Millennium Development Goals Merits Otherwise Economics Essay

MDGs發展目標的其他優點
 

本文首先對MDGs的制定的歷史背景進行簡要說明，來闡明正是由于激烈的競爭過程給他們提供了價值觀的形成，來規劃發展。然后以一個更廣闊的視野，來討論宏觀的國際目標的地位。然后對總是存在一些有爭議和未解決的問題進行批判性討論。至關重要的是，本文討論了這些問題以及他們對于發展的各種表現形式。為了闡述我的觀點，我討論了包括在坦桑尼亞的MDG教育活動的各種案例。本文鑒于MDG的經驗，通過觀測計劃發展的蘊含進行總結。

歷史背景
 

在20世紀90年代，二戰后大約50年后，發展通常被定義為一個經濟增長的線性路徑。在后冷戰時期，曾經存在大量的扶貧峰會和會議，它們能努力克服全球貧困這一懸而未決的問題，且能更好地促進國際發展的形成。珠穆拉瑪峰的這些努力是在2000年九月8日，189個國家領導人共同簽署的千年宣言。但是如果假定這個宣言的通過，是一個平淡無奇的外交手段實現的，這將低估所發生事物的本質。

 

This paper begins with an outline of the historical context of the formulation of the MDGs to illustrate that the very intense process that led to their formation provides evidence of their perceived worth by some to development planning. Then taking a broader view, the role of macro international targets is discussed. However there are both contentious and unresolved issues that thread their way into any critical discussion of development planning target setting. Importantly, these issues and their various manifestations on development are discussed. To enlarge my arguments, I discuss various examples including MDG education initiatives in Tanzania. The paper concludes with observations on the implications for development planning in the light of the MDG experience.

 

Historical Context

 

By the 1990s, after nearly 50 years of post second world war history, development had generally been construed in the mainstream as a definable linear projectory of economic growth. In the post Cold War period there was a plethora of poverty reduction summits and conferences which wrestled with the unresolved issue of global poverty and the formation of a better way to promote international development. The Everest of these efforts was the Millennium Declaration signed by the leaders of 189 nations on 8 September 2000. But to presume that the adoption of this Declaration was the culmination of an uneventful diplomatic process would understate the intense nature of what occurred.

 

The history of this process provides a narrative of how debates over diverse understandings of multi-dimensional poverty evolved into a global development mantra for the start of the twenty first century. In 1996 the International Development Targets (IDTs) were approved by OECD-DAC but struggled to gain acceptance outside the cluster of rich developed nations. Undaunted, there were powerful forces at work that considered development planning needed an overarching framework of this ilk. Consequently the MDGs, through difficult political and diplomatic negotiations, found their way onto the international political agenda imploring all nations to have a “collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level” (United Nations 2000).#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Meanwhile the work of Amartya Sen and others had been preparatory in promoting the idea that people are the ends and means of development. On a political level, the multi-dimensional flavour of the MDGs was not going to harm the diplomatic efforts to engage civil society and NGOs. With an inventory of choices that included education, gender, health and the environment, the civil society/NGO net had been cast wide. To their credit, the enduring distinctive of the MDGs is that they continue to dominate development planning space some ten years later. Despite the criticisms, and there are a few, “the MDGs have made a major contribution to establishing a public commitment to national action to promote human development around the world” (Hulme 2010: 21).

 

But what is it that sets the MDGs apart as a “normative framework of development” (Hulme and Fukudu-Parr 2009: 2)? Does their very survival over time reflect a critical need for the MDGs ? Do the embedded macro international targets of development warrant praise or criticism ? Has the political and diplomatic process that has elevated macro international targets simply overridden greater altruistic needs of development planning?

 

The Tipping Point

 

Over the past ten years the MDGs have become the overarching development framework on the international stage (Hulme and Fukudu-Parr 2009: 3). How did this multi-dimensional view of poverty eradication find its way into this privileged position? Previous United Nations declarations had failed to enjoy anywhere near the same level of infiltration. Significantly the MDGs were born out of the 1990s when there was a prevailing atmosphere of “aid fatigue” as governments and institutions reflected on decades of imperfect economic transformation amongst the developing nations. What was the catalyst for this change ?

