The Impossibility of “Poverty Reduction through Governance” Scenario

Abstract

In the mainstream agenda of international development such as MDGs and Post2015 agendas, governance agendas have been hot topic in tandem with poverty reduction agendas. There seems to be promoted “Poverty Reduction through Governance” scenario by international development community. However, descriptive statistical test indicates there exist week empirical evidence between the achievements of governance and poverty reduction.

This paper aims at examining the theoretical possibility of poverty reduction through governance: good governance is really effective for developing countries to achieve poverty reduction, if so, why and how?

First, the ideal model of governance which main advocate of MDGs such as World Bank and UNDP assumes were classified trough literature review: Economic Governance by World Bank and Democratic Governance by UNDP. Scrutinizing official documents and materials published by these organizations revealed the commonalities as well as the differences between Economic Governance discourse and Democratic Governance discourse.

Second, the structural factors which make poverty reduction through governance scenario impossible: (1) tradeoff of Inter-temporal choices among people living democratic-development states, (2) incompatibility between democratic institutions and effective states components, (3) dilemma between development as objectives and aid as means.