Soc Indic Res (2013) 113:609–625 DOI 10.1007/s11205-013-0292-0
New MDGs, Development Concepts, Principles and Challenges in a Post-2015 World Elaine Unterhalter • Andrew Dorward
Accepted: 16 November 2012 / Published online: 10 April 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract As we approach 2015 the question of what, if anything, should replace the MDGs becomes increasingly important. This paper presents findings from studies on the implementation of the poverty, education and gender MDGs in Kenya and South Africa. These show how top-down processes associated with meeting the MDG targets led by government or large NGOs are disassociated from bottom-up engagements with gender, education and poverty by households or communities. A missing middle linked with professional action by teachers or civil servants and enhanced information flow means that groups from the top and the bottom talk past each other. We therefore argue that these experiences with implementing the MDGs, coupled with a variety of global changes since 2000s, mean that a major concern in developing a set of post 2015 goals is the need to address the disarticulation between ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ approaches in international development. We link this challenge with five principles put forward for post 2015 goals and indicators: holism, equity, sustainability, ownership and global obligation. The application of this approach to work on goals and targets is illustrated in relation to nutrition/food security and secondary education. Keywords Millennium development goals Development principles Development coordination Food security Secondary education
This paper is a development of ideas initially formulated by colleagues participating with us in The Lancet MDG project led by Jeff Waage at the London International Development Centre (LIDC) (see Waage et al. 2010). In taking some of these discussions further, we want to acknowledge the insights we drew from work with other co-authors of the commission and the issues highlighted by participants in a seminar on future MDGs which took place at LIDC in February 2011. E. Unterhalter (&) Education and International Development, Humanities and Social Science, Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK e-mail:
[email protected] A. Dorward Development Economics, SOAS, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, UK
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1 Introduction The MDG summit in September 2010 was associated with the publication of an enormous volume of literature reviewing the MDGs. Some of this considered the MDG targets in particular countries, a key remit of the UN’s own reports (for example United Nations 2010), some reviewed whether or not the MDG goals and targets were appropriate for particular development issues, with equity often identified as the key missing MDG (for example Fukuda Parr 2010; Kabeer 2010), and some outlined the history of the MDG process considering this an important element of assessing any future framework (for example Manning 2009; Vandemoortele 2009; Sumner and Melamed 2010; Hulme 2008). As part of this discussion we contributed with colleagues at the London International Development Centre to work on a cross-sectoral analysis of principles for goal setting after 2015 (Waage et al. 2010). This study had some different emphases to other work analysing the decade long experience of the MDGs in that it paid attention to how the MDGs had worked in particular sectors, such as education, maternal health, and poverty reduction, and whether the promise associated with bringing all these different processes of social development together had been adequately supported. In it we examined both strengths and weaknesses of the MDGs and identified their fragmentation as a major problem in two ways: first, synergies could not be realised because different MDGs were disarticulated from each other, and second, some important issues had no MDG or target. Underlying this problem we argued were two wider problems. Despite the rhetoric of the Millennium Declaration, the MDGs had evaded making a normative statement about development, thus the goals and targets appeared arbitrary and associated with sectional interests. For example, despite the wide-ranging concern of the Millennium Declaration with freedom, equality, tolerance, solidarity, respect for nature, and shared responsibility, and its commitment to support completion of primary schooling for all children and to ensure girls and boys having ‘equal access to all levels of education’ (United Nations, 2000 paragraph 19), MDG2 narrowed this to merely achieving universal primary education without engaging with any of the substantive values the Millennium Declaration indicated should characterise that education. This was accompanied by indicators based on existing measures by UNESCO of net enrolment rates, progression and literacy (UNESCO 2010) and limited engagement with the complex processes that might be entailed in measuring equal access to all levels of education. Waage et al. (2010, 34–44) show how this kind of process was a feature of all eight MDGs. This placed obstacles in the way of co-ordinated actions to initiate wider processes of change. In addition, a point observed by many commentators (e.g. Bond 2006; Hulme 2008; Fukuda Parr 2010), the MDGs had not emerged from a popular process of reflection and debate: some MDGs, such as MDG 6 on HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB and MDG 2 on education were owned by sectional constituencies, some, such as MDG8 on a global partnership for development had no advocates, but few elicited a sense of shared ownership (Waage et al. 2010, 6–15). In order to overcome this problem we argued for trying to develop a normative orientation to development and to identify principles that could guide a process of deliberation and discussion in setting future MDGs. In this paper we revisit this conclusion. We consider first what we see as a common stream in emerging challenges and opportunities in the post-2015 world, that is a disarticulation between on the one hand a top-down need for regulation, resource allocation and co-ordination and, on the other hand, a bottom up need for participation with attention to small groups and communities or individuals, and a stress on agency and local processes of meaning -making. These two approaches generally tend to talk past each other (see for example Dorward 2009). This creates a very difficult terrain for developing a path to a post
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2015 agenda. We then explore this issue by reflecting on the conclusions from a recently completed study which found this disarticulation to be a major difficulty in the implementation of MDG1, 2 and 3 in Kenya, South Africa (Unterhalter et al. 2011; Unterhalter. 2012a). We highlight how this disarticulation means there is a limited policy vocabulary available to people who will implement any future MDGs. Building on the analysis of this data we review the five principles developed by the Lancet Commission (Waage et al. 2010), regarding an approach to developing goals beyond 2015, discussing how they too can be interpreted to blur the connection between regulation/co-ordination and participation/agency. We conclude with some suggestions for specifying forms of connection that do not talk past each other with a dichotomous ‘either/or’ kind of analysis. In arguing for a ‘both/and’ approach we sketch how this process might have a bearing on discussion of two candidates for future MDGs—considering first nutrition and food security and then universal secondary education.