 

The acceptance of the MDGs reached a tipping point, such that the momentum for change became unstoppable. So much so that Hulme and Fukudu-Parr (2009: 2) state that “the MDGs have proved an effective mechanism to promote the broad norm of eradicating global poverty.” They conclude that this can be explained through the specificity of the MDGs, their quantitative time bound nature and the role of message entrepreneurs in their communication. Using the concept of a tipping point, they explain how the combination of these factors gave rise to the adoption of the MDGs which “has put global poverty eradication/reduction on the international agenda” (Hulme and Fukudu-Parr 2009: 32).

 

The above discussion may well provide an outline on how the MDGs have commanded a general consensus and commitment to poverty eradication measures, but the question that must now be addressed is whether they or any other macro international targets are needed within development planning.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Goals and Targets

 

The MDGs unashamedly emphasise absolute target measurement. The agreed eight millennium development goals are associated with twenty one targets which in turn are associated with a total of sixty indicators. Black and White (2006: 17) observe that “goals and targets need to be something that can inspire both those working within international development agencies, and those outside”. Can we charge the MDGs with the claim of inspiration?

 

In a general sense, goals and targets, regardless of the context or discipline, can be credited for focusing the attention of stakeholders, imputing accountability, promoting dialogue, organizing, defining scope, and measuring success. Undoubtedly these characteristics offer a degree of attractiveness to elements within the development community where transparency is required for resource allocation decisions, progress monitoring is valued and financial accountability is seen as critical. Further, the benefits of target setting in donor activity include the benefits of enhanced motivation and co-ordination (Davis 2009: 4).

 

Goal and target setting is not a radical concept. Significantly though, in the 1990s, an important influence on the construction of the MDGs was the increasingly popular results based management (RBM) theories and practices that were being imported from the private sector into public management. RBM, as the name implies, emphasised the use of targets and performance measurement. RBM would prove to be a transportable acronym to top down development planning and a key driver of the MDGs (Hulme 2010: 19). Ironically, whilst RBM was enthusiastically embedded within MDGs 1 to 7 with evangelical fervour, MDG 8 which mandates the role of rich nations, was left untouched.

 

For those development institutions committed to RBM, output focused approaches are likely to hold a privileged position. Under this approach, otherwise complex social issues can be reduced to a list of measurable definable activities and outputs. Hulme (2010: 20) observes that as a consequence, “development goals meant focusing on measurable outcomes and not process changes or visions of universal human rights”. This has had an acute impact upon development planning. Within development planning there is clearly debate over the appropriateness of this reductionist approach.

 

Goal setting is not a new phenomenon within the international framework of setting, implementing and monitoring agreed objectives. Within development planning, history records a vast array of goals related to reducing human deprivation. Broadly, these include the implementation of education activities, the eradication of various diseases, numerous infrastructure projects to the promotion of economic growth initiatives. In so far as the United Nations is concerned, development goal setting has been commonplace since the 1960s (Bissio 2003). Significantly, the record of their success is generally considered to be uneven and the process of their formulation contentious (Jolly 2004: 73).#p#分頁標題#e#

 

The contentious nature of their formulation is illustrated through the International Development Goals (IDTs) in the 1990s which also purported to introduce a multi dimensional approach to poverty reduction goal setting. A key characteristic of the IDTs was that each target was quantifiable. In contrast to what was then a growing acceptance of a participatory approach to development planning, the IDTs were formulated by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) (essentially a group of rich country aid donors). The obvious paradox here is this: where was the space for actors aligned with developing nations to articulate their own definitions of poverty and their own targets?

 

With any target style approach it is critical that sufficient attention is given to the process. There needs to be due recognition of quality and not just quantity. This is discussed in more detail below in the context of MDG primary education targets in Tanzania.

