DATE DOWNLOADED: Fri Jan 26 15:06:37 2024

SOURCE: Content Downloaded from HeinOnline

Citations:
Please note: citations are provided as a general guideline. Users should consult their preferred
citation format's style manual for proper citation formatting.

Bluebook 21st ed.

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr & David Hulme, International Norm Dynamics and the End of Poverty:
Understanding the Millennium Development Goals, 17 GLOBAL GOVERNANCE 17 (2011).

ALWD 7th ed.

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr & David Hulme, International Norm Dynamics and the End of Poverty:
Understanding the Millennium Development Goals, 17 Global Governance 17 (2011).

APA 7th ed.

Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko, & Hulme, David. (2011). International norm dynamics and the end
of poverty: understanding the millennium development goals. Global Governance, 17(1),
17-36.

Chicago 17th ed.

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr; David Hulme, "International Norm Dynamics and the End of Poverty:
Understanding the Millennium Development Goals," Global Governance 17, no. 1
(January-March 2011): 17-36

McGill Guide 9th ed.

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr & David Hulme, "International Norm Dynamics and the End of
Poverty: Understanding the Millennium Development Goals" (2011) 17:1 Global
Governance 17.

AGLC 4th ed.

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme, 'International Norm Dynamics and the End of
Poverty: Understanding the Millennium Development Goals' (2011) 17(1) Global
Governance 17

MLA 9th ed.

Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko, and David Hulme. "International Norm Dynamics and the End of
Poverty: Understanding the Millennium Development Goals." Global Governance, vol. 17,
no. 1, January-March 2011, pp. 17-36. HeinOnline.

OSCOLA 4th ed.

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr & David Hulme, 'International Norm Dynamics and the End of
Poverty: Understanding the Millennium Development Goals' (2011) 17 Global Governance
17 Please note: citations are provided as a general guideline.
Users should consult their preferred citation format's style manual for proper
citation formatting.

-- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and
Conditions of the license agreement available at
https://heinonline.org/HOL/License
-- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text.
-- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your license, please use:
Global Governance 17 (2011), 17-36

GLOBAL INSIGHTS

International Norm Dynamics and

the "End of Poverty": Understanding
the Millennium Development Goals
9
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme

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 the world;
how economists, philosophers, and political scientists theorize the process of
development; and how these ideas are utilized and adopted by key stakehold-
ers. A significant evolution in recent years has been the emergence of a broad
consensus on ending poverty as the overarching objective of development.
This consensus is institutionalized in the UN Millennium Declaration adopted
in 2000 and in the widespread use of the global targets that have become
known as the 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 con-
cern with widespread poverty has been a major factor for keeping develop-
ment on the international agenda since the 1950s, strategies have been
dominated by economic objectives ranging from building infrastructure,
human capital and an industrial base in the 1960s and 1970s, to economic lib-
eralization in the 1980s and 1990s, to institutional and governance reforms
since the 1990s. 1 Civil society advocates and academics have consistently crit-
icized these national and international strategies for their neglect of poverty
and the human dimension. 2
This new consensus has important implications for the international polit-
ical economy of development. As Charles Gore argues, the consensus was
achieved at the expense of replacing the prioritization of building national ca-
pacities for development. 3 While the MDGs are usually seen as desirable, Ash-
wani Saith points out that "the MDG phenomenon carries the potential for
distorting meaningful intellectual and research agendas, and could function as
the catalyst and vehicle for a fundamental realignment of the political econ-
4
omy of development at the global level."
How did this normative shift take place? Was it driven by ethical consid-
erations? What was the role of key individuals and institutional stakeholders?

17
18 International Norm Dynamics and the "End of Poverty"

What were the strategic instruments deployed? The aim of this article is to ex-
plain how the MDGs emerged and became established and to analyze the tra-
jectory of the antipoverty norm itself. We draw on documentary material and
interviews conducted with over 100 individuals who were involved in the
framing and implementation phases of the Millennium Declaration and
MDGs. We use the model of international norm dynamics set out by Martha
Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink. 5 But we propose elements to extend and re-
fine that model in this context. We argue that the MDGs brought specificity
and concreteness to the idea of ending global poverty, and explain the dynam-
ics of that process by extending the conceptual apparatus of Finnemore and
Sikkink. We introduce two new concepts: the "supernorm," a cluster of inter-
related norms grouped into a unified and coherent framework, and the "mes-
sage entrepreneur," as distinct from the "norm entrepreneur."6

The Supernorm of Ending Global Poverty

In this article, we treat the MDGs as a vehicle to communicate and promote the
objective of ending global poverty. Legislatively the MDGs originated in goals
set in the Millennium Declaration, a political declaration signed by 189 coun-
tries, including 145 heads of state or government, that commits to ending
poverty as a key goal for the twenty-first century along with peace, human
rights, and democracy. The development chapter of the Millennium Declaration
is entirely focused on poverty rather than other dimensions of development. It
starts with the statement: "We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women
and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty,
to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected." 7 While the Mil-
lennium Declaration included clearly defined objectives and specific quantita-
tive goals, these were further clarified into a form that could be monitored more
effectively in the Road Map presented by the UN Secretary-General a year
later.8 These were presented in the Annex as Millennium Development Goals,
including eight goals, encompassing eighteen targets and forty-eight indicators.
Conceptually, the MDGs constitute a single package; although each of the
eight MDGs is important as an individual norm, they are strategic components
of the broader supernorm that extreme, dehumanizing poverty is morally un-
acceptable and should be eradicated. The MDGs are interrelated both as nor-
mative ends and instrumental means. As ends, each is a necessary part of
human dignity. As means, they reflect the findings of research since the 1980s
showing the synergies among them; for example, education contributes to re-
ducing child mortality and better health contributes to improving worker pro-
ductivity. 9 An important conceptual advance in development thinking over the
1990s, reflected in both the academic literature'o and policy of major agen-
cies,11 is the idea that poverty is multidimensional, and that ending poverty re-
quires addressing different dimensions simultaneously.
 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme 19