2 Challenges and Opportunities in a Post-2015 World The MDGs emerged at a time of considerable confidence in global projects. They came at the end of a decade of global convening which had begun with the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992 and ended with the MDG Summit in 2000. Over these 10 years global gatherings adopted Declarations on many issues including women’s rights, population, race and ethnicity, education, social development, and HIV. In many areas the process of building global networks across state boundaries connecting governments and civil society offered a positive alternative globalisation. This aimed to develop arguments and practices countering the heedless and often harmful growth associated with the easy flows of money, goods, and certain kinds of labour (Fisher and Ponniah 2003; Held and McGrew 2007). Visions of other kinds of global relationship developed in the 1990s and later thus came to take different forms: some were associated with human development and a challenge to the staggering inequalities of the global age (for example Alkire 2010; Deneulin and Shahani 2009), some with complete rejections of the market (for example Hardt and Negri 2001), some with dissolving existing formations of power (for example Gaventa 2007) and some with re-orienting the UN system (for example Hettne 2010). However, all were predicated on an assumption of continuing economic growth, whether this was seen as problematic or as potentially beneficial if adequately regulated and distributed. All were also largely associated with ideas of a redistributive state linking national versions of social justice to a global variant, be this associated with improved global relationships to enhance the flow of aid or better functioning of global systems. Many built in the significance of participation and bottom up approaches. However the nature of the articulation and connection between forms of global regulation, resource allocation and co-ordination—the ‘top-down’ problem—and the articulation of sectional or subordinated interests—the bottom-up problem—was not very much considered. These aspirations, nurtured in the afterglow of the fall of the Berlin Wall, were battered by a number of shocks, each of which may be analysed in terms of certain failures of regulation and of global structural power, inadequate processes for democratic deliberation that takes account of marginalised interests, and the limited and often hostile connection between the two (Shapiro 2007; Germanin 2010; Posner and Vermeule 2011; Baldwin et al. 2012).
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These shocks included the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq undertaken in response to the 9/11 attacks in the USA in 2001, those associated with the 2008 economic crisis (with associated greater perceived vulnerability to global price fluctuations) and others loosely grouped together as environmental. The conduct of these wars, the cuts in public expenditure in response to the 2008 and subsequent economic crises, and apparent state failures in making investments to protect citizens from environmental hazards called into question many assumptions associated with the nature and limits of liberal democracies’ and particular forms of capitalism in serving social interests. Long term trends which also contribute to the less optimistic background to the current conjuncture are continuing inequalities within and between countries, climate change, and concerns with population growth and food supplies. In response, there is both an acknowledgement that global regulation, co-ordination, resource flows and redistribution are vital, and at the same time a recognition that co-ordinated global settlements are extremely difficult to achieve. While advocacy for more participation and democratic deliberation on these issues is widespread, discussions abound regarding how to ensure empowerment, agency, representation and equity (e.g. Cornwall and Brock 2005; Bond 2006; Fowler and Sen 2010). These problems are illustrated in the tortuous process of trying to secure agreements on cutting carbon emissions and on rebalancing global trade in favour of developing countries. While many governments, bilateral and multilateral organisations found it difficult to deliver on the promises of the 1990s, partly for these reasons, but also because of many other national and international processes, the locus of power is no longer only concentrated in North America and Western Europe, but is moving east and south. The vigour of the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian economies identify these as significant players in the post-2015 world. Their emerging power then has complex and uncertain impacts on international debates and negotiations on global injustices and on stances on the dichotomy between ‘top-down’ regulation-co-ordination/resource allocation approaches to policy as opposed to more ‘bottom-up’ approaches concerned with participation-difference and agency. However, while assessments of political economy point to bleaker visions for the post2015 world, assessments of socio-cultural developments are more optimistic. The numbers of children out of school are decreasing, while the numbers staying in education up to tertiary level are increasing. Although patterns of enrolment, retention and attainment tend to reproduce the socio-economic inequalities of most societies, the huge growth of young people educated to high school level or beyond, the networking possibilities associated with information communication technologies (ICT) and mobile phones, and the frustration of large portions of this group (because employment and other opportunities have not opened up) have created a volatile mix. The MDGs were fashioned by a group of technical experts and adopted by heads of state. The new politics of participation in many forms may make such a process impossible for post 2015 formulation of any successors to the MDGs. It could be argued that in 2000 it appeared that the purposive agenda of the MDGs would do no harm, and might, if handled well, do some good, moderating the excesses of the free market, expanding access to education, health, income and water. Many developed this point (Sachs 2005; UNESCO 2010). It may be, however, that in a more fractured and much less confident economic and political context, a post-2015 global development compact must place more emphasis on procedural questions on how to achieve difficult top down global coordination in order to address the bottom up concerns of increasingly disaffected and economically and politically marginalised but socially connected young populations with growing disruptive potential. This suggests a need to ensure consistent articulation of development across top down coordination and bottom up participation. It
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points to the importance of attending, in addition, to the terrain of the middle where this connection is made. We now consider evidence of the significance of these issues in the implementation of the current MDGs drawing on findings on ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ articulations of development in a study of the implementation of the poverty, education and gender MDGs in South Africa and Kenya.
