Designing and Implementing Development Policy: The Shift to Holistic Approaches and Development Policy Frameworks

• Author: Clive Thomas
• Pages: 119-146

Designing and Implementing Development Policy 119

IntroductionIntroduction

IntroductionIntroduction

Introduction

In recent years, there has been a marked shift towards a more long-term

holistic methodology and approach in designing and implementing

development policy, programmes and projects. This seeks to integrate concerns

about economic growth; social policy, social development and social capital;

governance and political development; institutional and organisational re-

structuring; legal reform; human resource development, science-technology-

innovation-change; and environmental protection, on the premise that they

are linked interdependent elements of development and thus intrinsically

multidimensional in their scope. This shift encourages strategic thinking and a

focus on the sequencing and pacing of policy reforms. Pertinent examples of

this new approach are: the Sustainable Human Development Framework (SHDF)

of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); the World Bank’s

Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF); the Second Generation Reforms

of the IMF; and the donor agencies’ Partnerships and Sector Wide Approaches

(SWAPS). Integral to these innovations is an accompanying shift that situates

poverty reduction strategies (and more broadly social policy) in Social Policy

Frameworks (SPFs). This new approach is exemplified in the recently published

United Nations’ Millennium Goals which followed half-a-decade after the

historic Copenhagen Summit for Social Development (1995).

In keeping with this trend, the UNDP and the governments concerned (in

relatively short succession) requested my assistance to design appropriate SPFs

and make suitable institutional and policy recommendations for the OECS, St

Vincent and the Grenadines, and Barbados. It is my view that the theoretical

and analytical challenges posed by these tasks may have a wider salience for

researchers and policy makers, both within the Caribbean and further afield.

This article presents these issues to this larger audience. For fuller details on the

DesIgnIng anD ImplementIng

Development polIcy:

the shIft to holIstIc approaches anD

Development polIcy frameworks

CLIVE THOMAS

CHAPTER SEVEN

120 GOVERNANCE: THEORETICAL ASPECTS

policy and institutional recommendations in these studies readers are invited

to consult the following three reports: 1) Social Policy Framework: A New Vision

for Social Development in the OECS, OECS/UNDP, May 2001; 2) St Vincent and

the Grenadines: Social Policy for Poverty Reduction and Social Development,

OECS, December 2001; and 3) A Green Paper on Social Policy for Barbados,

UNDP, February 2002.

In this article therefore, the following section (section 2) will examine the

rationale behind the SPF approach. Section 3 will characterise the region’s social

welfare regimes while section 4 elaborates the SPF proposed for the region.

Section 5 will offer some concluding remarks.

Why A Social Policy Framework (SPF)Why A Social Policy Framework (SPF)

Why A Social Policy Framework (SPF)Why A Social Policy Framework (SPF)

Why A Social Policy Framework (SPF)

There are a number of considerations that would seem to favour the shift

towards the SPF approach. One is the important conceptual advance achieved

in the discourse on social policy. Starting from earlier instrumentalist views of

social policy as the “mid-wife” or “hand-maiden” of development, through

debates about safety nets and privatised social provisioning, the literature now

recognises the centrality or “equal partner” status of social policy when designing

and implementing development policy. In recent years, this has coincided with

a number of systemic domestic and external pressures on social welfare systems

(discussed later) and a public policy orientation biased towards the continuous

re-evaluation of forms of governance and state-society relations. As might be

expected, this shift to a more holistic approach has introduced a mix of elements

of risk, basic needs, rights, entitlements and citizenship in the design of social

welfare systems. Another consideration is that, on its own, the systemic domestic

pressures referred to have also created the need for a new approach. Chief

among these pressures are rising expectations about the nature of the state-

society “contract”, governance, participation, and inclusivity; increasing

instability generated by growing inequalities; the emergence of new social forces,

movements, and actors beyond the traditional state-market or state-community

duality the region has experienced; budgetary pressures on the affordability of

social safety nets; and the issue of firm competitiveness and the affordability of

social benefits. Thirdly, the international context has similarly produced a

number of multidimensional pressures that favour this shift. These pressures

flow through several channels, firstly, through the impact of economic

globalisation/liberalisation and the need this has created for the region to

reposition itself in an emerging global economic order in which survival depends

on international competitiveness; secondly, through the growing number of

international agreements, conventions, targets and obligations which bind

governments to specific social policies and programmes. These have resulted in

an expanding class of global public goods that, over time, all societies will have