 

Risk, Opportunity and Limitations

 

Undeniably the MDGs have been fashioned into a powerful framework for the purpose of international development. But, and a very significant but, they are incomplete and flawed. The implication is whether development planning needs yet another flawed incomplete framework.

 

The sceptics and critics of macro international targets argue that their use as a template for individual national development policies creates a significant number of problems. Not only do they over simplify and narrowly define the “poverty problem” but there is both a distortion of public expenditure priorities and disillusionment when efforts fall short of their targets (Maxwell 2003: 12). The counter to these observations is that target setting raises the level of political engagement and public awareness. An example of this is the heightened political engagement with the IDTs in 1990s and later with the MDGs. Hulme and Fukudu-Parr cite examples of the use of the MDGs to raise poverty alleviation awareness in India and Brazil (Hulme and Fukudu-Parr 2009: 30).

 

The very nature of goal setting privileges certain work over other alternatives. For example, the opportunity cost embedded within the MDGs includes diverting “donor and NGO resources away from the more important work of evolving rights-based approaches to development, especially in relation to water and HIV/AIDS”. (Nelson 2007: 2048). This criticism also includes the claim that a target style development approach is inherently susceptible to rewarding quick fix solutions rather than pursuing the root causes of poverty through structural change over a longer time horizon (Bond 2006).

 

Importantly, the proposition that accountability is a benefit of target based development needs to be addressed. To be sure, there is rhetoric that governments and aid agencies have been drawn into this accountability web through the MDGs (Fukudu-Parr 2004: 397). Questions remain though, as to who exactly is accountable and to whom. Without true ownership of the goals, accountability claims are impotent. A close reading of the MDGs (and in particular goal 8) does not reveal the typical principal-agent relationship necessary for a strong accountability framework.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

I suggest that it is unreasonable to expect the MDGs to be the complete overarching framework that draws together the many aspects of development and poverty elevation. Any conception that the MDGs provide “the solution” is seriously misplaced. The cautionary point is that all participants within the development community need to carefully assess and acknowledge the limitations. Valid and effective development planning can and does exist outside of the MDG framework. However this may not always be translated into practice when resource allocation is distorted by an insistence from rich donors to work within the “normative framework” of the MDGs. To illustrate the influence of the MDGs on donor policy, the AUSAID 2009 Annual Report includes the following description of that organisation’s objective:

 

“To assist developing countries reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development, in line with Australia’s national interest. Australia’s development assistance focus on poverty is guided by the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed targets for poverty reduction.” (AUSAID 2009: iii)

 

In addition to the privileged place of the MDGs, the AUSAID statement reveals that from a nation state perspective, poverty elevation and development planning is inherently conflicted. Foreign policy, which is connected with national security concerns and the nation’s own economic interests, confines the role of this international development. Internationally constructed target based development policies clearly provide governments with an important mainstream tool to navigate this process.

 

Whilst the MDGs include targets for poverty alleviation they have been criticised on a number of fronts (Satterthwaite 2003: 182). A detailed discussion of the short comings of the MDGs is beyond the scope of this paper. Nonetheless, a brief analysis is provided to show that blind acceptance of macro international targets is problematic. There is a price to be paid for encouraging the development community to focus on achieving the MDGs. With finite development resources, other poverty reduction programs that fall outside the MDGs may receive less or no attention. Even more fundamental is the pertinent question, whose goals/targets are they. Where ownership of the goals/targets fail to pass through to low income groups, this may result in questionable forms of development. With an emphasis on measuring outcomes there will be a bias towards those initiatives that can be measured at the expense of other alternatives. Where the indicators fail to reflect the stated target, development activities are at risk of losing their effectiveness.

 

Conceptually, if the role of the MDGs is misconstrued then there is a risk that they will be stigmatised as charity. As such, they will divert the focus away from the very causes of injustices in local, national and international spaces. As a caution, engagement with the MDGs must not be allowed to diminish engagement with a broader framework to improve human lives. The MDGs are only one form of the translation of “poverty alleviation” into practice.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Davis (2009: 9) concurs when he states:

 

“the MDGs do not and, perhaps by definition, cannot, embrace all the dimensions of development and all the drivers of poverty is not problematic so long as they are recognised by donors and partners as being limited and being just one, important step toward aid strategies that more fully respond to development”.

