Handbook of Development Policy and Management

Edited by Colin Kirkpatrick, Ron Clarke and Charles Polidano Edward Elgar,
Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA, 2002

After a succession of handbooks on different aspects of economics by Elsevier Science, this recent
handbook is of a different genre from Edward Elgar. In the preamble the editors confessed that this
handbook is not meant to be a dictionary; it covers a wide range of topics. On the choice of authors,
it has a bias to the place of its origin, the University of Manchester and the vibrant Institute of
Development Policy and Management, as endorsed by the editors as well.
This book embroils a wide array of contemporary topics across various major areas of development
economics. The book is divided into two sections: the first section deals with development policy
whereas the second part comprises a number of articles on development management. The first
part has three sections: Economic Policy (14 articles), Social Policy (7 pa-pers) and Environment
Policy (2 papers). The second part of the book has four sections: Political Context (4 papers),
Public Sector Management (7 papers), Managing Outside the Central State (5 papers) and
Managing at the Project Level (3 papers).

Besides this, in the preface, Ron Clarke discussed the meanings of “development”, “policy” and
“management”. He highlighted two significant main streams of development: “growth centered”
and “people centered” streams of development. The organization related to the first is the World
Bank (mostly macro approach: liberal market economy, globalization, elimination of trade
barriers, mitigation of power and influence of state) and various United Nation programs have
focused on the second (improvement of the quality of life through economic and social
betterment). In the growth centered approach, he has pointed out the prevalence of liberal
philosophy and on the contrary, the other side is represented by non-governmental organizations.
Amartya Sen’s philosophy is mostly centrist methodology: controlled market economy with an
inclination to the people centered approach. In the policy section of the chapter, it is highlighted
that the World Bank’s macro approach of liberalization has turned towards centrist policies due to
various political disruptions. However, there is no mention of the effectiveness of these types of
policies on some of the crises-affected countries in South East Asia. A clear distinction was drawn
between “strategy” and “policy”, which can clarify the confusion among the practitioners
(Kirkpatrick et al., 2002).

In this review it would not be feasible to cover all chapters, thus I will consider a few and more
significant ones. Tony Addition produced a paper on “Structural Adjustment” where he analyzed
the growth-orientated development policies of the World Bank and IMF. Discussion mainly
focuses on the predicaments related to structural adjustment loans in the agrarian societies. It is
also indicated that recent Asian financial crisis is an effect of mass liberalization in the South Asian
countries as a pre-condition of IMF loans. Gender, which has a significant impact on dimensions
of social impact of structural adjustment is quite interestingly argued: the fiscal conundrums lead
to reduction in health budget and lead women to cope up with the burden of allocating time for
family health (Mog, 2004). The addition of another chapter on the same aspect with reference to
sub-Saharan Africa is suitable as the structural adjustment programs are most strongly associated
with the countries in that particular region (compared to Asian and Latin American countries).
Peter Lawrence introduces his paper with a theoretical framework on economic amendments. It
mainly concentrates on the Berg Report, which is extremely critical as far as the fluctuation of
prices is considered due to government intervention in various markets. The controlled mechanism
of price in the agricultural sector and cash crop market has diminished the incentive for the
producers. Producer’s prices are further diminished due to the devaluation of domestic currency
receipts from exports which is a by-product of fixed exchange rates. Imports being relatively less
expensive, there is an encouragement on labor-saving investment and manufacturing along with
the fact that high wages created disincentive on labor exhaustive production). Author added
explanation from capital market fluctuation: resource mismanaged due to lower interest rate
compared to the market clearing rate. The bureaucracy has tainted itself by imbibing a mammoth
share of government revenue. The government took over multiple enterprises due to lack of private
interest, which resulted in the elevation of government expenditure. This ultimately led to budget
deficit and divergence of resource allocation from productive resources. For these reasons
structural adjustment process had price adjustments through market liberalization. Peter Lawrence
has written a very impressive section here that deals with the criticism of liberalization and
underdeveloped infrastructural facilities, heavy dependence on primary products, market failure,
missing market and bad institutional development of poor developing countries and market
liberalization fails to deal with this. There are other structural problems as well which create supply
distortion. Trade, fiscal and financial liberalization are also prone to criticism in such cases. This
adversely impacts the social sector. This paper clarifies and analyses why different results prevail
in various researches as far as the effect of structural adjustment programs is concerned.

Colin Kirkpatrick discusses the aspect of “Privatization”, which is a significant aspect of the
structural adjustment programs. A number of hypotheses have endorsed the model of privatization
as competition is not the only determinant to gauge the performance of enterprise; public
ownership may not be a productive way of dealing with market failure or meeting the desired
targets of social objectives; because of public choice and principal-agent problems public
ownership produces meek performance (Carbone, 2007). It is evident that the empirical evidence
is not very conclusive about the performance superiority of private ownership irrespective of the
nature of the market. It can be established that the political commitment is vital and necessary for
the success of privatization.

