INDEX NUMBER: 10743443

COURSE: POLI 344

AN ARTICLE REVIEW ON

Foli, R., y& Béland, D. (2014). International organizations and Ideas about poverty in Sub‐
Saharan Africa. Poverty & Public Policy, 6(1), 3-23.

The current policy on poverty and anti-poverty efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have taken

on a different face more than ever before. The purpose of the article under consideration was

to put the work of international organizations (IOs), particularly the World Bank and the

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), into context and show

how they have influenced policies in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Domestic policies frequently

transcend national borders, therefore International Organizations have offered technical

support, personal training, capacity building, and partnership with Civil Society Organizations

to influence policymaking through seminars, conferences, publications, and think tanks. Unlike

the World Bank, whose operations are well-known in the SSA, the OECD's are less well-

known. The paper, on the other hand, aimed to shed light on and widen its operations and

activities in the SSA region, arguing that, aside from conditionality, which is one of IOs' well-

known characteristics, their activities are diverse. In any case, the purpose of this essay is to

examine the aforementioned article and make an assessment on its effectiveness as well as its

flaws.

It is believed that, as a result of the globalized political system, the activities of international

organizations have evolved through time, and that domestic social policies are no longer

limited to a country's borders, even if external powers may not be fully capable of exercising

state power. As a result, they frequently use conditionalities, think tanks, publications,
seminars, conferences, and cooperation with society organizations to disseminate their

information and ideas. Because of their encounters with the Bretton Woods institutions'

Structural Adjustment Program in the 1980s (Marcedo, 2003), the SSA's approach to

comprehending the functions of IOs is narrowly limited to conditionalities. The article focuses

mostly on the lengthy relationship between SSAs and the World Bank and the Organization

for Economic Cooperation and Growth (OECD), two important international organizations that

have had a substantial impact on the region's development.

International Agencies generate ideas in the form of symbolism, impressions, theories, and

lessons that serve as the foundation for policy decisions and choices ( Beland & Cox, 2011).

Ideas are important for a variety of reasons, including creating policy challenges and reform

proposals, providing a medium for enacting and maintaining change, and providing a support

base of interest during economic and social crises. The paper argues that one of the most

important components of IOs' activity is policy information, and that information embedded in

the political terrain is slanted to support a specific viewpoint. As a result, information

regarding poverty suggests that the concept's meaning is relative, and how it is conceived

impacts how it might be addressed. For example, Thomas (1992) claims that the ideas and

techniques used to combat poverty are quite dynamic. Poverty was viewed by Adam Smith as

a source of social seclusion and inferiority. .

Poverty is now considered as a measure of per capita income in modern times. Poverty was

originally defined as improving growth rates and stabilizing income levels, but it was later

expanded to include state distribution of growth benefits ( World Bank, 1975). The shift from

a narrow definition of poverty to a broader spectrum is considered as evidence of the dynamic

nature of ideas. There was a global discussion between absolute and relative poverty at first.
Poverty has evolved over time to include issues such as overall well-being, freedom, rights,

social exclusion, freedom of speech, deprivation, and inequality. The relevance of players who

promote these programs on a global scale is underscored by the dynamic character of ideas.

The definition of poverty and the worldwide phenomena of large inequities among nations rose

to prominence after World War II (Cole, 1981). Factors such as the involvement of IOs,

increased economic connectivity, and the spread of economic concepts around the world all

contributed to this rise. As a result, these IOs concentrated primarily on national

reconstruction, poverty reduction, and economic growth, with additional support from the

United Nations General Assembly committee on poverty alleviation and inequality,

culminating in the designation of the 1960s to 1990s as the innovation decade. However, due

to the economic slump that began in the 1970s and the difficult conditions of the Structural

Adjustment Programs in the 1980s, the results of poverty reduction efforts in the first 30 years

were ineffective. Despite the fact that poverty and inequality issues arose after WWII, there

has been a gradual fall in interest in poverty and anti-poverty initiatives, particularly since the

1970s. When a result, poverty resurfaced on the global stage in the 1990s, as social policy

concerns around anti-poverty garnered international attention. In an ideal world, the United

Nations would recognize the consequences of the Structural Adjustment Programs and the

need for a more humane strategy to poverty alleviation. As a result, factors such as the

expansion of social funds in the form of mechanisms to help mitigate the social costs of

structural Adjustment Programs, the adoption of the United Nations' Fourth Development

