Human Development and Global Institutions

Evolution, Impact, Reform

Richard Ponzio, Arunabha Ghosh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780415483605
• eBook ISBN: 9781317278528
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Relaciones internacionales

This book provides a timely and accessible introduction to the foundational ideas associated with the human development school of thought. It examines its conceptual evolution during the post-colonial era, and discusses how various institutions of the UN system have tried to engage with this issue, both in terms of intellectual and technical advance, and operationally. Showing that human development has had a profound impact on shaping the policy agenda and programming priorities of global institutions, it argues that human development has helped to preserve the continued vitality of major multilateral development programs, funds, and agencies.

It also details how human development faces new risks and threats, caused by political, economic, social, and environmental forces which are highlighted in a series of engaging case studies on trade, water, energy, the environment, democracy, human rights, and peacebuilding. The book also makes the case for why human development remains relevant in an increasingly globalized world, while asking whether global institutions will be able to sustain political and moral support from their member states and powerful non-state actors. It argues that fresh new perspectives on human development are now urgently needed to fill critical gaps across borders and entire regions. A positive, forward-looking agenda for the future of global governance would have to engage with new issues such as the Sustainable Development Goals, energy transitions, resource scarcity, and expansion of democratic governance within and between nations.

Redefining the overall nature and specific characteristics of what constitutes human progress in an increasingly integrated and interdependent world, this book serves as a primer for scholars and graduate students of international relations and development. It is also relevant to scholars of economics, political science, history, sociology, and women's studies.

1 Human development An idea whose time has come?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315640945-1

The purpose of this book is to examine the idea of human development and its influence, over the past two and a half decades, in redefining our understanding of human progress in institutions of global governance. Beginning with the first Human Development Report (HDR) in 1990, human development was defined as “a process of enlarging people’s choices” to improve the human condition. Over time, it also came to be accepted as an expansion of human capabilities, an enhancement of freedoms, and a fulfillment of human rights. Whereas economic growth schools focus exclusively on only one choice—income—human development embraces the enlargement of all human choices: whether economic, social, cultural, or political. Many scholars, international policy-makers, and development practitioners view human development as both an intellectual and policy breakthrough given its success in reminding us of the ultimate purpose of development: to treat all people—present and future generations—as ends. ¹ When healthy, educated, well-nourished, and empowered, people are also the chief means of development.

• Conceptual antecedents to human development and their origins in global institutions
• Snapshot of human development in global governance over the past two and a half decades
• Chief research questions
• Why human development faces considerable challenges today in global governance
• Conclusion

Thinking on human development has contributed to a shift in academic and policy arenas away from national-income accounting to people, their well-being, and the human capabilities to expand their well-being. This project will assess the influence of the idea of human development in contributing to a paradigmatic shift in global institutions, by analyzing the extent to which international public policy-makers now think differently about development, raise new questions, and give priority to human development concerns and the multitude of constraints faced in pursuing this agenda. In particular, it will give attention to the impact of the human development approach in shaping how progress is perceived and measured in global governance in specific issue areas such as democratic governance, energy, the environment, human rights, peacebuilding, and trade. The book will highlight the major human development-related conceptual, measurement, and policy and institutional reform innovations introduced through, in particular, hundreds of noted global, regional, national, and sub-national HDRs. It will also offer a critical perspective on the limitations to current human development approaches and the obstacles that must be overcome if human development is to remain relevant, let alone gain wider traction, in international policy circles. The human development “brand” in the 1990s was itself a critical response and alternative to the 1980s structural adjustment policies of the international financial institutions, and to a preoccupation by wealthy donor nations with GNP, per-capita income, and other national-income accounting tools.

A combination of the 2008–2009 international financial crisis, terrorism, and other forms of extremism, resource scarcity and climate change, and leadership and structural concerns within the chief global institutional champion of human development—the United Nations (UN)—have converged today to place at risk both a continued commitment to human development priorities and the tangible gains achieved in recent decades. In short, a reinvigoration of international policy debates about human development is vital to rejuvenate and sustain global institutions, such as the UN, World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO). This is especially the case with regards to “new frontier issues,” such as energy, the environment, and democratization at all levels of governance.

This chapter defines and presents the key features of human development, beginning with a review of the conceptual antecedents to human development and their origins in global institutions. It then provides a snapshot of human development policy and institutional reform priorities in global governance over the past two and a half decades, giving attention to what has changed and what has not changed in global human development policy debates. The chapter then elaborates on four fundamental questions the book intends to address. First is the issue of paradigm shift: has human development transformed how development is understood in global governance? Second is the issue of agenda-setting: to what extent have international policy-makers sought to advance human development reform priorities in international policy forums? Third entails new horizion issues: what are the emerging human development ideas and innovations in global institutions? And the fourth concerns obstancles: what constraints and challenges—whether policy, resource, technical, or others—were confronted or are expected in pursuing this agenda?

