Dichotomy of development aid’s ambition and neoliberal imperatives: A case‐study of private‐sector development in Bangladesh

Development in the twenty‐first century (“neo‐liberalism”) is a tool and its success and sustainability depend on how this tool is applied on a specific grounded reality. This article investigates how this modernization process continually co‐creates globalized Bangladesh through private sector development. While this field report highlights the challenges development aid donors can face in Bangladesh’s post‐colonial culture, it also unveils the dichotomous traction between globalization and inequality as well as the friction poverty reduction, through private sector development, can generate in impoverished countries. Finally, this report attempts to reconsider the ways in which the aid development ambitions of equality and liberty can find a workable balance with the neo‐liberal Imperative for private sector development. This article calls for improving quality control to generate greater impact of development aid resources in developing private sectors.     

From Schism to Synthesis: The Off‐Centre Radical‐Reformist Role of Development Management

In a wide range of issues such as aid effectiveness, poverty reduction and planning, development management has witnessed a schism between reformists and radicals. This article traces the ‘schism’ between reformist and radical views, critiques their unnecessary dichotomization and proposes an epistemologically‐grounded metaphor for managing divergent ideas. Moving beyond the schism, the article examines current conceptions from Gulrajani that the synthesis should be at the ‘centre’ of the spectrum between radical and reformist frames. The article then proposes an ‘off‐centre’ radical‐reformist synthesis with a less apologetic acceptance of reformist or ‘managerialist’ approaches.     

Managing Development for Results: A Role for Results‐oriented Public Expenditure Management

Can results‐oriented approaches to public expenditure management function in low‐income countries? Do they have a role in securing the implementation of poverty reduction strategies? And can they assist donors in ‘managing aid for results’? Findings from seven countries suggest that they can work in environments with mediocre discipline in budget and public finance management and a degree of uncertainty caused by macroeconomic instability, but not when there is excessive ‘informality’ and instability. With political will and a strong finance ministry, they have proved valuable tools in ensuring the coherent expansion of pro‐poor programmes and their delivery through autonomous local governments. However, they have yet to become effective in improving public administrations' accountability to parliament and to non‐governmental stakeholders.     

Poverty talk: how people experiencing poverty deny their poverty and why they blame ‘the poor’

Drawing on life history interviews with sixty men and women in north‐east England who were caught up in ‘the low‐pay, no‐pay cycle’, this article describes how people living in poverty talk about poverty – in respect of themselves and others. Paradoxically, interviewees subscribed to a powerful set of ideas that denied poverty and morally condemned ‘the poor’. These findings are theorized in four ways: first, informants deployed close points of comparison that diminished a sense of relative poverty and deprivation; second, dissociation from ‘the poor’ reflects long‐running stigma and shame but is given extra force by current forms of ‘scroungerphobia’; third, discourses of the ‘undeserving poor’ articulate with a more general contemporary prejudice against the working class, which fuels the impetus to dissociate from ‘the poor’ (and to disidentify with the working class); and fourth, the hegemonic orthodoxy that blames ‘the poor’ for their poverty can more easily dominate in contexts where more solidaristic forms of working‐class life are in decline.     

The ‘New Minimalist Approach’ to Private‐Sector Development: A Critical Assessment

Recent literature on private‐sector development emphasises the need to establish a ‘level playing field’ and tends to disregard selective supportive interventions. The most commonly highlighted elements are administrative simplification and effective property rights policies, with business services largely left to private providers ‐ what we call the ‘new minimalist approach’ (NMA). However, the NMA is based on certain unrealistic assumptions and is barely backed by empirical evidence. A range of complementary public policies is needed to create competitive sectors and overcome internal constraints, especially in small‐scale economies.     

Will ‘Emerging Donors’ Change the Face of International Co‐operation?

Responding to the recent upsurge of interest in ‘emerging donors’, this article argues that the DAC share of aid is likely to decline only slowly from what is a historically high level, and at least some non‐DAC donors are likely to see DAC approaches and norms as relevant. Nevertheless, low‐income countries seem likely to have a wider range of financing options. Three key risks are that: they prejudice their debt situation by borrowing on inappropriate terms; they use low‐conditionality aid to postpone necessary adjustment; and they waste resources on unproductive investments. DAC members should develop constructive dialogue with other bilateral donors based on recognition that sustainable development and poverty reduction should be the core purpose of aid.     

The Politics of Investment and Growth in Egypt: Experimenting with a New Approach

‘Improve the investment climate!’ is the dominant advice for governments wishing to achieve substantial increases in productive private investment. However, national‐level investment‐climate approaches have been criticised for not paying adequate attention to context and feasibility. This article experiments with a new approach which focuses on sectors and on relationships between policy‐makers and investors, and shows how their common interest helped to overcome obstacles to investment and growth in Egypt. Such public‐private relationships can be abused but they have provided effective transitional arrangements for enhancing investment and inducing a new growth dynamic.     

