The 20th Century Has Left the Building:

Time to Reimagine Global Development

Lawrence Haddad
 2007-2009:
“we’re not in Kansas anymore”
• What should the measure of progress be?
• Who are the new voices we should be
listening to?
• How should they work together?
• What motivates us?
What should we measure as
progress?
 GDP/capita and Life Satisfaction

Deaton 2004
 Economic growth is not working as
expected on Indian malnutrition rates

Source: growth data, Table 1, Topalova 2008; nutrition data, NFHS

Not all economic growth is good,
not all economic growth is bad
Dudley Seers called for the “dethroning” of
GDP in 1969 -- it will not be easily dragged
out of the palace.
 We Need “3D Human Wellbeing”
• What a person has
• What a person can do with what they have
• What meaning they give to their goals and
how they achieve them

McGregor 2007
New Voices
 The “G-Factor”
G193
G77 o n
tiv e
ffe c
inclusive G20 E e x ?
issu

G8
G2

decisive
Need to talk to the “unusual suspects”
 Business

Security
Solutions
from the
South
 Citizen Report Cards Work
Randomised control trial of community-based monitoring of
public primary health care providers in Uganda

• Citizen report cards reduced child mortality by 33 per cent

• The study documents large increases in utilisation and
improved health outcomes
• Cost per child death averted was $300, well below the
average of $887 for 23 other interventions.

Björkman, M and Svensson, J. (2009) 'Power to the People: Evidence from a

Randomized Field Experiment on Community Based Monitoring in Uganda’, The
Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol 124: 2, pp 735–69
How do we work together?
Development needs to break out of its bubble
 Blueprints are out

We know the good ingredients

• Which meal to • How do they choose the best
cook? ingredients?
• Who cooks? • How can they influence which
ingredients are stocked?

We need We need co-construction

diagnostics of knowledge for
that combine
• easier use of “global best
Political practice”
Technical • more diverse “global
Capacity knowledge pool”
• better imagining of what
considerations issue by issue global
governance looks like
 Same
subject,
different
view
Same view, different
interpretations
What should motivate us?
From charity to
obligation
 From self
interest to
common interest
 Conclusions: 21st century global
development
• What: Get serious about wellbeing
• Who: Listen to those who have something
important to say, not those who are most
convenient or easiest to understand
• How: Find your own way + Blending
knowledge to imagine new global governance
• Why: From charity to obligation, from self to
common interest