While citing the phenomenal growth in human development-related policy reports, coupled with ample references to the concept since the UN world conferences of the 1990s, initial evidence cited in this chapter suggests that a number of factors preclude human development from deepening its roots in global institutions and international decision-making more broadly. Indeed, the concept is under immense strain and its associated policy prescriptions face the prospect of serious setbacks if an appropriate set of responses is not fashioned soon.

Conceptual antecedents to human development and their origins in global institutions

The human development conceptual framework can be traced back to philosophical traditions underscoring the sanctity of human life, as espoused by the world’s great religions—both from the East and the West—and the ancient writings of the renowned Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and the Indian philosopher Kautilya. In more recent times, human development derives inspiration from classical economics beginning with Sir William Petty’s Political Arithmetic and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which acknowledged the central role of the ingenuity and hard work of people to a nation’s progress. ²

By the 1950s and 1960s, alongside the meteoric growth in the number and reach of international organizations, attention shifted in influential bodies such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to an emphasis on the capital inputs and related macroeconomic reforms and balances to achieve economic growth. Perceived as a “growth only agenda” that appeared to devalue the significance of individual labor inputs and social outcomes, successive challenges were lodged in the 1970s against this perspective by leading scholars and policy analysts. In conjunction with a series of studies commissioned by the International Labour Organization, for example, Dudley Seers critiqued the emerging economic orthodoxy of the international financial institutions by stressing the employment objective, whereas Hollis Chenery, Hans Singer, and Richard Jolly went further in making the case for redistribution with growth as essential to fostering socio-economic development over the medium and long term.

These early intellectual forerunners to thinking on human development were soon followed by the basic needs approach, spearheaded by Paul Streeten, Frances Stewart, and Mahbub ul Haq while at the World Bank in the 1970s, which posits that the poor need certain basic goods and services (e.g., food, water, clothing, and shelter) and a decent life depends on how these are consumed. The basic needs approach further transformed how national and international policy-makers conceived of and measured absolute poverty, by seeking to define the absolute minimum resources (consumption goods mainly) needed for long-term physical well-being. Lists of basic needs in subsequent decades would also include health services, education, and sanitation.

Finally, in the 1980s, Amartya Sen—a long time collaborator with the United Nations—innovated his “capability approach,” which relates the evaluation of the quality of life to the assessment of the capability of human beings to function in society. According to Sen, “If life is seen as a set of ‘doings and beings’ that are valuable, the exercise of assessing the quality of life takes the form of evaluating these functionings and the capability to function.” ³ The notion that a person’s capability reflects his or her freedom to choose between different ways of living would later form a cornerstone of the human development paradigm.

Building on the above approaches toward fighting poverty, expanding human freedoms, and achieving more balanced, equitable growth, the human development school emerged in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Alongside its chief architects, Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen, its earliest key proponents included Meghnad Desai, Gustav Ranis, Frances Stewart, Paul Streeten, Khadija Haq, and Richard Jolly. Their vigorous debates in annual meetings of the Society for International Development’s “North-South Roundtable” contributed to the initial contours and distinguishing features of what would later encompass a robust, yet somewhat elastic human development conceptual framework. For instance, while advocating the need for developing country governments to divest from productive sectors of the economy where the business community maintains clear comparative advantages, they also took collective aim at the shortsightedness and destabilizing effects of the strict structural adjustment programs of the 1980s—introduced by the international financial institutions, with the backing of rich donor nations. At the same time, this eminent group of economists and development specialists stressed the urgency of donors and developing countries alike redoubling public investments in what they deemed as essential “human development priorities.” These include basic education (including a working literacy level), primary health care, potable water, basic sanitation, and the protection of the rights of women and children.

