No Small Hope

Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Reinert

This book argues in favor of an approach to global policy priorities that emphasizes the attempt to put a minimal set of basic goods and services into the hands of everyone. This universal provision of basic goods and services includes nutritious food, clean water, sanitation, health services, education services, housing, electricity, and human security services. The book argues that this policy focus is appropriate both for practical and ethical reasons, but that success in this provision will not be easy and therefore is no small hope. Basic goods and services meet central and objective human needs. The basic goods approach tries to form a bridge between the standard growth perspective on development and the capabilities/human development perspective. What really matters about growth is the possibility that growth will lead to an increase in the broad-based provision of basic goods and services, an outcome that is not always guaranteed. The hoped-for expansion of human capabilities and development is predicated on this expanded provision of basic goods, and the expanded provision of basic goods and services also can promote growth. In these ways, basic goods and services are critical link between growth and human development. The book explores each of the identified basic goods and services, the basic rights to them, and the many challenges to be overcome in their expanded provision.

Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Reinert

This introductory chapter introduces the basic goods approach and its relationship to the standard growth perspective and the capabilities/human development perspective. It defines basic goods and services as those that meet central and objective human needs and argues in favor of sustained attempts that achieve their universal provision. It identifies a set of basic goods that includes nutritious food, clean water, sanitation, health services, education services, housing, electricity, and human security services. The chapter argues that what really matters about growth is the possibility that it will lead to an increase in the broad-based provision of basic goods and services. The hoped-for expansion of human capabilities and development is predicated on this expanded provision of basic goods, and the expanded provision of basic goods and services also can promote growth. In these ways, basic goods and services are a critical link between growth and human development.


Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Reinert

This chapter describes the basic goods approach to global policy priorities. It reviews the treatment of human need in political philosophy, economics, and social policy and defines basic goods as those goods and services that meet objective human needs. The chapter identifies a set of basic goods that includes nutritious food, clean water, sanitation, health services, education services, housing, electricity, and human security services. It gives a sense of the magnitudes of deprivations for each of these basic goods. The chapter goes on to link the basic goods approach to minimalist ethics and subsistence rights, to assess the role of basic goods provision in growth processes, and to assess general approaches to basic goods provision.


Global policy making is unfurling in distinctive ways above traditional nation-state policy processes. New practices of transnational administration are emerging inside international organizations but also alongside the trans-governmental networks of regulators and inside global public—private partnerships. Mainstream policy and public administration studies have tended to analyse the capacity of public sector hierarchies to globalize national policies. By contrast, this Handbook investigates new public spaces of transnational policy making, the design and delivery of global public goods and services, and the interdependent roles of transnational administrators who move between business bodies, government agencies, international organizations, and professional associations. This Handbook is novel in taking the concepts and theories of public administration and policy studies to get inside the black box of global governance. Transnational administration is a multi-actor and multi-scalar endeavour having manifestations at the local, urban, sub-regional, subnational, regional, national, supranational, supra-regional, transnational, international, and global scales. These scales of ‘local’ and ‘global’ are not neatly bounded and nested spaces but are articulated together in complex patterns of policy activity. These transnational patterns represent an opportunity and a challenge for the study of both public administration and policy studies. The contributors to this Handbook advance their analysis beyond the methodological nationalism of mainstream approaches to re-invigorate policy studies and public administration by considering policy processes that are transnational and the many new global spaces of administrative practice.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-81
Author(s):  
Sacchidananda Mukherjee ◽  
Shivani Badola

Role of public financing of human development (HD) is inevitable, especially for developing countries like India where access to resources and economic opportunities are not equitably distributed among people. Governments aim to achieve equity in distribution of resources through allocative and redistributive policies whereas macroeconomic stabilisation policies aim to achieve higher economic growth and stability in the price level. Expenditure policies of the governments envisage in delivering larger public goods and services to enable people to take part in economic activities by investing in human capital and infrastructure developments. Progressivity of the tax system helps in achieving equity by redistribution of resources among people. Being merit goods, expenditures on education, health, and poverty eradication make it a case for public investment which empowers people to improve human capital. The benefit of universal economic participation is expected to contribute in larger mobilisation of public resources over time. Lack of economic opportunities and earning a respectable income may increase dependence on public transfers which may reduce fiscal space of the governments to finance programmes to promote overall economic growth. The objective of this article is to review existing studies on public financing of HD in India and highlight emerging challenges.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 969
Author(s):  
Marina Checa-Olivas ◽  
Bladimir de la Hoz-Rosales ◽  
Rafael Cano-Guervos

This study aims to contribute new information on how and through which factors employment quality and housing quality can be improved from a human development approach so that people can live the life they want. Using the human capabilities approach as a theoretical reference framework, the article analyses the effect of involuntary part-time employment and overcrowded housing on the Human Development Index (HDI). The empirical analysis is based on the panel data technique, which is applied to data from the European Statistical Office (Eurostat) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the 28 member countries of the European Union. The results shed new evidence on how involuntary part-time work and overcrowded housing limit or hinder people from living the lives they want, at least in the dimensions measured by the HDI.


2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 122a-122a
Author(s):  
Fida J. Adely

The Arab Human Development Report 2005, the fourth in a series that has received much acclaim and stirred much controversy, takes up the issue of women's development in the Arab world. Through a careful reading and analysis of sections of the report that address education and economic participation, this paper offers a critique of the human capabilities framework that frames this report. I highlight critical tensions between the claim that providing education is an essential element of expanding choices and the assumptions embedded in discussions about women and education regarding which choices are acceptable and/or desirable. These tensions point to the persistence of values derived from the mandates of global capital, albeit in the new language of neoliberal choice, revealing that ‘human development’ does not represent a significant departure from earlier conceptualizations of development. I draw on my ethnographic research in Jordan as one example to interrogate such assumptions and to shed light on the ambiguities built into the educational project for young women today.


1996 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
JESSIE H. AHRONI

Diabetes is a disease that challenges all people to learn, change, and develop. Older people can be taught about diabetes from a human development perspective using Erikson's psychosocial theory of development. Developmental changes in appearance, bodily function, and health status confront almost all persons in later years. If an individual does not have coping resources or a history of successful coping, changes in health status during aging can constitute serious crises. It is important to look at and work with individuals from the context of their entire life cycle rather than in a fixed period of time. The diabetes healthcare team can make more effective use of the theories of human development and aging to enhance the effectiveness of diabetes education for the elderly.


2021 ◽  
Vol 250 ◽  
pp. 06003
Author(s):  
Zeynegul Samaibekova ◽  
Gulzhamal Choyubekova ◽  
Kerezkan Isabaeva ◽  
Asel Samaibekova

Our paper focuses on the links between corporate sustainability and social responsibility. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) emerged as a tool for linking the priorities of business companies (making money and achieving profit) with the priorities of citizens and society. Bringing together the many different parts of a complex CSR programme into a single central system is crucial. Moreover, we discuss the role of corporate structures in the development of social organisations and their impact on society, as well as on corporate social responsibility and the impact of the social entrepreneurship model on the economy. It appears that companies can bring important benefits to society if they are responsible for the quality of the goods and services they produce and develop new goods or services that generate economic growth. The long-term benefits for investors therefore allow companies to invest in product innovation, thereby delivering highquality products that improve people’s standard of living. Business companies thus meet the needs of society and offer important benefits to society in the form of new jobs and economic opportunities for those in society who depend on the company’s good services. While companies seek new economic opportunities and regain public confidence, the creation of shared values and the pursuit of financial success is becoming increasingly important for companies in a way to support sustainable development and fighting global warming and climate change.


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