Until the 1990s global poverty eradication was, at best, only a nascent
global development norm promoted by activists, politicians, scholars, and in-
ternational commissions,12 and, at times, by major international organizations.
But it was not until the 1990s that it began to be crafted into a supernorm. This
took place through a series of separate initiatives. At the core of this process
was the series of UN summits and conferences starting with the 1990 World
Summit for Children. Though each event had specific origins and purposes, a
common theme that emerged by the mid-1990s was an agenda for inclusive
globalization and ending poverty and promoting equality.13 Each event
adopted declarations that are agendas for action, including quantitative targets.
The Copenhagen Declaration from the World Social Summit in 1995 was a
milestone in integrating various sectoral goals into the poverty umbrella.' 4
This was the first UN conference focused on poverty that emphasized its mul-
tiple human dimensions. Next came the 1996 policy document, Shaping the
21st Century, by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Or-
ganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the group-
ing of twenty-three major bilateral donors.15 This document defined reducing
poverty as the DAC members' common overarching purpose and set six In-
ternational Development Goals (IDGs), including income poverty, education,
gender disparity, maternal and child deaths, reproductive health, and environ-
mental sustainability. Finally came the Millennium Declaration in 2000, fol-
lowed by the MDGs published in 2001 that assembled a wide range of
individual goals into a single supernorm.

The Life Cycle of the Antipoverty Supernorm

In this section, we analyze the process by which an antipoverty supernorm
emerged and gained momentum. We apply Finnemore and Sikkink's model,
which has examined norm changes such as the abolition of slavery and votes
for women. This proposes a three-stage life cycle: (1) "norm emergence" in
which a norm begins to receive domestic and international attention that cul-
minates in a "tipping point" when a critical mass of states adopt the norm; (2)
"norm cascade" when the norm diffuses throughout the international commu-
6
nity; and (3) "norm internalization" when the norm changes behaviors.1 Each
stage is characterized by a particular set of actors, motives, and mechanisms
of influence (Table 1).

Norm Emergence:
Eradicating Poverty as a Global Responsibility
As Finnemore and Sikkink's model would predict, individuals with organiza-
tional platforms played key roles in this stage. These were people who had
dedicated their professional lives to particular causes and found themselves
20 International Norm Dynamics and the "End of Poverty"

Table 1 The Life Cycle of an International Norm

Stage I Stage 2 Stage 3

Norm Emergence Norm Cascade Norm Internalization

Actors Norm entrepreneurs States, Law, professions,

with organizational international bureaucracy
platforms organizations,
networks
Motives Altruism, empathy, Legitimacy, Conformity
ideational commitment reputation, esteem
Dominant Persuasion Socialization, Habit,
mechanisms institutionalization, institutionalization
demonstration

Source: Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, "International Norm Dynamics and
Political Change," InternationalOrganization52, no. 4 (1998): 887-917.

with potentially important organizational platforms-as leaders of UN agen-

cies, advocacy nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and social move-
ments. They commissioned studies and reports, collated and synthesized
scientific evidence, formulated organizational priorities, and engaged in pub-
lic advocacy and media campaigns to promote the specific norms to which
they were committed.
A leading norm entrepreneur was Jim Grant, executive director of the
UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), who spent decades researching, writing, and
campaigning to end poverty. He mounted the World Summit for Children in
1990 against considerable opposition and set an example of a high-profile
event with wide participation.' 7 In the end, an unprecedented number of
countries (159) and heads of state or government (71) attended the summit.
The declaration and plan of action adopted by the summit included a number
of goals related to infant and maternal mortality, child malnutrition and illit-
eracy, access to basic services for health and family planning, education, and
water and sanitation.18 Subsequently, Grant used these goals to mobilize ac-
tion, using the UNICEF headquarters and field offices as an organizational
platform. He traveled the world persuading national leaders to finance and
implement plans for immunization, iodized salt, and a number of other con-
crete targets.19
Another leading example is Nafis Sadik, a physician from Pakistan who
spent all of her professional life advocating and advancing family planning
programs. As executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and
secretary-general of the 1994 International Conference on Population and De-
velopment, she waged numerous diplomatic battles to include important, but
controversial, issues in the agenda and conclusions. 20 Issues such as women's
empowerment, reproductive rights, and even abortion could not be ignored
when these were the cause of so many deaths. She won over the Vatican and
 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme 21