3 Findings from the Gender, Education and Global Poverty Reduction Initiatives (GEGPRI) Project1 Between 2007 and 2011 a team of researchers from the UK, Kenya and South Africa looked at how three of the MDGs (MDG 1 on poverty, MDG 2 on education, and MDG 3 on gender) were being implemented. The Gender, Education and Global Poverty Reduction Initiatives project (GEGPRI) entailed a series of case studies conducted in Kenya and South Africa using qualitative research methods and a quasi- action research style of collaborative reflection of emerging findings. Case studies were conducted with the national Department of Education in South Africa, the Ministry of Education in Kenya, a provincial department of education in each country and some of its work at district level, a school in a matched neighbourhood on the edge of a large city serving a poor population. In addition case studies were made of an NGO working on questions of poverty and schooling in a rural setting in each country, and of an NGO working at the national level engaged in discussions with global networks. These were supplemented by a number of interviews with staff in global organisations. In all the research settings the research team looked at how global initiatives concerned with gender, schooling and poverty reduction were understood, who participated in implementing the MDG framework, what meanings of gender, schooling and global relations were being negotiated, what constraints were experienced, in what ways these were being overcome, and what concerns about global obligations were emerging (Dieltiens et al. 2009; Karlsson 2010; Unterhalter and North 2011a, b; Unterhalter 2012a, b). The study thus provided a wealth of data with which to consider the kinds of alliances regarding gender, education and poverty that the MDGs had helped support and the kinds of emerging challenges that would confront any post 2015 successor arrangement.2 A comparative assessment of each of the research sites as a place for work and discussion on gender, education and poverty reduction concluded that there was a considerable disjuncture between the policy frameworks drawing on the MDGs and articulated in the global organizations as against those articulated in the national departments. A language concerned with gender disappeared at the local level of school or rural NGO, either because there was no structure to support this or because the interpretation became very narrow (Unterhalter 2012a, c). For example in the local NGO in South Africa an insistence on being gender blind blocked the organization from engaging with gender equality issues. Girls and boys were 1
In this section of the paper we draw on research conducted as part of the project Gender, education and global poverty reduction initiatives funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Award no. RES 167-25-260. Thanks to colleagues working on that project (Veerle Dieltiens, Jenni Karlsson, Stu Letsatsi, Herbert Makinda, Amy North, Jane Onsongo and Chris Yates) who collected the data and contributed to the project reflections from which this section of the discussion has developed.
2
In the discussion that follows we present conclusions from this study, without detailed commentary on the data, which has been fully analyzed in the cited articles. The data from this study exemplifies processes which we wish to consider in relation to our key concern with new MDGs.
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often seen as the same and collapsed into the category of ‘children’. One staff member said: …our focus is on the very young child. We don’t focus on the very young girl-child or boy-child. We really focus on the very young child… we haven’t gotten into gender because we’re so focused on providing what we can for that very young child. (Local NGO staff member 3, 04/02/2010) Another explained that ‘the gender issue has not been our banner’ (A, 04/02/2010). Gender equality had no presence in the material that facilitators used for their group work (Local NGO staff member 2, 03/06/2009). Although facilitators avoided advising girls and boys about gender relations, girls and boys in the groups they ran were experiencing relationship dilemmas with consequences for their schooling as these extract from the group discussions conducted with young participants (11/03/2010) reveal: [Boys] propose love by force. They feel we are old enough now (G3) Boys force us to have relationships with them. They lie saying we love them. (G1) People will start talking about [relationships] and eventually it will reach the office [at school]. In the office they will ask why you are dating him. If you say you don’t, then they will punish you so that you never do it. (G2) The boy always gives the girl money [when they’re dating] (B1) The boys use the money to bribe us into dating them but we don’t take the money (G2) If you don’t agree to date him, he and his friends will tease you and laugh at you but if you do they leave you alone (G3) In Kenya there was also a sense that the local rural NGO needed to be gender blind. Their work on the ‘construction of classrooms, and training of SMC’s was not ‘gender related’. One worker in the education section commented on how the organisation worked equally with boys and girls: Sure they involve issues of gender, poverty in that we sensitize and mobilize on the community the importance of education for both boys and girls […] we also sensitize the community on the participation of education. (Local NGO staff member 9, 22/06/2009) While the interviewer and NGO worker canvassed a number of links to the MDGs, for the NGO worker gender was emphatically not their brief. Interviewer: Now the project you are doing, you get special grants that are really geared towards gender related initiatives? Education Officer: Gender! No! Education related! For construction of classrooms, training of SMC’s, things like that. Interviewer: […] Reduce poverty by 2015, reduce child mortality by 2015, What do you think we should focus on? Education Officer: I think we should be focusing on two goals education and reduction of poverty […] because if people are educated and poverty is reduced, I think that will be a very big achievement. (Interview with local NGO staff member 9, 19/05/2010) Thus local languages of implementation tended to focus, for example, on girls’ finishing school, building schools or carrying out training. A wider MDG terrain of co-ordinated action relating to poverty, health or women’s political presence was not only not realised, but no language or action was nurtured to begin putting this into place.