 

In reality, despite the MDGs’ promise of time bound commitments to the implementation of development goals, much aid will remain tied and it will fail to find its way to those places that are a priority for poverty alleviation. The prevalence of tied aid is illustrated by the Centre for Global Development 2008 Index findings that nearly half of all U.S. foreign assistance was tied or partially tied (Center for Global Development 2008).

 

Education in Tanzania

 

From an income poverty perspective, Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world. In 2001 with assistance from the World Bank and other donors the country implemented the Primary Education Development Program, which was designed to increase primary school enrolment rates. At a 2008 meeting of the UN’s MDG Africa Steering Group, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon cited Tanzania as an example of remarkable progress on primary education (United Nations 2008). The interplay of the MDG framework and donor involvement reflects how Tanzania’s education goals are being set, measured and funded.

 

Unfortunately as a result of the program, classrooms have become overcrowded, pupil teacher ratios are unsatisfactorily high, teachers lack adequate training, teacher absenteeism is high and rural areas disproportionately suffer due to a failure to attract their share of the teacher pool (Carlitz 2009: 3). Tanzania’s “remarkable” progress towards the MDG education goal has been measured in quantitative terms with apparent little regard to qualitative factors. This stands in contrast to studies that suggest educational quality is a more important predictor of a student’s future income (Hanushek and Woessmann 2009). If the quality dimension in education is so central then it should also be subjected to targeting, monitoring and measuring.

 

My primary purpose with this example is not to critically analyse the specific merits of the education MDG or Tanzania’s progress. Rather I highlight the difficulties of setting universal macro international targets. The premise that international goals and targets can be universally applied across the globe is ill-conceived on a fundamental level. No two countries are alike and even the conditions within each country are subject to variation. The pursuit of the education MDG within Tanzania should not be applied in a literal or mechanical fashion. A sensitivity to national conditions and local needs is mandatory, otherwise the claims of “remarkable progress” remain hollow.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

The history of primary school enrolments in Tanzania is akin to a rollercoaster. In the 1970s and again in the 1980s the country improved its primary school enrolments only to see them fall as public expenditure was cut to reduce an increasing national debt burden. Tanzania’s debt repayment capacity clearly needs to be redefined within the context of any development planning. Programs to increase primary school education attendance which are run in isolation to other external factors face significant sustainability issues. Raising education attendance and standards will likely also raise student expectations with respect to suitable employment opportunities. School attendance strategies need to be complimented by other initiatives to improve employment opportunities (Levy 2006). If the MDGs are mistakenly interpreted as a rigid universal master plan then the result will be a disjointed and potentially dysfunctional development.

 

Implications

 

Whilst the Millennium Declaration directs governments “to develop strong partnerships with the private sector and with civil society organisations in the pursuit of development and poverty reduction”, such a directive is both broad and general in nature (United Nations 2000). An interpretation is required because “people [are] not only the beneficiaries of progress but also the key agents of change” (Fukudu-Parr 2004: 396). The mainstream view is that MDGs are to be taken literally. That is, they provide firm targets for development planning participants. Thus issues around financing goals and donor accountability become fundamental. However I suggest that there is a valid alternative interpretation.

 

Clemens et al (2007) argue that the MDGS can be regarded as symbolic. Within this interpretation the MDGs are suggestive of “the kinds of outcomes toward which the development community should strive” (Clemens et al 2007: 747). As a counterpart to this alternate construction, Maxwell (2003: 21) suggests an approach where the developing country retains ownership of the process, and in doing so, donors and governments need to be flexible in allowing targets and programs to be set locally. Difficult issues and sectors should not be sidelined because they do not fit an ordered RBM approach. Empowerment of the poor (even with its kaleidoscope of meanings) is a central theme as is partnership with mutual accountability.