conservative states in incorporating these issues as health and reproductive

rights into the agenda of the conference.
International NGOs and NGO networks also played a major role, often
working unofficially beside official delegates to the conferences. For example,
the International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC) was a significant actor at
Cairo and promoted the evolution of an accessible evidence base and an epis-
temic community for reproductive health. 21 The women's movement played a
strategic role at several summits by carefully deploying its members to lobby
key audiences on key issues at key moments. 22 While this involved the efforts
of thousands of organizations, there was a group of norm entrepreneurs who
played leading roles in mobilizing networks of NGOs from around the world
that undertook coordinated campaigns focused on key international poverty is-
sues. These included, for example, Ann Pettifor of the Jubilee 2000 campaign
on debt relief, Martin Khor of Third World Network advocacy on international
economic policies, Adrienne Germain of IWHC on reproductive rights, and
Roberto Bissio of Social Watch on aid and social investments.
The 1990s UN conferences were high-energy events with widespread par-
ticipation and strategic coalition building across government and nongovern-
ment actors. 23 There were preparatory processes that brought together
technocrats and advocates from the substantive ministries, international and
national NGOs, donor agencies, and the media in protracted dialogues to for-
mulate national and regional positions. The content of these declarations re-
flected the broader participation and the critical positions and analyses of civil
society and UN agencies on poverty, inequality, marginalization, and global
governance.
Another source for the emergence of a poverty supernorm was the group
that formulated the DAC's IDGs. This was the collective effort of a group of
individuals representing France, Japan, the UK, United States, and other coun-
tries who met over the course of a year in different parts of the world to work
out a future policy direction for aid. This process was driven partly by institu-
tional interests. With the end of the Cold War had come a decline in political
support for development aid, and foreign aid budgets had dropped dramati-
cally. 24 The DAC selected six goals from the UN conferences of the early
1990s 25 in an effort to communicate a vision of what donors were striving to
achieve in their development work for the twenty-first century. 26 As Colin
Bradford, who represented the United States in these negotiations, explains,
"we needed a new post-post-war discourse for aid," one that could communi-
cate with the "parliaments and publics." 27 In the formulation process, one of
the major arguments was over how many goals to include, with all recogniz-
ing that fewer would be better, and some arguing for only one goal: the income
poverty goal. Others argued that several goals were needed to appeal to dif-
ferent political constituencies such as women's groups, education groups, and
health groups. 28
22 International Norm Dynamics and the "End of Poverty"

Among bilateral donors, four development ministers played particularly

active roles as both domestic and international norm entrepreneurs. They used
the IDGs to focus their countries' aid programs on poverty reduction goals.
Clare Short (UK), Evelyn Herfkens (Netherlands), Hilde Johnson (Norway),
and Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (Germany) formed the informal Utstein
Group. They strategized collectively, and used the IDGs to advocate increased
aid commitments; a refocusing of aid on human development and poverty re-
duction; and reforms to trade, debt, and other policy areas. 29 Under the lead-
ership of James Wolfensohn, the World Bank also became more active in
promoting an antipoverty agenda. 30
These norm entrepreneurs were a diverse group with diverse motivations
operating from many different organizational platforms. Ideational commit-
ments to ending poverty as an ethical imperative and to the broader princi-
ples of human dignity, equality, and social justice were important
motivations for most of them and all had a deep personal commitment to re-
ducing poverty. Many advocated a broader human-centered development
paradigm and analytical frameworks such as basic needs, human develop-
ment, capabilities, and feminism that differed from and critiqued mainstream
economic analyses.

Toward the Global Tipping Point: Message Entrepreneurs,

the Millennium Declaration, and the MDGs
By the late 1990s the vast number of goals being promoted by influential norm
entrepreneurs, NGOs, and social movements, alongside the Copenhagen sum-
mit follow-up process and unrolling of the DAC's IDGs, presented Kofi
Annan, the new Secretary-General of the UN, with a problem. These commu-
nicated a confusing message without any clear sense of priorities while Annan
wanted to assert UN leadership over a coherent international development
agenda. As the year 2000 approached, the Millennium Assembly needed to
have a major impact. Just as the IDGs had served the donors, the MDGs turned
out to be a solution to this problem in leading the world by their articulation
of a unified, coherent, and simple message on the supernorm of global poverty
eradication. The MDGs were a formulation of the antipoverty message, delib-
erately crafted to communicate more effectively than earlier specifications.
The core strategy was: (1) to use quantitative goals because that spoke directly
to results for which governments would be held accountable; and (2) to build
on the momentum of the IDGs that had political traction, but lacked legitimacy
because they were created by a donor group.
Finnemore and Sikkink argue that "norms that are clear and specific,
rather than ambiguous or complex and those that have been around for awhile
... are more likely to be effective." 31 In addition, norms that are "widely
accepted . . . in diplomatic discussions and treaties" are more likely to be ef-
 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme 23

fective. 32 The MDGs are a case in point. They were specifically designed to
meet such conditions. The MDGs powerfully communicated the global an-
tipoverty agenda because they delivered a concrete and simple message in
three particular ways. First, they referred directly to concrete human condi-
tions with which people could empathize rather than the abstract term
"poverty" that was open to interpretation. Second, they had quantified time-
bound targets and could be monitored.33 This made it clear that these were
concrete objectives, not abstract aspirations. Third, the list was relatively short
with only eight goals, not dozens, and could therefore be remembered and pre-
sented as a single PowerPoint slide. Keeping the list short was a key consid-
eration in the formulation of the Millennium Declaration. 34 It also was
significant in the earlier IDGs. 35
The aims of the message entrepreneurs who drafted and negotiated the
Millennium Declaration and MDGs were different from the norm entrepre-
neurs who had driven the UN conference agendas. They were institutionally
embedded individuals who were motivated by organizational mandates. This
is not to doubt their personal commitment to global poverty eradication, but
their actions were not driven by these ideals in the same way. As already
stated above, similar motivations had influenced the individuals who framed
the IDGs. As those involved in the Office of the Secretary-General explain,
the Millennium Summit was an opportunity for the UN and the Secretary-
General to demonstrate global leadership. 36 They aimed for a powerful dec-
laration and prepared for this through the Secretary-General's report, We the
Peoples. According to Ambassador Gert Rosenthal of Guatemala who
cochaired the intergovernmental negotiations on the Millennium Summit dec-
laration, We the Peoples was a powerful document with clear prose and co-
herence that reflected the fact that it was not written by committee as most
UN documents are, but by a single author-John Ruggie-with help from
two collaborators.37