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The focus on the MDGs at the global and the national level was importantly sustained by networking through print and ICT (Unterhalter and North 2011a; Unterhalter 2012a). However these communication links did not happen at provincial, district or school level. Networks at local level remained at local level, sometimes serviced with regard to gender or poverty reduction initiatives by the state or NGOs (Unterhalter and North 2011b; Unterhalter, 2012a, c). This section from the data shows a global NGO at work in South Africa, with a very structured approach to promote a women’s rights approach throughout the organisation. These last 5 years has been about putting [gender] on the map. Putting women’s rights very much central to our work – and in a very explicit way. Everybody has had to embrace women’s rights. And that’s been the change. And here and there you hear – ‘‘there’s too much women’s rights’’ [laughs]. You hear people say there’s too much – the women’s rights theme is very powerful and well organized. It was rammed down people’s throats – you had to have a women’s rights officer in every country programme, and you had to show that you’re working with women. (National NGO staff member 12, 09/12/2010) By contrast, the global NGO working in Kenya gave minimal attention to explaining women’s rights. In the context of local prejudices about girls’ schooling this precipitated resentments among boys and teachers. In discussions with the children at the school where the NGO worked to distribute sanitary towels it became clear that there was some resentment by the boys of the preference being shown to girls: Boy: We have an NGO like (Name) which is encouraging girls only to work hard in school but leave out the boys, for example they only give presents to girls every year and not boys I: And that discourages you? Boy: Yes Boy: We are mixed in class and we are taught by one teacher and there is a present for good performance. They say boys only get it when they get 350 and above, while the girl is given at 300. And let’s say the girl has gotten among the highest in the zone and then a boy gets 370, then a girl is given a calf and a cheque while the boy is only given a calf. It makes the boy feel very bad because they take us as not willing. Girl: (NGO) bases its incentives on studies that have shown that the girls have little time to study. Most of the time the girl is doing that work while the boys have their time to read – that is why the NGOs give the girls more emphasis. The boy has more time to read. I: And there is no lighting? Girl: Yeah we share the ‘mwenge’ (fire torch) but he still has more time. The exchange suggests that the NGO has run workshops and awareness raising for girls, but not equivalent sessions for boys or teachers, and that resentments at affirmative action amplify existing attitudes of hostility to girls. There were virtually no opportunities to network globally or even to other locations in a district, province or nation from local sites. Thus the MDGs appear to have catalysed networks at the top, fed from below, but have not built the state and civil society dynamism or articulations envisaged. The conclusions drawn from the GEGPRI study are that there is only a partial connection between the formulations articulated in global policy aspirations for gender equity, poverty reduction and education expansion and various sites of enactment. The clearest expression of a connection is in global NGOs and their work with local partners and in a
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national government like South Africa where there is considerable concern with, and interest in, questions of gender and poverty (Unterhalter and North 2011a; Unterhalter 2012a). However in this context some officials find it difficult to get full buy-in from colleagues for this work, and rolling it out to districts and schools is challenging. In Kenya the difficulties are greater. The simultaneous pressures of a substantial aid relationship, limits on the employment of staff, difficulties with corruption scandals, and discouragement of informed critical debate in a number of work settings mean that the kind of connection made is only to part of the global policy framework, notably the MDGs, with a relative neglect of the wider gender aspirations associated with the Education for All (EFA) goals and the gender, education and poverty concerns of the Beijing Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995). Thus the hope that the MDGs might open up wider interest in gender, education and poverty amongst policymakers and practitioners (e.g. Unterhalter 2005) seems to have only been partially realised. The rationale for the MDG approach was that in focusing on a purposive development strategy, which met some limited but universally agreed targets, many of the contentious issues of value and structure associated with development could be side stepped (Vandemoortele 2009). The consensus on achieving sufficient education or income, it was suggested or implied, would be an important form of global glue to support poverty reduction, gender equality, education and health expansion, but the detail of the policy direction in these larger areas was not to be specified by global compact. The GEGPRI data suggest that this might be partially correct in that the MDGs have