World Development Report (world + development_report)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Attacking Poverty,a strategic dilemma for the World Bank

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2001
Michael Hubbard
Attacking Poverty has attracted more than the usual interest in World Development Reports mainly because it reflects the dilemma in future strategy for the World Bank. Its basis in a widely welcomed consultation with the poor, its transparent process and new conceptual framework contrast with limited development of the new themes , equality, security, empowerment of the poor , and of issues to do with aid: resources and rights. Contributors to this special issue discuss the dilemma reflected in Attacking Poverty from a number of angles: critical self-awareness by World Bank, promoting equality, shifting from the Washington Consensus, limits to the Bank's role, and enabling collective action by the poor. Other contributions discuss how the analysis in Attacking Poverty should be strengthened: inclusion of urban poverty and urbanisation's role in political development, promoting informal means of reducing vulnerability, and investigation of the long term consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Priorities for the next poverty-focused World Development Report (2010?) should include a more disaggregated and complete view of who is poor, why and where, and analysis of progress in political development. The World Bank may be best able to contribute to political development by extending to the subnational and public services level its main achievement of recent decades: the gathering, analysis and dissemination of comparative development data, to help move the focus of politics towards improving services and living standards. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


The World Development Report: concepts, content and a Chapter 12,

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2001
Robert Chambers
The World Development Report (WDR) process set new standards for openness and consultation. Its concepts and content are a major advance on its 1990 predecessor. The intention that its concepts and content should be influenced by voices of the poor was partly fulfilled. Conceptually, the VOP findings support the multidimensional view of poverty as ,pronounced deprivation of wellbeing', and the use of income-poverty to describe what is only one dimension of poverty (though this welcome usage is not consistent throughout in the WDR). Two concepts or analytical orientations were not adopted: powerlessness and disadvantage seen as a multidimensional interlinked web; and livelihoods. On content, three areas where the influence fell short were: how the police persecute and impoverish poor people; the diversity of the poorest people; and the significance of the body as the main but vulnerable and indivisible asset of many poor people. A weakness of the WDR is its lack of critical self-awareness. Chapter 11 is self-serving for the International Financial Institutions: it lumps loans with grants as concessional finance; it makes liberal use of the term donor, but never lender; and it does not consider debt avoidance as a strategy. The Report ends abruptly, a body without a head. Its multidimensional view of poverty is not matched by a multidimensional view of power and responsibility. A Chapter 12 is crying out to be written. This would confront issues of professional, institutional and personal commitment and change. It would stress critical reflection as a professional norm, disempowerment for democratic diversity as institutional practice, and personal values, attitudes and courageous behaviour as primary and crucial if development is to be change that is good for poor people. A new conclusion is suggested for the WDR, and a title for the World Development Report 2010. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Attacking Poverty and the ,post-Washington consensus'

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2001
Paul Mosley
Has the increasingly pro-poor stance of the World Bank, as manifested in particular in its most recent World Development Report (WDR), caused it to abandon its traditionally free-market attitudes ? The answer is ,yes and no'. The pursuit of ,security' espoused by the WDR has forced the Bank to acknowledge widespread market failure in the provision of security, both social and financial; and this has caused the Bank to espouse some measures very inconsistent with the Washington consensus, such as international capital controls. On the other hand, the old agenda of rolling back the frontiers of the state remains, and is given a new twist in WDR 2000 by the revelation that the ,voices of the poor' are arrayed against bureaucratic abuses. Debate within the Bank has become much more open and transparent, and this has exposed long-persisting internal differences about what markets still need to be liberalized in what environments. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Delivering Public Services in the Developing World: Frontiers of Research

OXONOMICS, Issue 1 2009
Daniel Rogger
This essay presents a view of the frontiers of research on public service delivery in the developing world, based on a series of interviews with researchers and practitioners actively working in this field. It recognizes the lasting contribution of the theoretical framework laid down by the World Development Report 2004 that emphasized accountability, and the randomized evaluations that have taken place to test and develop this theory. Research on other questions, such as those relating to the analysis of politics and the structure and organization of government, is at an earlier stage, and is likely to need a more structural approach. There are many questions still to be answered in this field. [source]


Development Economics through the Decades: a critical look at 30 years of the World Development Report , By Shahid Yusuf, with Angus Deaton, Kemal Dervis, William Easterley, Takatoshi Ito and Joseph E. Stiglitz

ASIAN-PACIFIC ECONOMIC LITERATURE, Issue 2 2009
Stephen Howes
No abstract is available for this article. [source]