Andrew McKay’s chapter on “Distribution, Poverty and Economic Growth” is comparatively less
intense. This chapter tries to explain the factors that impact the distributional pattern of elevating
growth (Barrow, 2004). It is hinted that growth in several cases burgeoned inequality in income
and absolute poverty. Mostly the decomposition analysis by Datt and Ravallion has been
contemplated although there are various other sorts of decompositions available in the literature.
In this chapter the section on the relationship between growth and inequality is quite inclusive,
though discussion on some other significant issues, such as polarization and relative deprivation
are nowhere to be found. Income is analyzed to gauge poverty or inequality on the basis that it is
an acceptable indicator of household welfare. However, there are at least two criticisms. Firstly,
we need to enhance the information basis for welfare judgments, including the quality of life as
well. In the last section of his chapter Andrew McKay emphasized on this point. The other
argument that income is not a satisfactory measure of welfare is not considered in this paper.
Income is a subject to momentary fluctuations (which is quite common in developing countries)
and as a result consumption expenditure is considered to be a viable indictor of welfare. If income,
at all is to be used, then a detailed definition considering all receipts that elevate household’s hold
over resources has to be included.

professor Amartya Sen, in a public lecture in Singapore (in 2000), mentioned “What the Japanese
experience, followed by the success of East and south East Asia, did was to discredit a common
— and often unargued — belief that had been dominant specially in the West, that human
development is a luxury that a country can opt only when it grows rich”. The most significant
impact of the type of success that the east Asian economies have recently endured (beginning with
Japan — much earlier) is the total undermining of that implicit impairment. These economies went
early for mammoth expansion of education.

The Singapore Economic Review of broadening the entitlements allow the bulk of the people to
participate in economic transaction and social change”. The article by Christopher Colclough on
education as the first chapter in the section of “Social Policy” is very pertinent. This chapter
clarifies the prevalent predicaments related to often quoted findings of Psacharopoulous that both
private and social returns to primary schooling is higher than those of the secondary schooling,
and those of secondary schooling is higher than those of the tertiary schooling. The most important
question placed in this chapter is whether educational services should be handed over to the private
market or not. With multiple convincing reasons it was gauged that educational provisions should
be provided by the state for the smooth sailing of the proceedings. Ruth Pearson in her chapter
stressed upon the trajectory of gender and development research in the recent times. She anticipates
a positive policy agenda by the mutual exchange of ideas between feminist activists and scholars
on the one hand and development practitioners and policy makers on the other. James Roth clarifies
the definition of microfinance in Chapter 19 and explains the conundrums of implementation of
the theory in practice. Lauchlan T Munro’s chapter on Social Protection is an extraordinary
introduction to any researcher on social safety net programs. The chapter has provided a thorough
analysis of the leeway and coverage of the social protection measures in developing countries.
Besides the development economics related discussion, the presentation of moral and legal
philosophy of human rights is quite pedagogical. Despite its excellent coverage, in some of the
cases the concept of social safety net and social welfare state were insignificant. 19997–98
financial crises has created both economic and social meltdowns in multiple South East Asian
countries and the requirement of a social safety net have been considered more viable. significantly
in Thailand and Indonesia multiple programs have been initiated (both because of political pressure
and as an experiment ground of the World Bank). Time is not ripe enough to assess the scope,
influence, and flaws of these programs, however, mentioning it could make this paper
contemporary. Chapter 25 is an overview of the second part of the book. In this chapter O. P.
Dwivedi asked a number of key queries: with the varying scope of development management,
whether the theory and practices of development administration make any sense; whether various
aboriginal bureaucratic alternatives should be considered in tackling people’s needs, the
amelioration of rampant poverty, alleviating growing human deprivation and safe keeping human
rights and dignity (Khan & Rehman, 2007). He sums up that the current crisis of development is
due to the inability of the West to inculcate the substance of other non-Western development
experiences into the present paradigms. In the early 1990s, democracy and good governance was
considered as basics for development assistance. Mark Robinson in his chapter on “Aid and Good
Governance” analyzed these issues. The emergence of the definition of “good governance” is quite
adequately analyzed. As there is inadequate evidence available on the impact and efficacy of good
governance and democracy agenda an elaboration of the lessons from this sort of aids was not
possible. Charles Polidano in his chapter referring to few recent studies tries to mitigate the
confusion that often bothers us: why in several countries despite prevailing democratic credentials
the mechanism of accountability lost efficacy and became politicized. It is established clearly that
democracy by no means is incompatible with poor governance. Democracy over the years has
stalled to bring forth the expected amelioration of governance because of flawed financial
management, neglected human resource management, rampant corruption and bureaucratic
doldrums. One chapter each is associated with these aspects: Moses N Kiggundu briefs on
bureaucracy and administrative reform whereas Jon S T Quah writes on “Controlling corruption”.
Elsewhere, Willy McCourt and A Premchand correspond respectively on human resource
management and financial management. Numerous aid donors have initiated programs to support
nongovernmental organization and the independent media as an indirect means of nourishing
democracy and ameliorating public accountability. David Lewis writes on the elevating impact of
NGOs. The definition of NGOs is quite complex. This particular paper emphasized with an
interesting abstract of the literature to focus on the definition, structure, and operational dimensions
of various NGOs. A clear contrast between Northern NGOs and Southern NGOs was highlighted.
The most notable feature of this chapter was to analyze the accountability and performance of the
various NGOs.

The chapters of the book are mostly brief and the authors mostly stress on critical literature review
and analyze different concepts from their own perspective and personal experience. An additional
eye-catching feature of the book is the section “guide to further reading” at the end of each chapter.
This book will pay a dividend to students and other concerned authorities willing to learn about
improvement in social condition of people in developing nations.

References

Kirkpatrick, C. H., Clarke, R., & Polidano, C. (Eds.). (2002). Handbook on development
policy and management. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Mog, J. M. (2004). Struggling with sustainability—a comparative framework for

Khan, M. A., & Rahaman, M. A. (2007). Impact of microfinance on living standards ,

Barrow, C. (2004). Environmental management and development. Routledge.

Carbone, M. (2007). Supporting or resisting global public goods? The policy dimension
of a contested concept. Global Governance, 179-198.

Carbone, M. (2007). Supporting or resisting global public goods? The policy dimension
of a contested concept. Global Governance, 179-198.