provided a kind of glue that brings together very different kinds of institutions and organisations (Unterhalter 2012a). In this process, however, the needs for discussion of value and structure associated with rights, gender equity or poverty do not evaporate in a focus on results. In fact they remain, and practices which ignore value and structure may undermine the MDG project and limit its potential to lead to or catalyse a more expansive social justice development vision locally, nationally or internationally (Unterhalter 2012a). One such constricting practice, for example, is the focus on obeying a managed line of command, so that officials, teachers or NGO workers do not do anything on gender or poverty because they have not been instructed to do so by a programme that is taking a narrow lead from only some elements of the MDGs (Unterhalter 2012c). Similarly, with the focus on results and outcomes there is a reluctance to look at structures of gender inequality or poverty and their interconnection, and instead a slide to sometimes blame the poor for the failure to meet specific targets (Unterhalter et al. 2012). On the more positive side, however, it is also clear that the MDG project has not stifled critical procedural debates about value regarding poverty, gender and education (Unterhalter and North, 2011a, b; Unterhalter 2012d). The data from the project thus suggests bottom-up and top-down initiatives talking past each other with limited spaces for reflection or participation in the MDG process or consideration of forms of regulation or professional development. Table 1 indicates this in relation to the remit of MDG 2 to ensure all children complete primary schooling It can be seen that where there is space for bottom-up processes in the school, the local NGO and the global NGO there are no methods for consulting the poorest groups, and participation is more about implementation than policy direction. By contrast, the topdown processes develop policy and programmes, but have limited means for assessing or evaluating these. The missed opportunity to consult a middle level of professionals (teachers, researchers, commentators, journalists, information managers) means there is limited space for critical reflection. Many meanings of gender equity, poverty reduction and education are in play in all the case study sites. However, the most widespread ideas are those that do least to call into
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Table 1 Blocks in bottom up and top down processes Bottom up
Top down
National Ministries
No access to views from schools or communities. Instruct them on implementation through district & provincial structures
Limited access to international policy. National policy engaging with MDGs but limited channels for communication to global organisations.
Provincial education departments
No access to views from schools or communities. Instruct them on implementation
No access to national or international policy formation. Implement instructions passed down
School
Engagement with community, but often in terms of blaming the poor. No opportunities for the very poor to articulate views.
No access to processes of national or international policy making
Local NGO
Clear focus on local community, but limited engagement with very poorest.
No access to global or national policy and decision making fora
Global NGO
Some use community consultation as a form of implementation, not policy development
Programmes and advocacy rolled out through local implementing partners
Global organisations
Few participatory processes. Use reports or research to assess s learning and teaching
Develop policy and programmes to implement MDGs
question the power relations associated with inequalities in relation to gender, poverty and wellbeing. Thus in every site of data collection there was widespread acceptance of the notion of gender as a noun involving girls and boys, but this idea often coincided quite comfortably with very harsh critiques of young girls’ sexuality, poverty, and experience of inequality. In every research site there were limited opportunities to review and discuss different approaches to thinking about gender and poverty, and many disturbing instances of blaming the poor for the difficulties they experience were documented (Dieltiens et al. 2009; Unterhalter et al. 2011, 2012; Unterhalter and North 2011b). The GEGPRI team argued in their dissemination events in Kenya, South Africa and London in March 2011 that the implications of their study were (1) the need to build multiple local sites to discuss a post-2015 agenda; (2) the importance of reconnecting global and local processes for research and policy work on gender, education and poverty, and (3) the importance of working on professional education in these fields. It can be seen that the study expressed the need for articulation and connection between what we have called top-down and bottom up processes, but did not map any clear path towards how this might happen, although some later work highlighted what some of the difficulties might be (Unterhalter 2012c). In the next section we look at this in the context of arguments made in the Lancet Commission (Waage et al. 2010) and try to draw out how it is important to acknowledge and begin to address the tensions between the two approaches in order to move forward in mapping a path for future MDGs.
