After the MDGs: Citizen Deliberation and the Post-2015 Development Framework

Ethics and International Affairs

Volumn 26, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 113-133

  Wisor, Scott ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84890967300     PISSN: 08926794     EISSN: 17477093     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0892679412000093     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. Richard Jolly, “The MDGs in Historical Perspective,” IDS Bulletin 41, no. 1 (2010), pp. 48–50.
2. For a full list, see United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, The United Nations Development Agenda: Development for All (New York: United Nations, 2007).
3. Jan Vandemoortele, “The MDG Story: Intention Denied,” Development and Change 42, no. 1 (2011), p. 6. In 2005, U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton attempted to eliminate any references to the MDGs in Summit Outcome documents, but after widespread global condemnation, the MDGs were affirmed by President Bush in his speech to the General Assembly in September 2005. Bolton's reluctance must be understood in light of two factors: a strong opposition to the UN and multilateralism in general, and a strong opposition to any obligations that might be incurred by the United States from an endorsement of the MDG framework.
4. Claire Melamed and Andy Sumner, “A Post-2015 Development Framework: Why, What, Who?” Paper prepared for the ODI/UNDP Cairo workshop on a post-2015 Global Development Agreement, October 26–27, 2011 (London: Overseas Development Institute); http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/docs/7369.pdf, p. 4.
5. David Hulme, “The Millennium Development Goals: A Short History of a Big Promise,” BWPI Working Paper 100, Manchester, Brooks World Poverty Institute, 2009, p. 4.
6. The Millennium Declaration and MDGs “represented a hard-won consensus on how to tackle a range of difficult issues confronting the world, not least in the matter of how to promote sustainable development for the world's poor. Within the Declaration, the agreement on a few measurable targets for achievement, in most cases by 2015, was a notable step, and their translation into a structured framework of Goals, Targets and Indicators created a distinctive approach to encouraging development and international support for it.” Richard Manning, Using Indicators to Encourage Development: Lessons from the Millennium Development Goals, DIIS Report 2009:01 (Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies, 2009), p. 5.
7. David Hulme and James Scott, “The Political Economy of the MDGs: Retrospect and Prospect for the ‘World's Biggest Promise,’” New Political Economy 15, no. 2 (2010), p. 294.
8. Charles Kenny and Andy Sumner, “More Money or More Development: What Have the MDGs Achieved?” Center for Global Development Working Paper 278, p. 4.
9. Center for Global Development Working Paper, pp. 4–5.
10. Center for Global Development Working Paper.
11. Manning, Using Indicators, p. 38.
12. Michael Clemens, Charles Kenny, and Todd Moss, “The Trouble with the MDGs: Confronting Expectations of Aid and Development Success,” World Development 35, no. 5 (2007), pp. 735–751
13. William Easterly, “How the Millennium Development Goals Are Unfair to Africa,” World Development 37, no. 1 (2009), pp. 26–35.
14. Ashwani Saith, “From Universal Values to Millennium Development Goals: Lost in Translation,” Development and Change 37, no. 6 (2006), pp. 1167–1199
15. Naila Kabeer, “Can the MDGs Provide a Pathway to Social Justice?” Institute of Development Studies, 2010
16. Phil Vernon and Deborrah Baksh, “Working with the Grain to Change the Grain: Moving Beyond the Millennium Development Goals,” London, International Alert, 2010
17. Manning, Using Indicators.
18. Philip Alston, “Ships Passing in the Night: The Current State of the Human Rights and Development Debate Seen Through the Lens of the Millennium Development Goals,” Human Rights Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2005), pp. 755–829.
19. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, “Reducing Inequality - The Missing MDG: A Content Review of PRSPs and Bilateral Donor Policy Statements,” IDS Bulletin 41, no. 1 (2010), pp. 26–35.
20. The top decile of income earners have 57 percent of global income, and the bottom decile of income earners had 0.6 percent of global income. The bonuses of Goldman Sachs in 2009 equaled the total income of the 240 million poorest individuals. Branko Milanovic, “Global Income Inequality,” INET, 2010; siteresources.worldbank.org/INTDECINEQ/Resources/inet.pdf.
