the mid-1990s
John Ruggie and the Office of the Secretary General of the UN
Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator at UNDP
Usually skilled diplomats and senior bureaucrats rather than economists or development specialists
They turned the UN declarations and conference goals into something acceptable across the 189 UN delegations, the World Bank, IMF, OECD, DAC and UN specialised agencies - the MDGs (2001)
Major negotiations around Goal 8 (in) and reproductive health (out)

Stage II- norm cascade
The MDGs had global consensus, but still the process of cascade was dependent on follow-up.
Obstacles remained - the US was ambivalent or hostile; NGOs criticised MDG content and process of formulation; rich countries keen to avoid Goal 8 implementation
Nonetheless, this was partially overcome. From their launch in September 2001 the MDGs influenced international development events
Monterrey Consensus in 2002 (Bush launches a major initiative)
Brown and Blair used them in the G8 Gleneagles summit and EU Presidency in 2005
Celebrities (Bono, Bob Geldof, and Angelina Jolie) mobilised public support for the MDGs.

Stage III Norm internalization
In policy documents the MDGs appear to have total acceptance – national and donor goals, General Assembly 2005 and 2010.
But, in action (budgets, implementation and accountability) internalization has varied.
UK compared to Italy
Rwanda compared to Zimbabwe
The big success - the MDGs as an emerging EU norm?
For example, the EU required the states acceding in 2002 to increase their aid budgets to 0.33% of GNI by 2015. A commitment to reducing poverty globally is now a requirement of joining the European ‘club’.

MDGs as a Supernorm
Sakiko and I use the concept of the MDGs as a ‘supernorm’ - a cluster of interrelated norms grouped into a unified and coherent framework.
Conceptually, the MDGs constitute a single package; although each of the eight MDGs is important as an individual norm, they are strategic components of the broader supernorm that extreme, dehumanizing poverty is morally unacceptable in an affluent world.

MDGs as a Supernorm (cont.)
The great strength of the MDG supernorm is its communication of a complex set of norms in clear and relatively simple terms.
This is also their great weakness…‘too long’
They skirted around and did not resolve ideational divides within the international community - especially the links between economic and social policy.
Some norm entrepreneurs saw the MDGs as little more than pretence. Particularly with regard to gender issues and international relations (Goal 8).

The Post-2015 Agenda... Post MDGs
2015 will be as complicated as 2000/2001 but very different (the rise of the BICs, energy insecurity, G20, MENA revolution) but also very similar (Doha stalled, climate change stalled, international community fragmented)
Four particular ways in which the post-2015 agenda can maintain the progress achieved by MDGs and improve on it

Post-2015 Agenda - conclusions
From measurement to voice – activate the norm entrepreneurs now
Targets and indicators need to be set at the national level – global targets inappropriate for specific countries and negate ‘ownership’ (and democracy)
Post-2015 process needs to be linked to policies and plans – not a PRS (WB/IMF) and MDG (rest of UN) divide
The Post-2015 Agenda needs to be framed to impact on social norms not as planning tool. How can the global super-norm of the moral unacceptability of extreme poverty be cascaded and internalised…
…stop children dying now…

The Future of the MDGs
The MDGs can be understood as a part of the emergence of a supernorm that sees extreme poverty in an affluent world as being morally unacceptable.
Though far from complete, this is changing norms of international behaviour
Need to frame the post-2015 agenda in terms of norm change

Further reading
David Hulme (2010) Global Poverty: How Global Governance is Failing the Poor, (London: Routledge).
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme, (2011), ‘International Norm Dynamics and the “End of Poverty”: Understanding the Millennium Development Goals’, Journal of Global Governance, 17(1), pp. 17-36.
David Hulme and James Scott, (2010), ‘The Political Economy of the MDGs: Retrospect and Prospect for the World’s Biggest Promise’, New Political Economy, 15(2), pp. 293-306.

Status of the MDGs

Sussex Development Lecture, 10 March, David Hulme

by Institute of Development Studies

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