Achieving the Global Tipping Point: The MDGs

As soon as the Millennium Declaration was adopted by the General Assembly
in September 2000, the significance of the nascent goals as the message was
recognized. Lord Mark Malloch Brown, then administrator of the UN Devel-
opment Programme (UNDP), was one of the first to do so and he rushed to
publish an editorial in the InternationalHerald Tribune.38 He then began to
promote the goals in the declaration not yet packaged and labeled MDGs as
the global development framework. 39 This was not easy because he met with
some resistance from political leaders who were taking other initiatives to mo-
bilize support through other frameworks such as Gordon Brown on child
poverty.40 The World Bank was also quick to see the potential and called a
meeting to develop a more robust (and final) set of indicators for the goals. 41
24 International Norm Dynamics and the "End of Poverty"

This brought the UN, the World Bank, and the DAC secretariat into the
process of forging a follow-up process. Inevitably, questions arose about lead-
ership, and whether the goals would continue to be named IDGs. 42 Ultimately,
the Office of the Secretary-General undertook to lead the work of developing
an implementation plan (the "Road Map") for the Millennium Declaration, in-
cluding the final set of indicators. This work became a major task for Michael
Doyle, who had succeeded Ruggie in the Secretary-General's office. Such a
response to a General Assembly declaration is exceptional, given that the typ-
ical shelf life of a UN declaration is in days or weeks after adoption. 43 An in-
teragency group of technocrats-the core of whom had worked on the IDGs
including the OECD's Brian Hammond, World Bank's Eric Swanson, and
UNDP's Jan Vandemoortele-was formed to convert the list in the Millen-
nium Declaration into a more robust set of goals with targets and indicators
that could be monitored systematically. Malloch Brown also began to lobby
and negotiate for these goals-yet to be labeled MDGs-with influential lead-
ers such as Short.44
The individuals who drove the process converting the Millennium Decla-
ration's list into the MDGs were message entrepreneurs with characteristics
quite distinct from norm entrepreneurs. They were less motivated by an
ideational commitment to ending poverty and driven more by an organiza-
tional imperative. Ruggie and Doyle in the Office of the Secretary-General
and Malloch Brown at UNDP were committed to making the UN a more ef-
fective organization. They had neither led nor engaged in the battles that had
converted international development into poverty eradication over the 1990s.
Malloch Brown sought to achieve more consensual relationships across the
fractious development community that was divided by ideology and pitted the
World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) against NGOs with the
UN caught in the middle. 45 His view was shared by others in the development
community who wanted more effective coordination of development strate-
gies and activities, particularly World Bank president Wolfensohn, who made
a point of personally reaching out to the UN as his predecessors had never
done. 46 They sought a more unified international community for development,
which meant creating a shared vision and more constructive relationships
among the World Bank, IMF, UN, bilateral agencies, and NGOs. 47 As diplo-
mats skilled in negotiations among organizations and governments, they had
been trained mainly in history and political science rather than economics or
practical work in development. They negotiated an agreement across the 189
UN delegations and also brought on board the three other sets of actors who
were leading parallel efforts: the bilateral aid agencies (DAC of the OECD);
the World Bank and IMF; and the UN specialized agencies.
To illustrate the tensions of the time, in June 2000 when the UN jointly
published with the World Bank, IMF, and OECD the report A Better World for
All 48 on progress in meeting the DAC IDGs, an uproar went up from NGO net-
 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme 25

works. 49 They were shocked that the UN Secretary-General would sign a doc-
ument with the heads of the World Bank, IMF, and OECD. This was seen as a
betrayal. The antiglobalization debates behind much NGO thinking were often
framed in antimarket ideology and portrayed the World Bank and IMF as the
enemy. To communicate a coherent international agenda, which could be ac-
cepted by these fractious groups, required a message that would finesse the
"market is best . . . market is worst" positions of the international financial in-
stitutions and antiglobalization NGOs. The MDGs achieved this through fo-
cusing on people and the ends of development around which a common vision
could be established rather than the means to get there, which was fiercely
contested.
The supernorm of global poverty eradication approached a global tipping
point in September 2000 with the adoption of the Millennium Declaration,
which won the unanimous approval of the General Assembly. With the publi-
cation of the MDGs in September 2001, and the mobilization to implement
them, the tipping point was reached.

Cascading the MDGs: Old Obstacles

and New Organizational Platforms
As Finnemore and Sikkink's model would predict, the key actors involved in
the cascade process for the MDGs were states and international organizations
that adopted the MDGs to comply with international standards and, for some,
to enhance their international standing. The process of norm cascade for the
MDGs can appear both simple and complex. At one level, arguably, the MDGs
had an extraordinarily rapid and simple cascade process. Because they derived
from the unanimous approval of the Millennium Declaration by the General
Assembly, and most particularly by the majority of the world's heads of state,
it could be argued that all governments of the world adopted them at the same
time. But as Richard Jolly concludes in his analysis of UN goals, the effec-
tiveness of these goals in mobilizing genuine action depends on institutional
follow-up. 5 0 In this respect, the UN invested heavily through three major pro-
grams: (1) research to develop technical strategy; (2) a campaign to publicize
the goals and mobilize support; and (3) support to national governments. In
their policy statements, almost all national governments, multilateral organi-
zations, and bilateral agencies started to refer to the MDGs as a central ele-
ment of their strategy. But there were obstacles.
First, the United States was initially ambivalent and then later opposed to
the MDGs. While President William J. Clinton stood alongside other heads of
state at the September 2000 Millennium Summit to adopt the Millennium Dec-
laration, the incoming George W. Bush administration turned hostile toward
the MDGs. This position came to a head at the 2005 UN Millennium +5 Sum-
mit, when the incoming US ambassador John Bolton arrived during the final
26 International Norm Dynamics and the "End of Poverty"