21. See, for example, Frances Stewart, ed. Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008)
22. United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy, and Politics (Geneva: UNRSID, 2010).
23. See Thomas W. Pogge, Politics As Usual: What Lies Behind the Pro-Poor Rhetoric (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010).
24. Vernon and Baksh, “Working with the Grain.”
25. “This explicit inclusion in just two MDGs is too narrow, and sidelines other gender-specific risks and vulnerabilities, roles and responsibilities, and power relations. It is unlikely to lead to gender equality and the empowerment of girls and women, or tackle the development challenges that must be overcome for sustainable poverty reduction. These limitations are compounded by the gender blindness of other MDG indicators, and the fact that the gender dynamics that cut across the goals are relatively invisible in policy dialogues.” Nicola Jones, Rebecca Holmes, and Jessica Espey, “Gender and the MDGs” Briefing Paper 42, September (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2008).
26. Hulme and Scott, “The Political Economy of the MDGs,” pp. 293–306.
27. See, among others, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004).
28. Again, this is for the period 1999 to 2001. The longer-term process of international target setting was more participative. See Fukuda-Parr, “Reducing Inequality.”
29. The contemporary political environment offers both opportunities and risks for securing a post-2015 framework. Favorably, most countries have now accepted the MDGs as a critical component of global development work, most influential donors work from and toward the MDGs, and most (though not all) civil society organizations have come to seriously support the MDGs. For example, in a survey of global civil society activists from the South, 87 percent of respondents supported an overarching global development framework to follow the MDGs. See Amy Pollard et al., “100 Voices: Southern NGO Perspectives on the Millennium Development Goals and Beyond,” IDS Bulletin 42, no. 5 (2011), pp. 120–123.
30. However, there are considerable challenges reverberating through the international system that may make securing agreement on a post-2015 framework more difficult. On the one hand, following the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the continuing Eurozone crisis (whose final resolution is still unknown at the time of writing), governments may be less willing to agree to any framework that may require additional resources for development. On the other hand, the presence or threat of existing crises - e.g., climate, goods, finance, resource scarcity, and so on - and the interrelated and transnational nature of these crises may strengthen the commitment of national governments to a meaningful and potentially binding global development framework. On the political environment today and in 2000 when the goals were agreed to, see Melamed and Sumner, “A Post-2015 Development Framework.”
31. Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 241–242.
32. United Nations General Assembly, Annual Report of the Secretary-General, “Accelerating Progress Towards the Millennium Development Goals: Options for Sustained and Inclusive Growth and Issues for Advancing the United Nations Development Agenda Beyond 2015,” A/66/126, 2011, p. 15.
33. At the time of writing, the United Nations Development Programme is planning to undertake consultative efforts on behalf of the UN, but this is expected to be led largely by country-based UN offices and will not focus primarily on engagement with poor men and women. See Amy Pollard, “Post-MDG Update,” CAFOD policy team blog, January 16, 2012; cafodpolicy.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/post-mdg-update/.
34. My distinction here between extractive and deliberative participation draws heavily on Robert Chambers's work. See, among many other sources, Robert Chambers, Revolutions in Development Inquiry (London: Earthscan, 2008).
35. Fabienne Peter, “Political Legitimacy,” in Edward N. Zalta, ed., Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 ed.); plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/legitimacy/.
36. John Dryzek, “The Australian Citizens' Parliament: A World First,” Journal of Public Deliberation 5, no. 1 (2009), pp. 1–7.
37. For one proposal, see John Dryzek, Andre Bachtiger, and Karolina Milewicz, “Towards a Deliberative Global Citizens' Assembly,” Global Policy 2, no. 1 (January 2011), pp. 33–42.