How Should MDG Implementation Be Measured: Faster Progress or Meeting Targets?

A critically important aspect of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is that they provide concrete, time-bound and quantitative objectives against which poverty reduction can be measured. Governments can be held accountable by their people. The international community can hold accountable, and be held accountable by, national governments. If this newfound accountability is to be worthwhile, however, the method of determining progress or lack thereof must be the correct one. We argue that the correct measure is whether faster progress is being made, not whether the targets are to be met. The MDGs are not hard planning targets; they are aspirational norms and they offer benchmarks in an evaluative framework.How Should MDG Implementation Be Measured: Faster Progress or Meeting Targets?

Are the MDGs priority in development strategies and aid programmes? Only few are!

The gap between strong political commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and slow progress towards meeting them is often attributed to weak 'ownership' by developing country governments. This Working Paper addresses the issue of ownership by analysing the substance of 22 developing countries' Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and the policy frameworks of 21 bilateral programmes. Two major findings of the analysis are as follows. First, economic growth for income poverty reduction and social sector investments (education, health and water) are important priorities in most of the PRSPs; decent work, hunger and nutrition, the environment and access to technology tend to be neglected. PRSPs also emphasise governance as an important means of achieving the MDGs, but they focus mostly on economic governance rather than on democratic (participatory and equitable) processes. Since the key motivation for the MDGs as reflected in the Millennium Declaration was to promote a more inclusive globalisation through participatory processes, the PRSPs are undercutting their core policy purpose. Implementation could be refocused if greater attention were paid to the neglected objectives and dimensions in the MDGs' design, as major goals and with quantitative indicators. The single most effective revision could be to add a goal of reducing inequality in income and other dimensions of poverty within and between countries. Second, this Working Paper distinguishes between three functional uses of global goals: as consensus objectives, as monitoring benchmarks, and as planning targets. Most donor policy statements and PRSPs use MDGs as consensus objectives. Most PRSPs also use MDGs as planning targets, but without adapting them to local conditions and priorities. In most cases where MDG targets are set, they are in line with the MDG 2015 targets; this is not necessarily a sign of 'ownership' because these targets are not accompanied by coherent action plans. If the MDGs are to be used as planning targets for resource allocation purposes, the international community could develop a more consistent and effective approach to the local incorporation of MDGs into national planning and priority setting

Global development goal setting as a policy tool for global governance: Intended and unintended consequences

Global development goals have become increasingly used by the United Nations and the international community to promote priority global objectives. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the most prominent example of such goals, but many others have been set since the 1960s. Despite their prominence and proliferation, little has been written about the concept of global goals as a policy tool, their effectiveness, limitations and broader consequences. This paper explores global development goals as a policy tool, and the mechanisms by which they lead to both intended and unintended consequences in influencing international development strategies and action. It analyses the MDGs as an example to argue that global goals activate the power of numbers to create incentives for national governments and others to mobilise action and galvanise support for important objectives. But the powers of simplification, reification and abstraction lead to broader unintended consequences when the goals are misinterpreted as national planning targets and strategic agendas, and when they enter the language of development to redefine concepts such as development and poverty

Rethinking the policy objectives of development aid: From economic growth to conflict prevention

The current consensus objective of development aid in the international community is to reduce poverty in general and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in particular. In addition, the dominant view identifies economic growth as the principal means to this end. But the policy objective of aid can be defined in many ways, and has in fact varied over time with shifting priorities within the international community about the ultimate ends of development and the means for advancing those ends. This paper argues that more attention should be given to conflict prevention as a policy objective of development aid and explores the implications of doing so for aid programme priorities and the international aid architecture in general. The paper shows that violent conflict is a major obstacle to achieving the MDGs; it identifies 64 worst performing countries and finds that the majority have experienced violent internal conflict, and/or are vulnerable because of the socioeconomic correlates of internal war. The paper then argues that development policy priorities and their support with aid can be deployed to reduce these risks. Conflict prevention is thus an important policy objective as a means to achieving MDGs as well as an end itself since security from violence is an essential aspect of human wellbeing and human security. Integrating this policy objective would imply adjustments that would need to be made in aid architecture

National drinking water targets – trends and factors associated with target-setting

We examine how national targets change with time and show that no consistent pattern exists across all countries examined for this article during the 1980–2013 period. Instead, countries fall into different trend types including constant, increasing, and decreasing national targets with time. We found that level of coverage is one likely factor in determining the national target of a country, where countries with low coverage levels set lower national targets compared to countries with high levels of coverage. In general, most countries set ambitious national targets that require the future rate of change to be more than 20% greater than the current rate. Setting ambitious targets is related to greater progress in increasing coverage, as long as the national target does not require countries to more than triple their current rate of change. Changes in national standards of safe water were shown to have occurred, where improved technology type was not used in national standards in 1994 but was present in 2011 and 2013. Comparison of national and international targets suggests that international targets may influence national targets, with approximately 70% of countries having national targets equal to, higher than, or converging towards international targets

Unequal Development in the 1990s: Growing Gaps in Human Capabilities

Questions about global income inequality inspire some of the most contentious debates among not only academics but politicians and the public at large. People look to data on income inequality as they might a stock market index to gauge how the world is doing. Are things on the right track? Is enough being done? In this age of globalization, the question is inevitably about whether 'Globalisation' – meaning liberalisation of economies and the integration of global trade and capital flows – brings prosperity or not. The controversies raging today over the many studies coming to different conclusions depend on how the questions are asked, and which data series are used. Such debates indicate little more than how economists and statisticians can find many answers to the seemingly same questions. More fundamentally, these debates mask attention on the growing disparities in human lives

Measuring Technology Achievement of Nations and the Capacity to Participate in the Network Age

human development, democracy

Single-Particle Properties from Kohn-Sham Green's Functions

An effective action approach to Kohn-Sham density functional theory is used to illustrate how the exact Green's function can be calculated in terms of the Kohn-Sham Green's function. An example based on Skyrme energy functionals shows that single-particle Kohn-Sham spectra can be improved by adding sources used to construct the energy functional.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Reducing Inequality – The Missing MDG: A Content Review of PRSPs and Bilateral Donor Policy Statements

Although important gains have been made in reducing global poverty, the pace of progress across the world is not on track to achieve the 2015 MDG targets. Is this due to lack of ownership on the part of national governments and the international community? This article examines whether the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and donor policy statements are aligned with MDG priorities and targets. The analysis found a high degree of commitment to MDGs as a whole but both PRSPs and donor statements are selective, consistently emphasising income poverty and social investments for education, health and water but not other targets concerned with empowerment and inclusion of the most vulnerable such as gender violence or women's political representation. The article concludes that a new, ninth Goal needs to be added – to reduce inequality – to make the MDGs aligned to the original purpose of the Millennium Declaration