days of the preparations and objected to the use of the term "MDGs" in the
draft declaration. The United States ultimately gave in since it was over-
whelmingly isolated in its position.
A second challenge came from international NGO networks. NGO net-
works had confrontational meetings with the UN; for example, at the 2002
UNDP's Civil Society Advisory Board meeting with Malloch Brown. 51They
argued that the MDGs were not democratically formulated but put together
by bureaucrats and agreed on among governments without wider consulta-
tion. 52 The NGO networks were also critical of the content (see below) of the
MDGs because: (1) important goals, especially reproductive health goals,
were excluded; (2) the goals and targets were not ambitious enough, espe-
cially for countries that had already achieved them; (3) the Goal 8 partnership
goals and targets were weak and lacked quantitative targets; and (4) systemic
reforms of global governance structures and policies were excluded. Under-
pinning these specific criticisms was the deeply felt suspicion that the MDGs
had co-opted the UN and NGOs into a consensus position with the World
Bank and IMF-the systemic antiliberalization reform agendas for which
many NGO networks had been campaigning were not advanced by the
MDGs.53
Third, most developing country governments gave only lukewarm sup-
port to the MDGs because they feared that they would be used as another set
of donor conditionalities, and because they could see little value added. There
was nothing new or innovative for the Global South in these goals: reducing
poverty, freedom from hunger, education for all, and other goals had been part
of national development plans for decades.
In the end, these objections did not prevent the international norm cas-
cade process. The United States was marginalized. The NGOs could com-
plain, but they could not persuade UN member states to block the MDGs. For
the developing countries, fighting the MDGs would have undermined their
interest in keeping social and economic development issues at the forefront
of UN debates. And anyway, for most delegations, their country's president
or prime minister had approved the Millennium Declaration, so how would
their opposition to the MDGs be handled? For all stakeholders, the danger of
appearing to object to pulling people out of abject poverty was a position to
be avoided.
From their launch in September 2001, the MDGs began to command cen-
ter stage in international development events: the 2002 Monterrey Finance for
Development Conference sought ways to finance MDG implementation; Gor-
don Brown and Tony Blair used them to lead the G8 2005 summit at Glenea-
gles that secured a number of rich country commitments for action; celebrities
(Bono, Bob Geldof, and Angelina Jolie) have mobilized popular support and
raised public awareness about global poverty in the rich world. These were all
effective mechanisms of persuasion in the MDG cascade process.
 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme 27

Omissions and Self-censorship

Five content omissions in the Millennium Declaration and the original MDG
listing adopted in 2001 have continued to attract criticisms, particularly from
their respective constituencies encompassing individuals from national gov-
ernments, donor agencies, UN agencies, NGOs, academics, and specialists.
Each argues that the omission did not reflect state-of-the-art thinking in de-
velopment economics, human development, or best practice in international
development. The 2001 list was a compromise finalized by an expert group
seeking to keep the list as short as possible. As data professionals, they con-
sidered only objectives for which reasonably robust internationally compara-
ble data series were available, dating back to 1990. But they also were
sensitive to the demands of political expediency: to come up with a list that
would be accepted by nearly 200 governments.
The most controversial omission was reproductive health services for all.
This omission was no accident, but the result of pressure from the "unholy al-
liance" of the Holy See and a handful of conservative Islamic states that per-
suaded the G-77 to block this goal. 54 The message entrepreneurs who framed
the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs did not want to fail in developing
an umbrella listing of poverty goals around which consensus could be
achieved. For these message entrepreneurs, reproductive health was a quibble
over details. They tended to argue that it did not matter whether these specific
goals were included or not because, in any case, they would be part of any rea-
sonable implementation strategy.55
The second omission relates to governance, human rights and democracy.
By the late 1990s, many leading researchers argued that poor people remained
poor because they lacked power and were politically excluded. At a time when
the World Bank's flagship World Development Report 2000-2001 on poverty
concluded that empowerment was one of the three key strategies for ending
poverty, along with opportunity and security, it was surprising that the MDGs
did not include governance to empower the poor. 56 It would have raised con-
troversy with national governments as infringement on sovereignty.
The third omission was gender empowerment, which had only the target
of eliminating inequalities in schooling in the original formulation. The
women's movement had moved far beyond its early focus on educational dis-
parities to issues that were as much or more fundamental to women's disem-
powerment: gender-based violence, lack of property rights, economic
discrimination, and political exclusion. Goal 3 of the MDGs took the agenda
back to the priorities of the 1970s.
The fourth omission was the limiting of the decent work target to youth
employment. Reportedly, the top management of the International Labour Or-
ganization (LO) was dismissive of the IDG and MDG exercises. They ad-
vised staff that such lists were "a passing fad, we don't need to get mixed up
with them.. . this is not the only game in town." 57 The LO position changed
28 International Norm Dynamics and the "End of Poverty"

in the early 2000s and, by 2005, it was effectively advocating for decent work
to become an MDG target.
The fifth omission was in Goal 8, which lacks quantitative, time-bound
targets. While the results-based management principle of having SMART tar-
geting was rigorously pursued for Goals 1 through 6, and partially applied to
Goal 7, it was systematically avoided for Goal 8.58 Because Goal 8 was not a
quantitative goal in the Millennium Declaration, there was a limit to what the
framers of the MDGs felt they could negotiate; the expert group engaged in
self-censorship. 59 By 2001, the lack of support for the MDGs in the George W.
Bush administration was understood. 60 And there was little to be gained by
raising the likelihood of US withdrawal from this process by pushing for
SMART goals for rich countries.
In 2005 some of these omissions were corrected with the addition of tar-
gets for reproductive health, women's political representation, and decent
work, along with more detailed environmental targets. The belated inclusion
of reproductive health targets was a result of energetic lobbying led by norm
entrepreneurs-the head of UN Population Fund and a group of countries that
were committed to women's reproductive health rights. 6 1 They acted politi-
cally and mobilized much of the UN membership to support the inclusion of
this target, overturning the self-censorship exercised by the original framers of
the Millennium Declaration and MDGs.