4 The Lancet Commission and Post 2015 Principles In 2009 the Lancet commissioned a group of academics at the London International Development Centre (LIDC) to prepare a review of the MDGs and an assessment of what a
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future framework might be. This first assessed achievements in particular MDGs, but then came to consider the cross-cutting challenges across all the MDGs, using this as a basis to generate a set of principles for future goal setting (Waage et al. 2010). The analysis of cross-cutting issues that seemed common to the experience across the MDGs generated the conclusion that the MDGs had helped advocacy of particular agendas, such as those to reduce poverty and address infectious diseases. The MDGs also provided leverage to relatively neglected areas such as child survival, gender and maternal health. They improved the flow of aid, particularly in education and with regard to the illnesses identified in MDG 6. They had also helped strengthen monitoring and evaluation frameworks. However common difficulties across the MDGs were also recognised. The MDG approach suggested there must be causal links between particular kinds of expenditures and impact, something difficult to establish. The parsimony of the MDG targets, which may have facilitated the ease with which they were accepted by many governments, also limited their scope to address complex problems. There were a number of problems with the particular fit between goals, targets and indicators. The fragmentation associated with this was associated with the omission of important development needs and a failure to recognise the synergies between different goals. For example the three separate health goals meant there was little connection between them in practice, and the lack of a goal on secondary or higher education meant it was difficult to support the training of teachers and health workers to deliver on the education and health goals (Waage et al. 2010, 6–8). A number of goals were poorly specified. For example a broad aspiration for enhancing education and learning articulated in a number of internationally agreed documents on Education for All (EfA) was expressed as a goal in the MDG framework in terms of universal primary education, which limited the reach of what some countries could have achieved. Additional problems with the framework related to only partial ownership by sections of the international community and by some national governments (Waage et al. 2010, 12–14). A last set of problems related to the lack of attention to equity with result that only minimal or sufficient achievement of targets was suggested and important dimensions of development associated with fairness, dignity and human flourishing were omitted. These points together, and the last especially, suggest that the MDGs set the bar low in terms of what it was assumed governments could agree on, although pragmatically this might have been all the consensus that could be achieved. However, this meant that the opportunity was not taken to develop a full vision of development associated with aspiration, redress of inequities or full appreciation of the complexity of diversity. This process meant that features of inequity associated with gender, race or ethnicity could be ignored if targets were minimally achieved (Waage et al. 2010, 15–16). Arising from these difficulties we took an approach to thinking about post 2015 goals informed by what we had learned from the difficulties with the existing MDG framework. One key difficulty we felt was that the MDGs, because of their concern to secure what (Gore 2009), had called a purposive approach to development (with a minimum set of goals and targets that all could agree) had failed to define development. We were aware how contested the term ‘development’ was, with its confusing conflations of aspirations, outcomes and process, means and ends (Dorward 2009). We were also mindful of the debates regarding difficult trade-offs, for example between present and future consumption of resources, or between social development and economic growth. Nonetheless it was important to advance a view of development, acknowledging that this might be partial and contextual. In this we were interested in the ideas about justice advanced by Amartya Sen (2009) in which he suggested that elaborating a vision, even if there might be no institutions to realise it, could be a useful way to advance debate.
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We thus came to define development as ‘a dynamic process involving sustainable and equitable access to improved wellbeing’ (Waage et al. 2010, 19). Drawing on Sen (2009) we defined wellbeing as ‘the freedoms and capability to make choice and act effectively with respect to, for example, health, education, nutrition, employment, security, participation, voice, consumption, and the claiming of rights’ (Waage et al. 2010, 19) Implicit in this, but with hindsight in need of emphasis, is that this notion of wellbeing is not only self centred but also other oriented. This aspect is emphasised in our notions of sustainability and equity, where we remarked that in achieving particular aspects of wellbeing we needed to take into account quantity, quality, the diversity of aspiration of different individuals and communities, equity, and in areas concerned with material consumption, a need to recognise satisfaction from sufficient, not maximised, achievement, in the face of the way in which diminishing marginal returns to private consumption are being overtaken by increasing marginal costs to society. We considered that this definition of development could be seen as an attempt to resolve a number of views that emphasise dichotomies. Firstly that suggested by (Gore 2009), who had identified the ways in which the MDGs represented a switch from a procedural approach to development (involving common respect for norms, such as rights or practices associated with national sovereignty) to a purposive approach which identifies wellbeing targets that can minimally be agreed on by a range of players no matter what comprehensive norms they might disagree on. In our view our definition of development is both purposive and procedural. A second set of interlocking dichotomies have been termed by (Unterhalter and Carpentier 2010), a tetralemma. In the context of discussing the difficult choices facing higher education institutions they define a tetralemma as a form of impossibility to hold together simultaneously aspirations for economic growth, equity, democracy and sustainability. They point out how there is a tendency to trade off, but that in the particular conditions of the present conjuncture, trade off undermines achievement in a particular field and that what is required is not just satisfying some of these conditions but mutual satisfaction of all four. In our view our definition of development is an attempt to satisfy all conditions together. A third dichotomy, which was largely implicit in (Waage et al. 2010) but is explicitly addressed in this paper, is the tension between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ views of development processes. Dorward (2009) considers this in terms of Kanbur’s distinction between the ‘Ministry of Finance’ and ‘Civil Society’ views of development processes and outcomes (Kanbur 2001). Dorward proposes a unifying view of development that is holistic, dynamic, and inclusive of both local and larger scale processes of change and their interactions. This view of development sits behind and is implicit in our definition of development in The Lancet analysis (Waage et al. 2010). (We do not, however, address the subtext of Kanbur’s paper, the vested interests that lie behind this dichotomy and seek to control the policy agenda to protect national interests). Given this definition of development we then generated five principles that we believe should guide future goal setting and overcome some of the problems of the past. These are: I. II. III. IV. V.
Holism. Equity. Sustainability. Ownership. Global obligation.
