This books provides a timely comparative case study that reveals the factors driving the International Monetary Fund's policy reform in Low Income Developing Countries (LIDCs), as a resurgent IMF expands its footprint in the world's poorest states. Through a research design that employs both mainstream and critical IPE theory, Mark Hibben uncovers three major tendencies. Principal-agent analysis, he argues, demonstrates that coalition formation among powerful states, IMF staff and management, and other influential actors is necessary for policy reform. At the same time, he uses constructivist analysis to show that ideational frameworks of what merits appropriate macroeconomic policy response also have an impact on reform efforts, and that IMF management and staff seek legitimacy in their policy choices. In response to the crises in 1999 and 2008, the author maintains, poverty and inequality now 'matter' in IMF thinking and serve as an opportunity for policy insiders and external actors to deepen the institution's new commitment to 'inclusive' growth. Finally, Hibben draws on neo-Gramscian analysis to highlight how the IMF looked to soften the destabilizing effects of globalization through reforms focused on stakeholder participation in poor states and will continue to do so in its support of the new United Nation Sustainable Development Goals. This means that the 2015-2030 time period will be a critical juncture for IMF LIDC reform. By drawing from diverse theoretical traditions, the author thus provides a unique framework for the study of contemporary IMF change and how best those interested in LIDC policy reform can meet this objective.

This book brings together a set of distinguished academics and activists to analyze, critique, and debate the global politics of poverty and justice and the contemporary nature of globalization. It examines the connections between ‘really existing globalization’, global capitalism, and global poverty, and the idea of and prospects for ‘global justice’ now and in the future. Identifying continuing contradictions between the stated aims of the reigning global economic orthodoxy and the actual consequences of these policies in relation to alleviation of severe poverty and injustice, the authors engage in a lively critique of the very visible campaigns to end global poverty during the past several years and especially in 2005, the year of the make Poverty History campaign, Live8, the Africa Commission’s report, and the Gleneagles G8 summit. Contributions range from consideration of the meaning and definition of global justice, its relation to global ethics and development in both theory and practice, analysis of the new forms of global politics that challenge neoliberal globalization and global injustice, and trenchant critique of the practices and policies of some of the major organizations and agencies deeply involved in global poverty alleviation. Globalization and the Global Politics of Justice is highly recommended for all those interested in contemporary global politics and the issue of inequality, injustice, and poverty between the North and South. This book was previously published as a special issue of Globalizations

Globally, poverty affects millions of people’s lives each day. Children are hungry, many lack the means to receive an education, and many are needlessly ill. It is a common scene to see an impoverished town surrounded by trash and polluted air. There is a need to debunk the myths surrounding the impoverished and for strategies to be crafted to aid their situations. Sociological Perspectives on Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction in Rural Populations is an authored book that seeks to clarify the understanding of poverty reduction in a substantive way and demonstrate the ways that poverty is multifaceted and why studying poverty reduction matters. The 12 chapters in this volume contribute to existing and new areas of knowledge production in the field of development studies, poverty knowledge production, and gender issues in the contemporary African experience. The book utilizes unique examples drawn purposely from select African countries to define, highlight, raise awareness, and clarify the complexity of rural poverty. Covering topics such as indigenous knowledge, sustainable development, and child poverty, this book provides an indispensable resource for sociology students and professors, policymakers, social development officers, advocates for the impoverished, government officials, researchers, and academicians.

This book examines the use of norms by British and Brazilian actors in aid/cooperation in the 21st century, unveiling the politics behind norm circulation. Inspired by a constructivist approach, this research analyses actors’ agency in asymmetric international and domestic environments, in which different norms, dissimilar identities, and opposing interests coexist. Regardless of the discourses and theories surrounding the differentiation between North-South and South-South aid/cooperation, British and Brazilian actors use norms to achieve their own goals at the domestic and international levels. Processes of norm circulation in aid/cooperation have a greater impact at the international level and within the domestic environment of donor/partner countries, than in promoting behavioral changes in recipient countries. However, the content of British and Brazilian norms is different given their historical position in the international architecture and domestic context. The present study sought to unveil the politics behind how actors use aid/cooperation norms in order to achieve their goals in three major instances: 1- the international forums where actors debate the aid/cooperation architecture; 2- the domestic environment of donor/partner countries; and, 3- the domestic level of recipient countries, where international norms are diffused.

'China: Overcoming Rural Poverty' assesses the state of poverty in China at the end of the 1990s. The book also evaluates the most effective and efficient means of overcoming the remaining absolute poverty in the new decade. It focuses on China's absolute poor who are increasingly concentrated in remote and mountainous townships and villages. The report places considerable emphasis on the macroeconomic context, and finds that the trends in poverty reduction in the 1990s have been partly determined by larger macroeconomic trends.

This book analyzes the affect that government institutions have on whether or not microfinance contributes to poverty alleviation in the context of Latin America. It concludes that political and economic stability, as well as and law order, have a statistically significant impact on microfinance effectiveness. The conditions that promote poverty alleviation are not entirely the same as those upon which major microfinance investors base their funding decisions. The result is that much microfinance funding is going to the wrong places. This means that not only is microfinance not helping the poor, but under the wrong conditions it actually exacerbates poverty. The author arrives at these conclusions through a mixed methods approach, using both statistical analysis and case studies.

This timely report presents a comprehensive view of the challenges of reconstruction facing the Bosnian authorities during the next three years, acknowledges the considerable difficulties in implementing their agenda, and points to the actions requiring the most urgent attention in the coming months. The report, prepared for the second donors' conference jointly sponsored by the European Union and the World Bank in April 1996, serves two purposes. First, it presents a framework for understanding the challenges facing Bosnia in the critical period ahead as it attempts simultaneously to rebuild its economy, strengthen economic management, and make the transition from a planned to a market economy. Second, it outlines background information on the new state and entity structures that have emerged since the signing of the Dayton and Paris peace accords. The report describes Bosnia's current macroeconomic situation, policies, and recent economic performance and articulates policy options for structural reforms in the public sector and in the enterprise and banking systems.

Many different organizations and institutions around the world came together for a conference to discuss the meaning of evaluation in poverty reduction. Their goals during the two day conference were: first, to identify lessons from past efforts to evaluate poverty reduction programs; second, to search for the new evaluation frontier in methodology for future poverty reduction programs; and third, to discuss how partnerships in evaluation can be promoted and how to use evaluation results more effectively. This volume contains the proceedings of that conference.

In many discussions of nations' development, we often focus on their economic and social development. Is it becoming wealthier? Is its society modernizing? Is it becoming more technologically sophisticated? Are social outcomes improving for the broad mass of the public? The process of development policy implementation, however, is always and inevitably political. Put simply, regime type matters when it comes to deciding on a course of development to follow. Further, political institutions matter. When a government's institutional capacity is low, the chances of success severely decline, regardless of the merits of the development plan. In The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of Development, two of America's leading political scientists on the issue, Carol Lancaster and Nicolas van de Walle, have assembled an international cast of leading scholars to craft a broad, state-of-the-art work on this vitally important topic. This volume is divided into five sections: major theories of the politics of development, organized historically (e.g. modernization theory, dependency theory, the Washington consensus of 'policies without politics,' etc.); key domestic factors and variables; key international factors and variables; political systems and structures; and geographical perspectives, inclusive of regional dynamics. A comprehensive and cross-regional examination on key issues of political development, this Handbook not only provides an authoritative synthesis of past scholarship, but also sets the agenda for future research in this discipline.