New Poverty Reduction Strategies and the Missing Middle

Arjan Haan
Additional contact information
Arjan Haan: UK Department for International Development

Chapter 6 in Reclaiming Social Policy, 2007, pp 134-150 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Since the period of adjustment, international development practices have evolved rapidly. A new generation of poverty reduction strategies has been developed, and new approaches to public policies, in particular governance. This chapter explores the implications of these recent trends for the formulation and implementation of social policy in the South. The chapter first describes the theoretical approach of the post-Washington consensus, and the progress this entails in terms of broadbased and comprehensive approaches to development and poverty reduction. It discusses the increased attention to institutions in the reform debates, and reviews critiques of recent approaches. This section includes a discussion of the implications of the Monterey consensus, and of scaling-up aid and what this implies for public policy-making. The second section focuses on sector-wide approaches, which have recently not received as much attention as, for example, PRSPs, but which are crucial in a discussion that focuses on public policy capacity. Key questions in this section are whether these are compatible with a perspective that focuses on inter-sectoral public policy-making, and what the influence has been of recent ‘vertical’ initiatives, for example, in the case of HIV/Aids. Section 3 looks at Poverty Reduction Strategies as one of the major instruments put forward under the process of debt relief for heavily indebted countries. In particular, in the context of the argument in this book, we are interested in the experiences with participatory and comprehensive policy planning that were among the central tenets of the PRSP initiative. The fourth section concludes, looking at the recent debates on the scaling-up of aid, and the new challenges this poses for the main theme of this book.

Keywords: Poverty Reduction; Policy Dialogue; Debt Relief; Washington Consensus; Poverty Reduction Strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59228-5_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230592285

DOI: 10.1057/9780230592285_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().