International Norm Dynamics and the “End of Poverty”: Understanding the Millennium Development Goals

THE PURPOSE OF DEVELOPMENT AS A GLOBAL OBJECTIVE REQUIRING INTERNATIONAL cooperation can and has been defined in many ways. Such definitions depend on how political leaders envision important normative goals for world; how economists, philosophers, and political scientists theorize process of development; and how these ideas are utilized and adopted by key stakeholders. A significant evolution in recent years has been emergence of a broad consensus on ending poverty as overarching objective of development. This consensus is institutionalized in UN Millennium Declaration adopted in 2000 and in widespread use of global targets that have become known as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In previous decades, international development objectives were not so clearly defined nor did they focus on poverty and poor people. Although concern with widespread poverty has been a major factor for keeping development on international agenda since 1950s, strategies have been dominated by economic objectives ranging from building infrastructure, human capital and an industrial base in 1960s and 1970s, to economic liberalization in 1980s and 1990s, to institutional and governance reforms since 1990s. (1) Civil society advocates and academics have consistently criticized these national and international strategies for their neglect of poverty and human dimension. (2) This new consensus has important implications for international political economy of development. As Charles Gore argues, consensus was achieved at expense of replacing prioritization of building national capacities for development. (3) While MDGs are usually seen as desirable, Ashwani Saith points out that the MDG phenomenon carries potential for distorting meaningful intellectual and research agendas, and could function as catalyst and vehicle for a fundamental realignment of political economy of development at global level. (4) How did this normative shift take place? Was it driven by ethical considerations? What was role of key individuals and institutional stakeholders? What were strategic instruments deployed? The aim of this article is to explain how MDGs emerged and became established and to analyze trajectory of antipoverty itself. draw on documentary material and interviews conducted with over 100 individuals who were involved in framing and implementation phases of Millennium Declaration and MDGs. use model of international dynamics set out by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink. (5) But we propose elements to extend and refine that model in this context. argue that MDGs brought specificity and concreteness to idea of ending global poverty, and explain dynamics of that process by extending conceptual apparatus of Finnemore and Sikkink. introduce two new concepts: supernorm, a cluster of interrelated norms grouped into a unified and coherent framework, and message entrepreneur, as distinct from norm entrepreneur. (6) The Supernorm of Ending Global Poverty In this article, we treat MDGs as a vehicle to communicate and promote objective of ending global poverty. Legislatively MDGs originated in goals set in Millennium Declaration, a political declaration signed by 189 countries, including 145 heads of state or government, that commits to ending poverty as a key goal for twenty-first century along with peace, human rights, and democracy. The development chapter of Millennium Declaration is entirely focused on poverty rather than other dimensions of development. It starts with statement: We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected. (7) While Millennium Declaration included clearly defined objectives and specific quantitative goals, these were further clarified into a form that could be monitored more effectively in Road Map presented by UN Secretary-General a year later. …