Since the third wave of democratization that began in the 1970s, many regions of the world have experienced significant economic and political reforms as policymakers have sought to provide the citizens of their countries with a better life. Little systematic effort has been undertaken to understand the cumulative results of these reforms on a global scale, the extent to which outcomes have matched expectations, the effect of regional contexts on reforms, and the ways in which reforms have, perhaps negatively affected the target populations. The Fifth Annual Global Development Conference, which opened on January 27 in Delhi, addressed these critical questions, premised on the belief that a better understanding of past reforms—including their initiation, implementation, and outcome—should inform the design, introduction, and execution of future reforms throughout the developing and transition worlds.
Bringing together almost 600 researchers and policymakers from around the world for three days of plenary sessions and breakout meetings, the multidisciplinary Conference was organized by the Global Development Network (GDN) and hosted by the Government of India. Sessions on regional perspectives and key themes of understanding reform formed its core. As in previous years, the Conference provided an opportunity for researchers from the developing world, representatives of international organizations and leading policy makers to express their views and culminated in presentations by the finalists in the Global Development Awards/Medals Competition—the largest international contest for researchers working on development issues. Indeed, the presentations of the finalists have always functioned as the central part of the conference, supplying it with its ultimate raison d’etre. The Conference closed with the announcement of the winners of the Awards and Research Medals, including two $100,000 prizes for the most innovative development project and for outstanding research on development.
Building on the experience of GDN’s past conferences, this year’s Conference, more than ever, addressed issues of global importance, covering a critical variety of regions and conceptual approaches to reform. The choice of Delhi as the setting for the Conference represented the recognition of the achievements of the Indian government’s reform efforts over the last decade. Indeed, the liberal, pro-market reforms introduced by the government of India in 1991 after a prolonged period of ineffectual statism represent a sea-change in the country’s development strategy. Moreover, holding the Conference in India provided an excellent opportunity to compare the Indian experience to that of other developing regions. Latin America, for example, has undergone a long period of reform efforts that have been plagued by crises and troubles; for its part, Sub-Saharan Africa has encountered great difficulties in moving reforms forward due mainly to a historical legacy of colonialism and political instability.
This year’s Conference opened with a keynote address by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, a native of India who has not lost connection with his native land despite the celebrity status afforded by international recognition. Sen was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on welfare economics, particularly the causes of famine and ways to prevent it. His address at the Conference underlined the commitment of GDN to improve the human condition through development policies stemming from world-class research. Specifically, Sen’s speech focused on the three factors that would concern him most if he were charged with the task of initiating and implementing a major reform. Sen identified three factors: reach, range and reason. In terms of reach, Sen emphasized that it is important to always keep in mind what the proposed reform does for the people it affects; one must pay attention, specifically, to the economic, social and political reach of reform, ensuring that the ends of institutional reform and policy change be “person related” and “even handed.” As far as range is concerned, Sen noted that reformers must recognize that the means to pursue the ends of reform involve a variety of institutions, not just a few magic bullets. Finally, Sen argued that reformers must constantly be willing to ask themselves why they are pursuing a particular course of reform or choosing a certain policy instrument over another. This conceptual framework brought ethical considerations straight to the conference’s agenda, and resonated well with the other conference participants in subsequent presentations.
Based on the premise that a better understanding of past reforms should inform their future progress in the developing and transition worlds, the Conference relied on the following two approaches.
First, participants drew upon the results of research on the reform process. The first plenary offered a multidisciplinary conceptual framework for understanding the process of reform from its initiation to implementation. Building on the remarks of the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen delivered at the Opening Dinner, it provided an analytical structure for the rest of the conference. Following up on this conceptual framework, the plenary session on GDN’s Global Research Project, Understanding Reform, presented the preliminary findings of this project, in progress since September 2002. The speaker was the project coordinator, José Fanelli, from the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (Center for the Study of State and Society) in Buenos Aires. Many of the project’s findings and implications were revisited in greater detail in the twenty five parallel (breakout) sessions held during the three days of the conference. Intended to demonstrate different outlooks on reform, the parallels reflected the conference theme from the point of view of different disciplines, sectors, and regions as well as from a global standpoint.