 

A discussion on the merits of macro international targets for development planning would be incomplete without mention of ideological frameworks. For the harsh critics of neo-liberal policies such as Ashwani Saith (Saith 2006 and Saith 2007) the MDGs have for the most part reinforced unjust power relations. The exclusion of key issues on the redistribution of wealth and power are so fundamental that the MDGs are an unwanted tool in development planning. In the opposite corner, the free market capitalists argue that the role of economic growth should be privileged and enhanced. So for some, on ideological grounds alone, the form of the targets is paramount. Despite this apparent ideological divergence, I contend that the MDGs can be credited with the provision of the necessary political space to debate development planning and global poverty. This is no small feat when we consider the competition from other weighty issues which include the war on terror, the global financial crisis and the impact of climate change. Thus the MDGs and other macro international targets, regardless of their flaws, provide a real opportunity to focus the spotlight on the issues of development planning.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

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Literature Cited

 

AUSAID 2009. “AusAID Annual Report 2008-2009”. Accessed 24 May 2010. Available at http://www.ttc-switch.com

 

Bissio, Roberto. 2003. “Civil Society and the MDGs”. Development Policy Journal. 3. pp 151 -150.

 

Black, Richard and White, Howard. 2006. “Targeting development : critical perspectives on the millennium development goals”. London. Routledge.

 

Bond, Patrick. 2006. “Global Governance Campaigning and MDGs: from Top-Down to Bottom-Up Anti-Poverty Work”. Third World Quarterly. 27:2 pp. 339-354.

 

Carlitz, Ruth. 2009. “Quantity Without Quality? Rethinking Education Goals”. Budget Brief No. 8, International Budget Partnership. Accessed 24 May 2010.

Center for Global Development. 2008. Accessed 24 May 2010.

 

Clemens, Michael; Kennya, Charles and Mosset, Todd. 2007. “The Trouble with the MDGs: Confronting Expectations of Aid and Development Success”. World Development. 35:5, pp 735-751.

 

Davis, Thomas. 2009. “The MDGs and the Incomplete Relationship between Development and Foreign Aid”. Accessed 24 May 2010
 

Fukudu-Parr, Sakiko. 2004. “Millennium Development Goals: Why They Matter”. Global Governance. 10:4. pp. 395-402.

 

Hanushek, Eric and Woessmann, Ludger. 2009. “Do Better Schools Lead to More Growth? Cognitive Skills, Economic Outcomes, and Causation”. NBER Working Paper No. 14633. National Bureau of Economic Research.

 

Hulme, David. 2010. “The making of the Millennium Development Goals: human development meets results-based management in an imperfect world”. In Global Governance, Poverty and Inequality , J Clapp and R Wilkinson (eds), London. Routledge.

 

Hulme, David and Fukudu-Parr, Sakkio. 2009. “International Norm Dynamics and 'the End of Poverty’: Understanding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)”. BWPI Working Paper No. 96, Manchester: BWPI, University of Manchester.

 

Jolly, Richard. 2004. “Global Development Goals: The United Nations Experience”. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities. 5:1. pp 69 – 95.

 

Levy, Santiago. 2006. “Progress against Poverty: Sustaining Mexico’s Progresa/Oportunidades Program”. Washington DC. Brookings Institute Press.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Maxwell, Simon. 2003. “Heaven or Hubris: Reflections on the New ‘New Poverty Agenda’”. Development Policy Review. 21:1, pp 5 -25.

 

Nelson, Paul. 2007. “Human Rights, the Millennium Development Goals, and the Future of Development”. World Development. 35:12. pp 2041 – 2055.

 

Saith, Ashwani. 2006. “From Universal Values to Millennium Development Goals: Lost in Translation”. Development and Change 37(6): 1167-1199.

 

Saith, Ashwani. 2007. “Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Dumbing Down of Development: Goals Set for the Poor, Goalposts Set by the Rich”. International Institute of Social Studies Newsletter. 45. pp 12-13.