Norm Internalization
The internalization of the MDGs has made rapid progress at the level of pol-
icy statements, documentation, and reporting. The MDGs have become inter-
nalized as the metagoal of virtually all international development efforts. The
term "Millennium Development Goals" has entered the language of interna-
tional development as a synonym for "poverty reduction." The goals are reg-
ularly referred to in policy documents of donor agencies and in national
development planning documents such as the Poverty Reduction Strategy Pa-
pers. 62 They also are mentioned by NGOs, think tanks, and the media.
Monitoring MDG progress continues to command the highest profile at
the General Assembly. The MDGs were the centerpiece of the 2005 Millen-
nium +5 Summit at which the MDGs were officially affirmed and at a special
high-level event in 2008. The 2010 General Assembly was an "MDG Summit"
that reviewed progress and renewed commitment to accelerate progress to-
ward achieving the goals. 63 Such events are significant for countries; for ex-
ample, the prime ministers of both India and China have personally presented
their national MDG reports at the UN. Conformity to international standards
has clearly been a driving motive for using the MDG framework in monitor-
ing development.
The MDGs have also been used to mobilize action across many different
communities; private corporations,64 municipalities, 65 national governments,
 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme 29

schools, and NGOs have framed their activities in terms of contributions to

MDG achievement. The Stand-Up Against Poverty campaign has mobilized
ever-increasing numbers to make personal commitments to fight for MDGs,
reaching 117 million in 2009. In effect, these instances show that the MDGs
have become a habit, and reflect internalization as predicted by Finnemore and
Sikkink's model.

Norm Content: Contestation and Consensus

The great strength of the MDGs as a supemorm, communicating a complex set
of norms underpinned by a more abstract idea (global responsibility for erad-
icating extreme poverty) in concrete and unambiguous terms, is also their
great weakness. They skirted around, and did not resolve, the ideational di-
vides within the international community. The present form of the MDGs re-
flects many compromises to create a consensus on which the major
stakeholders could agree. The tension continues between the many norm en-
trepreneurs (and their organizational platforms) who have pushed to get their
norm included in the MDG supernorm framework and the message entrepre-
neurs who have striven to keep the MDG list as short and simple as possible.
The message entrepreneurs either have argued that proposed additional goals
are covered by existing goals, or have negotiated proposals for additional
goals down to the target level (as with water and sanitation, decent work, and
reproductive health) or the indicator level. The debates that emerged in the im-
mediate aftermath of the Millennium Declaration continue in many formal and
informal debates. 66

Ideational Trajectory
The norm entrepreneurs who mobilized and energized the UN conferences and
summits often were reacting against the Washington Consensus. But the mes-
sage entrepreneurs wanted to avoid these divides within the international de-
velopment community and achieve a broader consensus around poverty
reduction. This meant attempting to create a cease-fire and moving beyond the
contests over debt relief, structural adjustment, and many other issues because
the MDGs had to be championed not only by the UN, but also by the World
Bank and IMF. The leading message entrepreneurs, like Malloch Brown and
Doyle, wanted a unified front. They were also seeking a "new bargain" be-
tween the aid donor countries and developing country governments to expand
total aid flows. Reaching a consensus was critical. 67 According to Malloch
Brown at that time:

both the uncontrolled and ultimately mismanaged entitlement culture of aid

that characterized the '60s and '70s and the top-down, destructive condition-
ality approach of the so-called Washington Consensus that dominated devel-
30 International Norm Dynamics and the "End of Poverty"

opment thinking in the '80s and '90s have been discredited.... [Wihat is
emerging is a new consensus that demands that we match mutual commit-
ments and mutual accountability: a political bargain being built around a
partnership of self-interest between the countries of North and South under
which sustained political and economic reform by developing countries will
be matched by direct support from the rich world in the form of the trade, aid
and investment needed if they are to succeed. 68

But the ideational divides were strong and entrenched. So when NGOs
protested against the UN Secretary-General joining the heads of the World
Bank, IMF, and OECD in signing Building a Better World, the 2000 progress
report on the DAC's IDGs, Annan had to stand firm, writing back that the re-
port was not a policy document and IDGs were goals and targets originated in
UN conferences. 69 In the formulation of the MDGs and the Millennium Dec-
laration, the message entrepreneurs consciously laid out the objectives that
were shared among the dissenting parties and avoided the more contentious
issue of the economic strategies, and other hot topics such as reproductive
health, needed to achieve them. The lukewarm support for the MDGs from
NGOs and developing country governments reflected their unease in endors-
ing a consensus with the Bretton Woods organizations. 70
It is no accident that the MDGs are headed by the goal of reducing the
proportion of people living in extreme income poverty (Goal 1 and Target 1).
That was the preference of the OECD. And by ensuring this goal was at the
top of the list, the message entrepreneurs sought to make it clear that the shift
from a focus on national development to global poverty reduction did not sug-
gest that economic growth, based on globalization, was to be marginalized.
This meant that the MDGs had a significant degree of continuity with earlier
ideas about dealing with mass poverty. It also meant that the message entre-
preneurs could disguise the complexity of the MDGs through the simple short-
hand of goal 1, to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, and target 1A, to
halve the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day.
The MDGs are a grand simplification of the many goals and targets
identified by the norm entrepreneurs of the 1990s. The goals and priorities
of the 1990s UN conference processes had in common emphases on equal-
ity and human rights as well as partnerships across state, business, and civil
society and across poor and rich countries. The vision of the Millennium
Declaration was driven by the principles of human dignity, equality, and sol-
idarity that reflect international human rights principles.71 But the MDGs
barely reflected these human rights principles. 72 While the MDGs adopted a
human development conceptualization of poverty, approved by many oppo-
nents of neoliberalism and structural adjustment, they took a relatively con-
servative "basic needs" position.73 This was taken instead of a more
assertive human rights perspective that the meeting of basic needs is a global
responsibility. 74
 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme 31