Markets,Institutions and Technology: Missing Links in Livelihoods Analysis

The benefits of livelihoods thinking and approaches are widely recognised. This article focuses on an important gap in much of the conceptualization and application of ‘livelihood approaches’— a lack of emphasis on markets and their roles in livelihood development and poverty reduction. The omission is important, as it can lead to failure to identify and act on a wider range of market, institutional and technological opportunities and constraints. An alternative conceptualisation is proposed, with markets as one particular set of institutional mechanisms for co‐ordination and exchange in an economy. It is argued that more explicit attention to interactions between institutions, technology and assets in livelihood analysis may be valuable in conceptualising and managing programmes for livelihood development and poverty reduction.     

Child welfare workers’ constructions and causal explanations of poverty

Studying the perceptions of the causes of poverty is warranted because individual perceptions shape behavior toward poor people and actions related to poverty. Prior studies relying heavily on survey methodology fail to capture deeper and fuller meanings participants apply to poverty. This study explores how child welfare workers understand poverty by examining their definitions of, and what they see as causal explanations of, poverty. Individual interviews were conducted with 30 child welfare workers throughout a Midwestern state. Analysis indicated that workers all defined poverty as ‘not getting basic needs met,’ corresponding to the underlying assumptions of absolute poverty measures. Workers simultaneously augmented these definitions using other poverty constructions, namely the federal guidelines and more complex views – conceptually in line with relative poverty measures – that account for factors outside income or consumption. Workers’ causal explanations of poverty were multifaceted. Causal explanations included structural/systemic, individual, family/generational, and luck, with the first three being most prominent. These findings have implications for practice and training in the child welfare system as it relates to poverty.     

Exploring the relationship between poverty,childhood adversity and child abuse from the perspective of adulthood

A recent Australian study of people experiencing poverty, involving in‐depth interviews with 20 participants, suggests that a complex process leading to poverty in adult life can stem from abusive and adverse experiences in childhood. It is considered that these experiences of abuse and adversity may begin a process of ‘negative chain effects’ (Rutter, 2000) resulting in a pathway into poverty caused by ‘accumulated adversity’ (Seth‐Purdie, 2000). The development and maintenance of human capital, defined as the sum of a person's physical, psychological and economic capabilities, are strongly influenced by the extent of adversity experienced over a person's life course, particularly experiences of adversity in early childhood (Seth‐Purdie, 2000). In this paper, the experiences of childhood abuse and adversity reported by the interviewees will be outlined and discussed in the light of theory and research related to development during childhood and adolescence. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Institutions and Policies for Pro‐poor Agricultural Growth

Global experience with pro‐poor growth and empirical work spanning India, Malawi and Zimbabwe demonstrates the importance of agricultural growth for poverty reduction in poor rural areas, while also pointing to the need for complementary non‐farm sector growth. Theoretical arguments, historical evidence and livelihoods modelling in poor medium‐potential rural economies suggest that, contrary to thinking dominating much of current development policy, subsidies to relieve critical seasonal credit and cash restraints and reduce market and input supply uncertainties need to help in ‘kick‐starting’ agricultural markets if increased smallholder productivity in food‐grains is to drive rural non‐farm growth. Establishing the base conditions for these to work, designing and implementing them to be effective, and then phasing them out are major challenges facing policymakers.     

Agents for Change or Conflict?

In today’s Latin America, governments implementing public policies for development and against poverty and inequality meet with social movements that engage in practices for social change, poverty reduction, and empowering. In this context, we analyze the interplay between both processes, describing its conflicts in three specific dimensions: the material, the democratic, and the environmental. Social movements are permanently contesting and challenging public policy when they autonomously appropriate public policy resources; yet, governments respond with criminalization and cooptation strategies. In a setting where social conflict takes place in response to existing poverty and inequality levels, movements challenge development and poverty reduction projects of an ‘assistentialist’ and extractivist nature, and propose an integral understanding of development and the emergence of new relationships among individuals, society, and the environment.     

Poverty Reduction and Growth Interactions: What Can Be Learned from the Syrian Experience?

The aim of this article is to analyse in depth the interactions of growth and poverty in Syria, which undertook reforms to reduce the government's involvement in the economy. During the 1996–2004 period, growth was pro‐poor in ‘weak absolute’ terms but not in either relative or ‘strong absolute’ terms, owing to the increase in inequality. This can be explained partly by tax policies, but also by an unequal distribution of investment at the regional level. There was also a widening of the gap between urban and rural areas, mainly owing to a pattern of growth in which oil played an increasing role and agriculture a decreasing one. Agricultural and land‐policy reforms could have had a negative impact on poverty, despite their positive effect on productivity.     

Can ‘refundable’ state Earned Income Tax Credits explain child poverty in the American states?

