Theme Paper prepared for the project Southern Perspectives on Reform of the International Development Architecture Power Imbalances and Development Knowledge Norman Girvan Professorial Research Fellow Graduate Institute of International Relations University of the West Indies St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago September 2007 Author’s Acknowledgements This paper has benefited from comments on earlier drafts by participants at the Strathmere Meeting and Wilton Park Conference on Southern Perspectives on Reform of the International Development Architecture held in October 2006 and May 2007 respectively, and from subsequent comments by Roy Culpeper, Bill Morton, Ananya Mukherjee Reed, Felix Zimmerman and Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake. Special thanks to the staff of The North-South Institute for their help in sourcing materials. Of course I alone am responsible for the content of this paper and for any errors of fact or interpretation that it contains. Norman Girvan
[email protected] This paper was prepared for the project Southern Perspectives on Reform of the International Development Architecture coordinated by The North-South Institute. The North-South Institute would like to thank the following for their valuable support for the project: Department for International Development (DFID), UK Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) Executive summary This paper discusses reform of the international development architecture within an analytical framework of power imbalances. In Section 1, power is defined as “the ability of human agency to exercise control over its social and physical environment” and power imbalances as “asymmetrical relations of power among persons, institutions or states”. Power imbalances in North-South relations reside in the military and economic spheres and in that of knowledge.