Decade Strategy, which focused on poverty alleviation and the shift in the Banks' approach to

poverty, the adoption of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) in the year 2000, and
the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The World Bank was founded in

1944 with the primary goal of assisting in the rehabilitation and growth of postwar European

economy. The Bank's mandate has been expanded over time to include global poverty

reduction. The bank's initial concentration was on infrastructure development, but it has since

turned to assisting countries in implementing social policies and programs. Most SSA

countries did not have a relationship with the World Bank until the 1950s and 1960s, when

they acquired independence. Pre-structural, Structural, and Post-structural Adjustment are the

three phases of that bond or relationship for the purposes of this paper. First, the Pre-structural

Adjustment underlines the bank's modest involvement in poverty alleviation and that the

bank's connection with most SSAs was mostly based on pro-liberal market values, particularly

devaluation. The structural adjustment phase begins with the implementation of the World

Bank's and the International Monetary Fund's Structural Adjustment Programs. SSA countries

were obliged to adopt progressive ideas such as commercialization, depreciation,

liberalization, and decentralization as a result of the SAPs. The World Bank, on the other

hand, was heavily chastised as a result of these policies' crippling effects. As a result,

beginning with the Post-structural Adjustment, there was a shift in policy suggestions. In order

to address the SAP's objections, there was a balance between conditionality and participation,

as well as IOs and SSA, during this phase.

On the other hand, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was

founded in 1948 to focus on postwar reconstruction, much like the World Bank. Through the

distribution of specialist information or policy ideas on specific topics, the OECD also

engages in capacity building to support development and poverty reduction in developing

countries. Its operations have also centered on strategies to promote development and poverty
eradication in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) through development assistance. The SSA-OECD

partnership takes the form of bilateral contacts, in which state officials can build various

finance and trade relationships to support development. However unlike Bank, however, the

OECD's engagement with SSA began in the 1990s with the approval of the policy plan

"Shaping the Twenty-First Century: Development Cooperation's Contribution." These

principles served as the foundation for the United Nations' approval of the Millennium

Development Goals (MDGs) in the year 2000. The concept of who a poor person is and what

poverty entails is very subjective. The first paradigm takes into account an income perspective

based on a poverty line of $1 per day, as proposed by the World Bank. The second paradigm

is based on basic needs, which views poverty as a lack of the bare minimum for meeting basic

human requirements. Amartya Sen and the United Nations' most recent paradigm focuses on

human capability, emphasizing a lack of basic capabilities such as the loss of freedom as a

type of poverty. These issues have had a significant impact on global development debates.

Moreover, it must be founded that the article under consideration presents a thorough

scholarly thesis on the nature of international organizations, their relations with Sub-Saharan

Africa, and how their ideas and information are used to shape policymaking strategies in the

region through seminars, conferences, publications, and think tanks. The article, however, has

a number of flaws. One major flaw is that the paper fails to address domestic issues that

stymie policy efficacy in most SSA nations, such as the comprador class, corruption, poor

management, and terrible governance systems. Again, the article is untrustworthy, especially

outside of the SSA context. So, in the future, if you want to learn more about the World Bank

and the OECD's operations and activities in developing countries like Asia and Latin America,

this essay won't help you.

To sum up, this article has covered a wide range of international institutions' activities in SSA,

particularly the World Bank and the OECD. To provide a better judgment, the review of this

work relied on the theme sections or germane parts of the text. It aimed to broaden the role of

these two key international bodies in determining regional policymaking. The writers of the

article de-mystified the long-standing connection between SSA and intergovernmental groups,

as well as their benefits to not only conditionalities but regional development.

REFERENCE

Macedo, J. B. (2003, December 14). Retrieved from http://globalcentres.org/html/pdf/Bellagio_

Dec_2003/Background_5_reportsgnxt.pdf

Be´land, D., & R. H. Cox. (2011). Ideas and politics in social science research. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Thomas, A. (1992). “Introduction.” In T. Allen & A. Thomas (Eds.), Poverty and development

in the 1990s (pp. 1–5). Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with The Open

University.
World Bank. (1975). The assault on world poverty. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Press.

Cole, J. P. (1981). The development gap: A spatial analysis of world poverty and inequality.

New York: John Wiley and Sons.