Department of Economic & Social Affairs CDP Background Paper No. 36 ST/ESA/2017/CDP/36 April 2017 From planning to policy: Half a century of the CDP Daniel Gay1 ABSTRACT The United Nations Committee for Development Policy (CDP) comprises 24 independent specialists from a variety of disciplines. It advises the UN Economic and Social Council on emerging economic, social and environmental issues relevant to sustainable development and international co-operation. The paper argues that since its launch in 1965 the CDP has at times struggled to make an impact, but that it has been most effective when it has been at its most creative and when it has broken with convention. It helped put into practice the target that developed countries should devote 0.7% of their gross national income to official development assistance. The Committee created the least developed countries category and continues to monitor and update membership of the group. Its members were prominent in the genesis of the human development approach and continue to conduct new work in the areas of governance, productive capacity and sustainable development. JEL Codes: F02, N01, O1, O2, O15, O19 Key words: aid, human development, least developed countries, official development assis- tance, sustainable development, United Nations. 1 Inter-Regional Adviser, CDP. Email: [email protected]. With thanks to Jose Antonio Alonso, Annette Becker, Matthias Bruckner, Namsuk Kim, Teresa Lenzi, Jose Antonio Ocampo and Roland Mollerus. The views in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Committee for Development Policy (CDP), its Secretariat, or the United Nations. This document should not be considered as the official position of the CDP, its Secretariat or the United Nations. All errors remain those of the author. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acronyms .............................................................................................3 Introduction ...........................................................................................4 1. 0.7%: “The most famous target ever set and never met” ...................................................6 2. Listing the least developed. .7 3. One size doesn’t fit all .......................................................................................8 4. Changing times, changing names. .10 5. Virtue is bold ................................................................................................12 6. Bibliography ................................................................................................14 Annex: List of principal CDP themes, 1966-2017 ...............................................................16 CDP Background Papers are preliminary documents circulated in a limited number of copies and posted on the DESA website at https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/ document_cdp/cdp-background-paper-series/ to stimulate discussion and critical comment. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of UNITED NATIONS the United Nations Secretariat. The designations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and terminology employed may not conform to UN Secretariat, 405 East 42nd Street United Nations practice and do not imply the ex- New York, N.Y. 10017, USA pression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of e-mail: [email protected] the Organization. https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/document_cdp/ Typesetter: Si Chen cdp-background-paper-series/ Acronyms CDP Committe for Development Policy OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and ECOSOC Economic and Social Council Development ECLAC Economic Commission for Latin America and the UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Develop- Caribbean ment DAC ECA Economic Commission for Africa Development Assistance Committee ODA ECAFE Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East Official Development Assistance LDCs Least Developed Countries ESCAP Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the MDGs Pacific Millennium Development Goals GNI UNDP United Nations Development Programme Gross National Income 4 CDP BACKGROUND PAPER NO. 36 Introduction developing-country governments in their successful transition to higher economic growth and poverty When Jan Tinbergen was appointed the first Chair reduction. A statist, programmatic attitude toward of the Committee for Development Planning (CDP) economic development was partly a product of the in 1964, income per capita in the Congo was more times: for instance A.N. Efimov, Director of the than one-and-a-half times that of the Republic of Economic Research Institute of the Soviet State Korea and Sudan was richer per head than Thailand. Planning Committee, Gosplan, is listed as one of 18 Decolonisation was still in progress, with many of founding members. the challenges and successes that those new nations would experience still unknowable. Even the notion The emphasis on the importance of strategic plan- of international development itself was undergoing ning was part of a broad and pragmatic view within a process of definition and clarification. It would be the CDP that international coordination and gov- five years before Tinbergen, a Dutch national, would ernment intervention were critical to development for his work in macroeconomics jointly win the in- success, and that governments often got planning augural Riksbank economics Prize in Memory of wrong. Planning was seen not as a top-down process Alfred Nobel alongside Ragnar Frisch. of economic organisation performed solely by the state, but as how the various actors in the develop- It was in this very different era that the Committee ment process – firms, civil society and the state – was created, with the original purpose, set out in should coordinate and approach development. General Assembly and Economic and Social Coun- cil (ECOSOC) recommendations, of evaluating At the second session, held at the Economic Commis- and coordinating the various organs of the United sion for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Nations related to development planning and to in 1967, development planning was articulated as an generate ideas for their improvement.2 The CDP was “instrument for the formulation and implementa- also mandated with transferring knowledge to de- tion of coherent development policies, expressed in veloping countries, analysing major trends and stud- both qualitative and quantitative terms” (UN 1967: ying questions about planning and programming. 2). Emphasis was placed on the importance of state Members were, and still are, recommended by the legitimation “… [T]he political will to develop and Secretary-General on the basis of their individual the ability to exercise substantial control over stra- expertise, with the aim of providing policy advice tegic activities in the economy are accordingly the to ECOSOC on emerging cross-sectoral develop- inescapable conditions for the effective implementa- ment issues. The CDP remains the only UN body to tion of development plans.” (UN 1967: 2-3) which development specialists are appointed in their A hallmark of the CDP from the start was its reluc- personal capacities and are expected to contribute tance to promote a universal approach to planning their own expertise rather than that of their own and its desire to tailor analysis and recommendations government. to the regional and national context. The next two Founded during the first “Development Decade” on sessions were held at the Economic Commission for the premise that “The importance of planning is now Africa (ECA), and the then Economic Commission widely recognized, as is attested by the fact that it is for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) (which became used in countries with very different economic and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and social systems,” (UN 1966: 3) the CDP was from the Pacific (ESCAP) after its name change in 1974). its first meeting in 1966 preoccupied with how the Efforts were made to provide advice specific to each international community could successfully support of these regions. 2 ECOSOC resolution 1079 (XXXIX), 28 July 1965 FROM PLANNING TO POLICY: HALF A CENTURY OF THE CDP 5 The fifth session, held at ECAFE in May 1969, was health and education – of a prominent independent held at a time when East Asian development poli- panel of UN experts, and their holding their third cies and strategies were still under elaboration.3 The session at ESCAFE, was at least no hindrance to the CDP’s report from that year comments approvingly efforts of national governments in this regard. on the increase in aid for the region and devotes The CDP broke new ground in other ways, too. It is considerable space to the recommendation that East possible to identify an early strain of thinking in the Asian governments should revitalise the planning CDP’s work that might now be known as human process and empower planning institutions, advice development, even if couched differently. The 1974 that fits well with the observation that: “From the CDP report, Industrialisation for New Development 1950s to the mid-1970s, ECAFE promoted a diri- Needs stated that: “Industrialisation can and should giste model of development, with the state as a cen- be explicitly ‘people-oriented.’ Plainly, this does tral actor” (UN 2009b). not mean that one pattern of development can be Notably the CDP report mentions “the failure of prescribed for all countries, regardless of their size, [Asian] exports to expand rapidly” and that “coun- location, preferences or other