1. Poverty
   1. What is poverty?
      1. Relative
         1. Developed world poverty tends to be measured as a comparison between best off and worst off.
      2. Absolute
         1. Day to day, hand to hand survival is precarious
         2. Lacking the means to provide for oneself and ones family
         3. Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities. A violation of human dignity.
         4. World bank defines it as living on 1.25 dollars a day.
         5. Many definitions include cultural, democratic and social participation and opportunities for that. As well as access to things like education, healthcare and so on. Ie it's about empowerment and not just about financial lack.
   2. What is being done about it?
      1. When we talk about international development we usually mean development in poor countries, rather than in the local north
      2. Often focused around the MDG millennium development goals which are supposed to be eradicated by 2015. To halve the number of people on 1.25 dollars a day.
      3. Donors have less money to spend. Even in UK where govt has committed to maintaining aid expenditure despite austerity at home.
   3. Bretton Woods - 40 nations took part
      1. IMF
         1. Short to loans for balance of payments problems. Maintaining stability in the developed world
      2. World Bank
         1. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
            1. Priority was Europe after the war, first steps we the Marshal Plan
      3. Tried to marry national level Keynsian demand management, with open nd free international trade.
      4. GATT 1947
         1. Most favoured nation principle. No allowance made for developing countries. Embeds liberalism.
   4. New International Economic Order (the "Third World")
      1. Largely represented by the non-aligned movement
      2. The seventies, because of things like the oil shock, showed the third world that they could negotiate a better deal - after OPEC's success in holding she west to ransom.
         1. Former colonial powers in particular became worried that their former colonies would not take with them.
         2. Some key demands:
            1. Commodities prices - should be more stable.
            2. Reform of Bretton Woods organisations better to reflect representation of developing world.
            3. GATT developing countries would no longer be subject to same laws. Developed countries could do bilateral agreements with developing countries.
            4. Eg non-reciprocal access to EU markets.
      3. A more "critical" approach to development
         1. Import Substitution Industrialisation - before you can compete at international level you have to nurture your home industry.
            1. Not successful for a variety of reasons. Eg they did not actually promote development
            2. However similar tactics have worked in the Newly Industrialised World - those (often south east Asian) countries that have gone from developing to developed status in the course of a few decades after state led development before trade liberalisation.
      4. Tired world debt crisis more or less put an end to is after the global fall in commodities prices
         1. A number of countries defaulted on debt. WB and IMF often imposed "structural adjustment" programs.
            1. Evidence that they did more harm than good.
         2. The Washington Consensus is essentially a neoliberal idea. See John Williamson
            1. Fiscal discipline
            2. Tax forms at lower marginal rates and on increased tax base
            3. Redirect public expenditure away from welfare
            4. Liberalisation of interest rates
            5. Competitive exchange rate
            6. Liberalisation of trade
            7. Liberalise foreign direct investment
            8. Privatisation of state owned enterprises
            9. Deregulation of economic activity
            10. Secure property rights
   5. Development NGOs
      1. Have tended to gain influence since 80s
      2. Appropriate regulation to ensure social needs
      3. More active policies for social intervention
      4. Joseph Stiglitz and the post-Washington Consensus
         1. Is it just neoliberalism with a human face? Have the macroeconomic policies actually changed?
      5. Brundtland Commission put new issues on the agenda - sustainability for instance, empowerment of women
2. Trade policy and development
   1. The way GATT was set up allowed for no special rules for developing countries
   2. Most favoured nation principle is that if you grant a special trade concession to one country you have to offer it to all.
      1. GATT did not allow derogation from this rule at first.
      2. Then following New International Economic Order pressure developing countries were allowed to make special arrangement to protect their own emerging economies - the so called Grand Bargain of the Uruguay round that created the WTO, GATS, WIPO etc.
      3. LDCs largely want Duty Free Quota Free (DFQF) access to developed world markets. Doha round
3. Hunger
   1. Features in every definition of poverty and is key to the MDGs
      1. One in seven people worldwide will experience hunger in 2010
         1. Most acute in sub-Saharan Africa with other pockets in south east Asia
         2. What causes the absence of food for some people? Is it natural, or engineered
            1. Malthusian population theory. Not so dominant a theory nowadays. There is sufficient farm production on the planet to give everyone 3600 calories a day.
            2. So most focus is on socially created issues about food, entitlement and distribution. Amartya Sen.