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Table 2 Principles and the roles of ‘bottom up’ and ‘top down’ processes in post 2015 MDG formulation and implementation Principle
‘Bottom up’
‘Top down’
All
Develop general and locally specific models for synergistic building and matching of top down and bottom up resources, knowledge and commitment
Holism
‘Local’ representation & accountability for knowledge of priority goals & actions
Resources & coordination for social welfare/public goods
Equity
‘Local’ representation, reflection & accountability for power
Resources & coordination to enforce equitable policies
Ownership
‘Local’ representation for commitment
UN agencies’ commitment
Global obligation
‘Local’ commentary on and input into Northern government or large multilateral commitment
‘Northern’ governments’ or existing UN institutions’ commitment
Sustainability
All of the above
All of the above
We do not wish to reprise here the argument we made in the earlier work with regard to the five principles, but instead to look at how each of these principles can be interpreted in either a ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’ form. Table 2 represents this schematically. What this review shows is that there must be assessment of the framing of any candidate MDG or target in order to overcome the forms of disarticulation we have highlighted both in relation to the empirical work on the implementation of the MDGs in GEGPRI and to the differences between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ processes for the five principles as set out above. We develop this using two illustrative examples considering how particular post 2015 candidate goals of nutrition/food security and of universal secondary school education might be framed in relation to the complementary articulation between ‘bottom up’ and ‘top-down approaches’ (see Tables 3 and 4 respectively). Table 3 sets out in relation to food security and nutrition the networks of organisations to be consulted and sustained ‘at the bottom’. These comprise local organisations concerned with the production and consumption of food, but the links these organisations need to make across the sector and with other social development sectors is highlighted. The table draws specific attention to the significance of women’s organisations. It sketches how all these networks have a brief in relation to engaging with holism, equity, ownership, global obligation and sustainability, reflecting critically on existing goals and targets. This bottom-up process connects with a top-down process where networks of international organisations, work through and with the process of setting goals, targets and indicators to establish links between consumption, production, employment, income, expenditure, gender equality & social protection and articulate with the networks at the bottom. This entails building links beyond the food security and nutrition sector, and requires specific actions to ensure features of the vision of development are realised. Thus holism is associated with a joined up vision of delivery, equity with understanding and responding to particular needs, ownership with attending to information flows and accountability, and global obligation and sustainability with ensuring appropriate conditions for delivery. Table 4 summarises a similar process with regard to the expansion of secondary education, notionally years 7–11 of a school cycle. Table 4 sets out how policy moves to expand provision of schooling to encompass secondary education and enhanced learning entail a bottom up process of connecting local
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Table 3 Principles and the roles of ‘bottom up’ and ‘top down’ processes in post 2015 MDG formulation and implementation of a candidate goal: nutrition/food security Principle
Bottom up
Top down
All
Develop general & locally specific models for synergistic building & matching of top down & bottom up resources, knowledge & commitment
Holism
Ensure that networks of local organisation (CSOs, including women’s organisations, producer groups, etc.) reflect critically on the targets & the goals in relation to a wide interpretation of social development, which promotes positive relationships between consumption, production, employment, income, expenditure & social protection. Ensure this has reach across & beyond the food & agriculture sector (e.g. livelihoods, health, education, water, sanitation, communications, gender relations, governance, environment, etc.)
Review goal, target & indicators & resource investments to ensure they address wide interpretation of nutrition & food security. Work to develop relationships between consumption, production, employment, income, expenditure, gender equality & social protection. Make connections across & beyond the food & agriculture sector (e.g. livelihoods, health, education, water, sanitation, communications, gender relations, governance, environment, etc.)
Equity
Ensure that farmers, consumers, traders, health workers, and extension workers have a good knowledge of equity issues & can make demands regarding the indicators. Build confidence, solidarity & local information & accountability systems
Ensure governments have comprehensive market, health, nutrition & social monitoring systems, programmes, policies & resource allocations to support & deliver (a) private & public food access & (b) social protection to all members of society, taking account of socio-economic circumstances & the needs of particular groups
Ownership
Build the capacity of local organisations including women’s organisations (farmers & consumers groups, a traders, health workers, extension workers, CSOs) to make arguments to national & global bodies regarding the emphasis of the goal, target & indicators
Ensure relevant international & national agencies & co-ordinating networks provide information & have clear responsibility & accountability for nutrition & food security goals, targets & indicators
Global obligation
Ensure adequate critical reflection on & contribution to forms & effects of global co-ordination, paying particular attention to the views of & impacts on the most excluded socially, economically & geographically
Co-ordinate flows of finance, information, technologies, professional skill & promote fair & stable food markets & equitable consumption patterns to ensure realisation of goal & targets
Sustainability
All of the above. Work with local communities to promote & learn from local technical & institutional innovation & practices
All of the above with special attention to research & investment for sustainable agricultural practices, environmental & natural resources conservation, & sustainable consumption patterns
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Table 4 Principles and the roles of ‘bottom up’ and ‘top down’ processes in post 2015 MDG formulation and implementation of a candidate target: universal secondary education Principle
‘Bottom up’
‘Top down’
All
Develop general and locally specific models for synergistic building and matching of topdown and bottom-up resources, knowledge and commitment
Holism
Ensure networks of local organisation including women organisations, professional bodies and CSOs reflect critically on the targets and the goals in relation to a wide interpretation of social development which develops relationships between access, participation and learning beyond the education sector, for example into concern with nutrition, livelihoods, health, reproductive rights, communications, gender relations, governance,
Review goal, target and indicators to ensure that they address aspects of further and higher education, labour market access, health, family relations etc., and develop relationships between access, participation and learning beyond the education sector (e.g. nutrition, livelihoods, health, reproductive rights, communications, gender relations, governance, etc.)