Whether the supemorm that the MDGs represent is to be seen as a great

advance, as a missed opportunity, or as a regression depends on the ideational
framework applied. From a neoliberal growth perspective, the MDGs have
shifted attention to social policy and may slow down the economic growth that
is needed to reduce poverty. The MDGs neglected the centrality of growth and
the private sector for poverty reduction and dangerously exaggerated the role
and capacity of the state. But for critics of the neoliberal growth strategies of
the late twentieth century, the MDGs are not progressive enough. The MDGs
middle-of-the-road and post-Washington Consensus stance promoted by the
message entrepreneurs opened them to criticisms from the left. For feminists
(Peggy Antrobus and Rosalind Eyben) and the more radical left (Saith), the
MDGs were seen as only a minor shift in the status quo, perhaps merely pre-
tence. 75 The MDGs accepted that global capitalism should be the engine for
achieving poverty reduction; failed to recognize the need for redistribution
(both materially and in terms of political power); and conceptualized poverty
76
reduction as a lack of goods and services rather than as a relational problem.
With the exception of gender equality within nations, the MDGs avoided di-
rectly promoting the reduction of social and economic inequality (between and
within countries) or the achievement of human rights for all.

Conclusion
In this article, we have analyzed the evolution of a complex international su-
pernorm to eradicate extreme poverty as a global responsibility. Finnemore
and Sikkink's model has proved valuable in understanding these processes.
But we have also extended the conceptual apparatus in four particular ways.
First, complex, multiple goal norms are best understood as supernorms-
carefully structured sets of interrelated norms that pursue a grand prescriptive
goal. Second, while our analysis confirms the centrality of altruistically moti-
vated individuals as norm entrepreneurs for the emergence of international
norms, it also identifies a significant role for a different set of actors, the mes-
sage entrepreneurs. Message entrepreneurs have personal normative positions,
but their primary function is to achieve consensus, which is the purpose of an
intergovernmental organization. The detailed content of the supernorm is of
secondary importance for them. They use self-censorship to minimize con-
frontation. While a norm entrepreneur can be expected to stick to his or her
principles, a message entrepreneur must mix principles with pragmatism to
achieve a deal. The role of message entrepreneurs therefore is essential in
making the transition from norm emergence to norm cascade and internaliza-
tion. It also explains why ideas commonly become distorted when taken up by
international organizations. 77
The message entrepreneurs not only are essential in achieving norm cas-
cade and internationalization, but they also influence-or reshape-the con-
32 International Norm Dynamics and the "End of Poverty"

tent of the norms. The poverty eradication supernorm emerged in the context
of a fractious international community divided by ideological battles over
structural adjustment. The MDGs came on the scene as a useful communica-
tion device and a means of coordination. They argued for a shift away from
structural adjustment, but did not refute a market-based approach to develop-
ment. This was only a partial solution to creating a larger and more coordi-
nated attack on poverty since it brought with it several contradictions. First,
while the motivations and intent of the norm entrepreneurs were to change
policies they believed were obstacles to eradicating poverty, the key motiva-
tions of the message entrepreneurs were to avoid controversies, which they
perceived to be driven by the ideologies of earlier eras, and achieve a prag-
matic consensus to increase resources and efforts for poverty reduction. As a
consequence, the institutionalization of the norm did not really lead to sub-
stantial change in policy approaches. Second, the norm entrepreneurs sought
behavioral change in policymakers while the message entrepreneurs targeted
the public at large who might support policies for poverty reduction.
The recent evolution of the agenda for international development, and es-
pecially its reworking as global poverty eradication, can be only partially ex-
plained by norm dynamics. Ideas count but when it comes to global altruism,
the economic and political interests of states, and the elites who manage na-
tional affairs, take priority. A realist analytical perspective must lie alongside
our constructivist approach. The slow movement on implementation of the su-
pernorm through behavior change contrasts with the fast spread of the MDGs
in policy statements: only limited evidence for specific countries and for spe-
cific targets suggest that poverty reduction is being accelerated; the develop-
ment round in trade talks has been stymied; after an initial increase in the late
1990s, aid flows have stagnated; and progress has been slow in finding alter-
native approaches to manage intellectual property regimes to allow for in-
creased access to technology. Moreover, the origins and trajectory of the MDG
supernorm have to be seen in terms of the political and economic interests of
corporations and rich states who want to maintain a neoliberal economic
agenda of market globalization and, thus, seek to accommodate the challenge
of global poverty through a third-way framework. 0

Notes
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr is professor of international affairs at The New School, New York.
David Hulme is professor of development studies at the University of Manchester, and
director of the Brooks World Poverty Institute. The authors are grateful to all those in-
terviewed for this research and to James Scott for his excellent research assistance. The
usual provisos apply.
1. Alastair Greig, David Hulme, and Mark Turner, Challenging Global Inequality:
Development Theory and Practice in the 21st Century (New York: Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2007).
 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme 33

