Governance, Good Government and Poverty Reduction

Abstract

Introduction This discussion relies substantially on a commissioned evaluation of the UK aid programme’s support to poverty reduction during the period 1990–7 and, to a lesser extent, on a commissioned research programme on the changing role of government in adjusting economies, a new research programme on urban governance, partnerships and poverty, and work for the World Health Organization to put poverty reduction at the centre of health policies and programming. All of these studies have been led by the International Development Department in the School of Public Policy at the University of Birmingham and have involved a number of research organizations both in Europe and in developing countries. The discussion here does not represent the formal conclusions of any of the studies, but rather a personal reflection on the ideas and material thrown up by them. The commissioned evaluation was part of the UK aid programme’s change of gear on its poverty reduction goal, which followed the election of the current Labour government in May 1997. The UK Department for International Development (formerly the Overseas Development Administration) wanted an independent review of its programme to date to help to decide which aspects to strengthen and which ones to de-emphasize. The review departed from usual practice in such evaluations by taking a cross-section of the aid programme in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa as the focus of inquiry. Significant areas of support which were not primarily intended or thought to reduce poverty were included, along with a sample of activities clearly intended to reduce poverty. The purpose was to review the aid programme as a whole and to ask what it added up to in terms of poverty reduction, understood as a multi-dimensional concept. One advantage of this was that it examined macro-policy and economic management support, sector level work (including sector reform), as well as the more direct routes to poverty reduction. This focus enabled some significant observations to be made about the relationships between aspects of governance, good government and poverty reduction.