Andy Sumner, Meera Tiwari. After 2015: International development policy at a Crossroads. Andy Sumner, Ray Kiely (Editors). Palgrave Macmillan: UK; 2009, ISBN 978-1-4039-8772-3, 215 pp

✍ Scribed by Valentino Dhiyu Asmoro

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 40 KB
• Volume: 23
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.1683

✦ Synopsis

It is 2015. George Clooney is US President. Angelina Jolie is Vice President. Bob Geldof and Bono are, respectively, Irish President and Prime Minister. Millenium Development Goals which were agreed at the UN Millennium Assembly in 2000 have given a roadmap to world development till 2015. We imagine that MDGs lead us to a better world as well as changing world power distribution. We may predict that China will overtake US as the world's largest economy. India is not so far behind. We can expect that some of the MDGs target will be met. Some will not be. But, what happens when we no longer have the MDGs? What will guide policy after 2015? Sumner and Tiwari's book tries to provide us with some alternative ideas about what lies beyond 2015.

The world in 2015 and beyond will be difficult to predict, although many try to create models estimating development in the mid-21st century and beyond. The last 50 years' experiences of development and development policy have shown us how unpredictable they are. However, the current pace of change is accelerating and creating both challenges and opportunities. There are many possibilities.

Taleb's (2007) Black Swans is a good example of the unpredictable situation. Reading his thesis make us pause for thought, beside any development simulations. Who would have imagined the spread of the Internet? Who would have imagined the collapse of the Soviet bloc or the post-9/11 world? What can we say at this stage?

Sumner and Tiwari believe that there are some major global and regional transformative processes and emerging issues marked by increasing inter-dependence between the North and South (or East and West) above all else. There are also tendencies for such processes to destabilise existing livelihoods, unravel social fabrics, create conflict and exclusion as well as disrupt international markets.

These processes are also reinforcing diversity in what was once the 'Third World'. We are facing two ends of development. There are, on the one hand, a group of accelerated developers in the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), BRICETS (add Eastern Europe and Turkey), and the Goldman Sachs N11 emerging economies. At the other end of the spectrum there are the LICUS (Low Income Country Under Stress) or 50-60 countries that might be classified as 'fragile states'. Sumner and Tiwari pose the question of how we can promote pro-poor development policy after the MDGs and amid complex changes, some of which mediate in favour of the poor, and many do not.

Five decades since Truman's 1949 Declaration to spread the benefits of industrial progress to the 'underdeveloped areas' we still face controversial questions. Should countries focus more on growth? Or less? Should we talk of well-being and what people can do and be, rather than of poverty and deprivation? Should the focus be on poor people or poor countries? What is the policy narrative? What works? Who or what are the drivers of policy changes? Sumner and Tiwari try to discuss those questions in this book.

Over the last few years there has been a re-emergence of attempts at a big idea notably from Paul Collier, William Easterly and Jeffrey Sachs but also Alice Amsden, Ha-Joon Chang, Dani Rodrik, Wolfgang Sachs and Josep Stiglitz to name but a handful. Each author presents some kind of diagnosis of the problem of (mal) development and entry points with most leverage for (good) change.