Second, the participants learned from the experience of those most closely involved in the initiation and implementation of nation-wide reforms. Building on the results of the last year’s Conference in Cairo, GDN continued a tradition of holding a policy roundtable as a central moment of the conference. At this year’s policymakers’ roundtable, Juan Antonio Morales, President of the Central Bank of Bolivia, and Edgardo Angara, Senator of the Republic of the Philippines and formerly Secretary of the Departments of Agriculture and Education, shared their experiences with reform in developing countries. At the same roundtable, Tamar Beruchashvili, Deputy State Minister of Georgia, and Grzegorz W. Kolodko, former Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance of Poland, conveyed their views on transition to market-oriented democratic societies in Eastern Europe. A plenary session led by representatives of the Government of India focused on why the economic reform in India was successfully initiated and implemented and what can be learned from the Indian experience. As part of a new initiative to introduce the broader perspectives of international civil society, conference participants learned the views of its key representatives, such as Petro Poroshenko, political coordinator of the leading opposition bloc in the Parliament of Ukraine, Miguel Braun from Argentina’s Center for the Implementation of Public Policies Promoting Equity and Growth, Basheerhamad Shadrach, Director of Oneworld South Asia, and Sanjaya Baru, editor in chief of The Financial Express, a major financial daily of India.
The Conference program reads as an international effort to bridge research and policy. The diverse list of participants and their varied presentation topics reflect the agenda of GDN—an organization that links research institutes from around the world to inform policymaking on development. GDN’s focus is on building multidisciplinary research capacity in developing and transition economies. Its overall goal is to produce policy-relevant knowledge on a global scale, closing the gap between research and policies.
It should be noted that this year’s Conference was an exciting blend of old and new practices, as GDN built on the experience of previous Conferences to better carry out its mission. Although last year’s conference in Cairo was centrally focused on an overall theme of Globalization and Equity, it included much discussion on issues of reform intended to opportunities for the developing world in the context of globalization. Conversely, several of the breakout sessions of this year’s Conference in Delhi integrated themes of globalization into the larger task of understanding reform.
GDN’s Conference has always sought to facilitate the comparison and cross-fertilization of research across disciplines and regions. In this respect, this year’s Conference significantly increased the focus on multidisciplinary understandings of development issues, particularly in the breakout sessions that addressed the theme of Understanding Reform from the perspectives of different disciplines. These discussions cut across various regions to focus on economic, social, human, political, and environmental aspects of reform. Moreover, while in previous years breakout sessions were structured according to specific regions, this year’s Conference introduced a significant innovation in terms of interregional sessions that discussed the process and outcomes of reform in the comparative context, providing evidence from largely similar regions. By investigating key aspects of reform from the perspective of two regions of the developing and transition world, each session created opportunities for a broad sharing of experiences. The introduction of the civil society roundtable this year was also a new development, based on the recognition that civil society plays an important role in shaping the reform process in both established and fledgling democracies.
Reflecting GDN’s commitment to disseminating research on development issues as broadly across the globe as possible, throughout the Conference, a Knowledge Fair offered research and policy institutes an opportunity to share recent work and future plans with potential partners and sponsors. Thirty-eight institutes showcased their posters and publications and presented computer-assisted displays such as CD-ROMs and websites.
In its four years of existence, the Global Development Network has proven itself a leading resource and authority on development issues. Launched in December 1999 by the World Bank, GDN became independent in 2001, and is an ever-expanding network of research and policy institutes from both developing and developed countries, working together to address problems of national and regional development. GDN currently brings together 11 regional networks, headquartered in Kenya, the Czech Republic, Singapore, Egypt, Russia, Germany, Japan, the United States, Argentina, Fiji, and India. In order to be closer to its declared constituents from the developing world, GDN will be moving its headquarters to Delhi in the near future.
From Delhi, the Global Development Network will continue to generate and apply local and international expertise to promote reform, help bridge the gap between the developed and less developed world, and link research and policy. The future looks ever more promising as the network of partnerships expands and GDN-sponsored research begins to be noticed by policymakers in the developing world.
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