From its infancy, the human development paradigm sought to shift how national policy-makers, citizens, and international bodies judge national progress. In incorporating Sen’s “capability approach,” it also scrutinized the ways and means of enlarging people’s choices to live productive and meaningful lives. By the mid-1990s, Mahbub ul Haq observed broad agreement on key aspects of the human development paradigm_

• Development must put people at the center of its concerns.
• The purpose of development is to enlarge all human choices, not just income.
• The human development paradigm is concerned both with building up human capabilities (through investment in people) and with using those human capabilities fully (through an enabling framework for growth and employment).
• Human development has four essential pillars: equality, sustainability, productivity, and empowerment. It regards economic growth as essential but emphasizes the need to pay attention to its quality and distribution, analyzes at length its link with human lives, and questions its long-term sustainability.
• The human development paradigm defines the ends of development and analyzes sensible options for achieving them. ⁴

Over time—and as illustrated in this volume—human development has evolved into a rich, multidimensional concept and framework for analysis and understanding development. For example, leading a long and healthy life, being educated, and enjoying a decent standard of living were initially portrayed as the most critical development choices. But, in subsequent years, political freedom, broader human rights, and environmental sustainability grew increasingly important, as detailed in Chapters 5 and 6. This sequencing of development priorities arose, in part, because of criticisms by governments in the Global North and South that objected strongly to initial attempts by the HDRs to provide a disinterested, neutral assessment of freedom in countries.

Critical perspectives about the human development conceptual framework and the norms and concrete policy prescriptions that flow from it were introduced in the early years by scholars and policy analysts, such as Leen Boer, Allen Kelly, Ad Koekkoek, and V.V. Bhanoji Rao. ⁵ In particular, they criticized the elasticity of the basic concept of human development—for example, that it tries to “mean everything to everyone” and, therefore, lacks analytical utility or the ability to facilitate policy consistency—as well as the over-simplification of complex policy problems because of the framework’s lack of methodological rigor and reliable data sources.

However, with each successive global, regional, national, and sub-national HDR, combined with writings associated with the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities and the global membership of the Human Development and Capability Association, the human development conceptual framework and its associated analytical tools and policy prescriptions were further refined through stringent “field testing” in diverse policy settings. In this volume, we examine the application and impact of human development in policy deliberations undertaken in institutions of global governance. Although the school of thought faces innumerable intellectual and political challenges today, human development has demonstrated consistently, during the past two and a half decades, a marked and potentially durable effect on international policy discourse related to fundamental questions of world order, organization and social spending within states, and the balancing of competing political, economic, social, and cultural priorities.

Snapshot of human development in global governance over the past two and a half decades

Besides the annual global HDR, more than 700 national and regional HDRs have been produced since 1990, and a large literature has emerged on the finer aspects of human development theory and measurement. Human development—as advanced through the global HDR and other vehicles—has shaped international policy discourse over the past 25 years in institutions of global governance in at least three concrete ways. First, human development has shifted and expanded what is commonly perceived as the goal of development today—a new conceptual framework or paradigm of human development. Second, it has innovated new means for gauging human and national progress (new human development measurement tools). Third, it has introduced many recommendations for change in international public policy (new global governance policy and institutional reform proposals). A few examples follow of human development’s impact, detailed at length in this volume.

Shifting and expanding what is commonly perceived as the goal of development today

While emanating from the traditional development community, the HDRs had a profound effect on thinking and practice related to the conflict-security-justice nexus in global governance shortly after their birth. The concept of human security, introduced in the 1993 and subsequently elaborated in the 1994 Human Development Report, soon shaped how policy-makers view the origins of, and an appropriate international response to, deadly armed violence.

The HDRs defined human security as “people exercising their human development choices safely and freely” and “ensuring freedom from fear and freedom from want.” In this way they contributed to a broader understanding of the sources of violent conflict and the need to inject targeted resources for human development into any kind of strategic framework or individual (sectoral) measures aiming to cope with violent conflict and reduce the likelihood of its recurrence. Both human development and human security placed people at the center of future conceptions of peacebuilding, serving as both the ends and chief means towards achieving sustainable peace. Consequently, they markedly changed the international mindset on the requirements for effective peacebuilding. This mindset was freed in part by the lapse in the superpower (and modern military and state-centric) standoff that virtually paralyzed global institutions such as the UN during the Cold War.

At the 2005 UN summit, world leaders stressed in a section on “human security” in the outcome document “the right of all people to live in freedom and dignity, free from poverty and despair.” They also recognized that “all individuals, in particular vulnerable people, are entitled to freedom from fear and freedom from want, with an equal opportunity to enjoy all their rights and fully develop their human potential.” ⁶ World lea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Book Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Human development: An idea whose time has come?
• 2 The international policy impact of the human development approach in the 1990s … the early years
• 3 Human development measurement tools: Advantages and shortcomings
• 4 Human development in international policy-making, Part I: Trade, water, energy, and environment
• 5 Human development in international policy-making, Part II: Democratic governance, human rights, and peacebuilding
• 6 Human development in global governance: New frontiers
• Select bibliography
• Index
• Routledge Global Institutions Series