Equity
Ensure that groups of parents, young people, teachers in secondary school and teacher trainers have a good knowledge of equity issues and can make demands through participatory processes regarding the nature of the indicators to be used
Ensure governments have a comprehensive idea of how to deliver excellent learning and teaching to all young people attending secondary school taking account of socio-economic circumstances and the needs of particular groups which experience discrimination and exclusion
Ownership
Build the capacity of local organisations including women’s organisations or sections (trade unions, CSOs, school committees) to make arguments to national and global bodies regarding the emphasis of the goal, target and indicators
Ensure existing co-ordinating networks associated with the EfA movement (e.g. GFE, GCE, High level EFA group, UNICEF, UNGEI) pay attention to the implementation of universal secondary education in formulating the goal, target
Global obligation
Ensure adequate critical reflection on and contribution to forms of global coordination, paying particular attention to the views of the most excluded socially, economically and geographically.
Co-ordinate flows of finance, information, and professional skill and regulate forms of labour migration to ensure adequate resources to deliver excellent learning and teaching up to at least grade 12 and ensure realisation of goal and target
Sustainability
Work with local communities to take ideas from specific local conditions and ensure this is included in curricula, teacher training and forms of assessment.
Consider how flows of resources nationally and globally to secondary schooling can help improve productivity in the poorest communities
organisations holistically within the education sector and beyond. This should make demands regarding the content and form of secondary education, particularly with regard to questions of equity and sustainability, thus expressing the principle of ownership and global obligation as a process connecting with local engagement. It also specifies how connection to issues of health, labour market and reproductive rights are central to the expansion of secondary education as an aspiration from the bottom and the top. In the topdown specification of how the principles work, multilateral and bilateral organisations, together with global civil society networks connect with each other and with bottom-up processes to deliver on the five development principles, paying particular attention to enhancing professional skills and learning in relation to the new goal, and associated target and indicator.
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5 Conclusions In this paper we have argued that a major concern in developing a set of post 2015 goals to follow the MDGs needs to give specific attention to addressing the disarticulation between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches to and processes of change. In this we follow some of the implications articulated by Sen (2009) with regard to the actual choices that can be made. We have thus suggested that forms of consistency are needed across ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches and processes in the context of the five principles for post 2015 goals put forward in the Lancet Commission, and have illustrated these with regard to possible goals and candidate targets in nutrition/food security and secondary education. These ideas and examples take forward important issues regarding the disarticulation and inconsistency between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’, but it is important to recognise that there are major challenges regarding how this may be achieved. We make two observations on this. First, there are serious knowledge, resource and organisational constraints to the pursuit of the five principles within as well as across ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches. These are illustrated by the compartmentalisation of goals and actions pursuing them, as shown in the GEGPRI project findings. In ‘top-down’ approaches these arise from compartmentalised and self perpetuating disciplinary training, career paths and organisational and power structures; short term career and political incentives and horizons; and different circumstances and interests of different countries and international groupings. In ‘bottom-up’ approaches they arise from values and socio-economic structures that also perpetuate themselves by separating different groups of peoples with different circumstances, interests, understandings and access to power and resources. Specific actions need to be taken to challenge these selfperpetuating patterns. New initiatives are therefore needed to build on and extend growing interest in, for example, interdisciplinary research and training, inter-sectoral coordination, and inclusive governance and participatory processes. Insufficient attention has to date been given to the significance of this middle terrain of interconnection, but it can be seen that without noticing articulation as a specific kind of action the top-down and bottom-up approaches will continue to talk past each other and important opportunities will be missed. Second, and again drawing on the GEGPRI project findings, in focussing on ‘bottomup’ and ‘top down’ approaches it is essential to emphasise linkages or potential linkages— and in particular the importance of district and other middle level services in linking and mediating between them. Addressing weaknesses at this level requires particular attention in ‘top-down’ approaches for these to become accountable and sensitive to and supportive of ‘bottom-up’ concerns. This requires change in knowledge, resources and organisational structures, as discussed above. It also requires more understanding of the players at this level, of their interactions with each other and with both central government and clients, and of their interests, knowledge, opportunities, access to different resources and constraints. Attention to these issues is important. Unless we address the disarticulation between the ‘top-down’ and the ‘bottom up’ approaches, taking action to promote consistency, communication and articulation with each other, we may repeat the problems of 2000 in harder times. Acknowledgments This paper was presented at the European Association of Development Research Institutes/Development Studies Association 2011 Conference ‘Rethinking Development in an Age of Scarcity and Uncertainty’ special session on Multi-dimensional Poverty. We are grateful for helpful comments in discussion on the paper at the conference, for the suggestions from the referees for this journal Special Issue, and our dialogue with the editors in refining the analysis.
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