Global Poverty and Development

Abstract

The problems associated with global poverty and the challenges of economic development are a fundamental concern for IPE. The emergence of development as a modern concept is closely associated with the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and remains bound up with the role and power of modern nation-states. Both development goals and the idea of ‘development’ itself comprise highly controversial issues that cut cross politics at the local, national, regional and global levels, and are subject to intense contestation over competing conceptions of fairness and justice in the global political economy. In comparison, the concept of underdevelopment refers to a situation where the resources of a country or area are not used to achieve their economic and social potential. In the twenty-first century, comparative statistical indicators show that levels of extreme poverty in many countries around the globe remain high, while debates over the most efficient allocation and use of foreign aid to tackle poverty and address broader development issues are characterized by strong disagreements among scholars, development practitioners and policy experts and the staff of lOs, as well as aid donor and recipient governments. This chapter introduces the contemporary context of economic development and global poverty, the role of economic ideas in shaping the range of possibilities for global development policies and the contemporary challenges and sources of change in development and poverty in the global political economy.