The 20 th Century Has Left the Building : Time to Reimagine Global Development Lawrence Haddad

The 20th Century Has Left the Building:

Time to Reimagine Global DevelopmentLawrence Haddad

2007-2009: “we’re not in Kansas anymore”

• What should the measure of progress be?

• Who are the new voices we should be listening to?

• How should they work together?• What motivates us?

What should we measure as progress?

GDP/capita and Life Satisfaction

Deaton 2004

Economic growth is not working as expected on Indian malnutrition rates

Source: growth data, Table 1, Topalova 2008; nutrition data, NFHS

Not all economic growth is good, not all economic growth is bad

Dudley Seers called for the “dethroning” of GDP in 1969 -- it will not be easily dragged

out of the palace.

We Need “3D Human Wellbeing”

• What a person has• What a person can do with what they have• What meaning they give to their goals and

how they achieve them

McGregor 2007

New Voices

The “G-Factor”

inclusive

decisive

Effective on

issue x?

G2

G193

G77

G20

G8

Need to talk to the “unusual suspects”

Business

Security

Solutions from the South

Fix the broken feedback loop:

talk to people who are

supposed to be benefitting

Citizen Report Cards WorkRandomised control trial of community-based monitoring of

public primary health care providers in Uganda

• Citizen report cards reduced child mortality by 33 per cent

• The study documents large increases in utilisation and improved health outcomes

• Cost per child death averted was $300, well below the average of $887 for 23 other interventions.

Björkman, M and Svensson, J. (2009) 'Power to the People: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment on Community Based Monitoring in Uganda’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol 124: 2, pp 735–69

How do we work together?

Development needs to break out of its bubble

Blueprints are out

We know the good ingredients

We need co-construction of knowledge for

• easier use of “global best practice”

• more diverse “global knowledge pool”

• better imagining of what issue by issue global governance looks like

We need diagnostics that combine

PoliticalTechnicalCapacity

considerations

• Which meal to cook?

• Who cooks?

• How do they choose the best ingredients?

• How can they influence which ingredients are stocked?

Same subject, different

view

Same view, different interpretations

What should motivate us?

From charity to obligation

From self interest to

common interest

Conclusions: 21st century global development

• What: Get serious about wellbeing• Who: Listen to those who have something

important to say, not those who are most convenient or easiest to understand

• How: Find your own way + Blending knowledge to imagine new global governance

• Why: From charity to obligation, from self to common interest