Making the world development report 2000: attacking poverty

摘要

In "Economic policy, distribution and poverty: the nature of disagreements," Ravi Kanbur (2001) illuminates the nature of central disagreements in world development. He describes two broad policy constellations and their institutional bases, one labeled "finance" (Group A), the other "civil society" (Group B). He shows how the ostensible disagreements between them reflect more fundamental, generally implicit disagreements about the level of aggregation, the length of the time horizon, and whether markets are basically competitive or riddled with pockets of market power. He then observes that polarization between the two policy constellations occurred in the late 1990s. The international financial institutions (IFIs), he argues, have been engagingin discussion and research less in a spirit of understanding and dialogue than in a spirit of "policy messaging," of getting out a hard and sharp message in support of the "finance" agenda for fear that acknowledgement of qualifications would be taken asa sign of weakness by the other side. "Especially since Seattle [in November 1999], a 'line in the sand', 'this far, no further' mentality seems to have gripped elements of Group A-- in the IFI's, in the G7 Treasuries, in the financial press and some inacademia."