This study estimates the effect of ‘refundable’ state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITCs) on child poverty from 1994 through 2003. Research results indicate that a refundable state EITC is associated with reductions in child poverty, holding all other variables constant. For example, states with refundable state EITCs have observed a 40% greater reduction in child poverty rates compared to states without refundable state EITCs. This study also discusses policy implications for implementing the ‘refundable’ state EITC.     

Characterizing private investments and implications for poverty reduction and natural resource management in Laos

We examine the patterns and characteristics of private investment in Laos, and how these evolve in relation to the Lao government's investment incentive policies in particular, and the wider State policies in general. Our goals are to: (1) systematically describe and analyze the patterns and characteristics of private investment in the country, and (2) analyze investment outcomes in terms of economic growth, poverty reduction and livelihoods. We argue that while private investments in the resource sector have contributed to economic growth, they have also negatively impacted local resources and communities. From a policy perspective, we highlight the need to examine the actual significance of policy incentives provided by the Lao government, especially with regard to its ability to direct investment decisions, in terms of both geography and sector.     

Steering the Poverty‐Environment Nexus in Central Asia: A metagovernance analysis of the Poverty‐Environment Initiative (PEI)

The close and reciprocal ties between poverty and environmental degradation present significant potential for simultaneous improvement of the livelihood of the poorest along with increased opportunities and enhanced resilience of the environment and natural resources. By supporting governments and other stakeholders in designing and implementing development plans that tackle environmental and poverty concerns in a joint manner, the globally operating UNDP‐UNEP Poverty‐Environment Initiative (PEI) addresses a major governance challenge for sustainable development (SD) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in particular. Focusing on Central Asia, and specifically Tajikistan, a country outside the spotlight of studies concerned with SD governance mechanisms, and through the analysis of PEI programme documents and stakeholders’ interviews, this article probes into the governance and governance co‐ordination (metagovernance) settings for SD. The article closes by presenting a set of recommendations to improve governance co‐ordination, while achieving more inclusive decision‐making and ultimately increasing the impact of PEI on the society and the environment. Specifically, it argues for improved information policy and enhanced integration of endogenous knowledge. Furthermore, national and local development planning and private initiatives should be better linked, and the different levels of governance for poverty‐environment mainstreaming should be more coherent. The solutions discussed are of relevance for wider Central Asia and the global community engaged in moving the SDGs into the mainstream of governance and policy frameworks.     

Community,the private and the individual

Attempts are being made to associate a supposed ‘return to the private’ with a parallel phenomenon of a ‘return to community’. Both terms, private and community, are central to sociological theory, but are surrounded with confusion and a profusion of historical referents which confirms their importance but obscures their significance. This review of the literature and of the various problematics for which the ‘private sphere’ is a key concept concludes that it is civil society which determines the modalities of discussion as well as the actual degree of autonomy of the ‘private’, and thus that an approach from the side of the ‘private’ (or of ‘community’) can be of only restricted value.     

Women's Work,Dirty Work: The Gynaecology Nurse as ‘Other’

This article seeks to explore the world of the gynaecology nurse. This world defines the gendered experience of nursing; that is, women in a women's job carrying out ‘women's work’. It is also a world that receives scant public recognition due to its association with the private domain of women's reproductive health. Many issues dealt with on a daily basis by gynaecology nurses are socially ‘difficult’: cancer, infertility, miscarriage and foetal abnormalities; or socially ‘distasteful’: termination of pregnancy, urinary incontinence, menstruation and sexually transmitted disease. The ‘tainted’ nature of gynaecology nursing gives it the social distinction of ‘dirty work’ but does not deter the gynaecology nurse from declaring her work as ‘special’, requiring distinctive knowledge and skills. Qualitative data collected from a group of gynaecology nurses in a North West National Health Service hospital displays how they actively celebrate their status as women carrying out ‘dirty work’. Through the use of ceremonial work that continually re‐affirms their ‘womanly’ qualities the gynaecology nurses establish themselves as ‘different’, as ‘special’, as the ‘other’.     

Global Governance,neoliberalism and national responses: The case of Bangladesh’s ready‐made garment (RMG) sector

This article on the ready‐made garment (RMG) sector of Bangladesh shows how over‐reliance on foreign capital for development financing and deregulated investment—a hallmark of neoliberal economic arrangements—undermines the incorporation of SDGs’ and INGOs’ equity principles, contributing to biased policy responses yielding unequal outcomes. The article cautions that while countries prioritize economic growth over social and environmental nourishment and continue to adopt neoliberal economic policies to promote economic growth, inequity is unavoidable, if not inevitable. Thus, the way forward may be to shift the focus of ‘development’ from the economy to society, to building ‘good societies’ where institutions and strategies, including those that contribute to economic growth, are organized such that these complement not compromise the evolution of such societies.