2. For a review of poverty in the policy agenda, see UNDP, Human Development
Report (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 43-65.
3. Charles Gore, "The MDG Paradigm, Productive Capacities and the Future of
Poverty Reduction," IDS Bulletin 41, no. 1 (2010): 70-79.
4. Ashwani Saith, "From Universal Values to Millennium Development Goals:
Lost in Translation," Development and Change 37, no. 6 (2006): 1167.
5. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, "International Norm Dynamics and
Political Change," International Organization52, no. 4 (1998): 887-917.
6. Ibid.
7. UN, Millennium Declaration(2000). Resolution adopted by the General As-
sembly A/55/L.2, par. 11, www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm (accessed
12 December 2010).
8. Road Map Towards the Implementation of the United Nations Millennium Dec-
laration:Report of the Secretary-General(New York: UN, 2001).
9. UN Millennium Project, Investing in Development: A PracticalPlan to Achieve
the Millennium Development Goals (London: Earthscan, 2005).
10. For example, Amartya Sen's capability and human development approach; Paul
Streeten and others' work on meeting basic needs, gender and development, and femi-
nist economics. For good summary reviews of these approaches, see David Clark, ed.,
The Elgar Companion to Development Studies (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar,
2006).
11. Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, Dharam Ghai, and Frdd6ric Lapeyre, UN Con-
tributions to Development Thinking and Practice (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2004).
12. Andrew Shonfield, The Attack on World Poverty (London: Chatto & Windus,
1960); Gunnar Myrdal, The Challenge of World Poverty: A World Anti-poverty Pro-
gram in Outline (London: Penguin, 1970); Brandt Commission, North-South: A Pro-
gramme for Survival (London: Pan Books, 1980).
13. UN, The United Nations Development Agenda: Development for All (New
York: UN, 2007).
14. Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development, www.un.org/esa/socdev
/wssd/copenhagendeclaration.html (accessed 11 December 2010).
15. Development Assistance Committee, Shaping the 21st Century: The Contribu-
tion of Development Co-operation, OECD, Paris, May 1996, www.oecd.org/dataoecd
/23/35/2508761.pdf (accessed 12 December 2010).
16. Finnemore and Sikkink, "International Norm Dynamics and Political Change."
17. Peter Adamson and Richard Jolly, Jim Grant-UNICEFVisionary (Florence:
Innocenti, 2007).
18. UNICEF, "World Declaration and Plan of Action on the Survival, Protection
and Development of Children," 30 September 1990, www.un.org/geninfo/bp
/child.html (accessed 12 December 2010).
19. Ibid.
20. Nafis Sadik, former executive director of UN Population Fund, interviewed by
the first author, New York, 26 January 2009.
21. See lWHC's journal Reproductive Health Matters to appreciate the way it has
sought to create a common value position and knowledge base for those working in
what was earlier seen as family planning.
22. Martha Chen, "Engendering World Conferences: The International Women's
Movement and the United Nations," Third World Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1995): 477-493.
23. UN, The United Nations Development Agenda: Development for All (New
York: UN, 2007).
34 International Norm Dynamics and the "End of Poverty"

24. OECD, Statistical Annex of the 2010 Development Co-operationReport, table

9, www.oecd.org/document/9/0,3343,en_2649_34447_1893129_1_1_1_1,00.html (ac-
cessed 24 July 2010).
25. David Hulme, "The Making of the Millennium Development Goals: Human
Development Meets Results-based Management in an Imperfect World," Brooks World
Poverty Institute Working Paper No. 16 (Manchester: University of Manchester, 2008).
26. Interviews with key players in the DAC IDG process: Colin Bradford, inter-
viewed by the first author, New York, 16 October 2008; Richard Carey, interviewed by
the first author, New York, 16 October 2008; Richard Manning, personal communica-
tion with the first author, January 2009.
27. Bradford interview.
28. Bradford interview; Carey interview.
29. Hulme, "The Making of the Millennium Development Goals"; Eveline
Herfkens, former Minister for Development Cooperation of the Netherlands and for-
mer Coordinator of the UN MDG Campaign, interviewed by the first author, New
York, 4 September 2008.
30. Sebastian Mallaby, The World's Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial
Crisis,and the Poverty of Nations (London: Penguin Books, 2004).
31. Finnemore and Sikkink, "International Norm Dynamics," pp. 906-907.
32. Jeffrey W. Legro, "Which Norms Matter? Revisiting the Failure of Internation-
alism," International Organization 51, no. 1 (1997): 31-63. Legro argues that this
"may be a sword that cuts both ways," but for nascent norms, like global poverty erad-
ication, the affirmation associated with concordance adds to robustness (p. 35).
33. This made them especially attractive to politicians and publics in the rich world
who had become used to results-based management (RBM) approaches in their public
sectors. See Hulme, "The Making of the Millennium Development Goals."
34. John Ruggie, former Assistant General for Strategic Planning, interviewed by
the first author, Cambridge, 6 August 2008.
35. Bradford interview; Carey interview.
36. Andy Mack, former staff of the UN Secretary-General's office, personal com-
munication with the first author, 11 September 2008; Edward Mortimer, former staff of
the Secretary-General's office, personal communication with the first author, 14 August
2008.
37. Gert Rosenthal, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Guatemala to
the UN, interviewed by the first author, New York, 25 August 2008.
38. Lord Mark Malloch Brown, former Administrator of UNDP and former UN
Deputy Secretary-General, interviewed by the first author, London, 27 June 2008;
Mark Suzman, former staff of UNDP Administrator's office and former staff of UN
Secretary-General's office, personal communication with the first author, 20 October
2008; Mark Malloch Brown, "Halving World's Poor Is Realistic Goal," International
Herald Tribune, 21 September 2000, www.iht.com/articles/2000/09/21/edbrown.tO.php.
39. Suzman, personal communication.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Eric Swanson, manager in the World Bank's Development Data Group, inter-
viewed by the first author, Washington, DC, 10 September 2008; Brian Hammond,
head of DAC Statistics, OECD, telephone interview with the author, 23 September
2008.
43. Mortimer personal communication; Mack personal communication; Ruggie in-
terview; Michael Doyle, former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Plan-
ning, interviewed by the first author, New York, 12 September 2008.
 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and David Hulme 35

44. Suzman personal communication.

45. Malloch Brown interview.
46. James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank, interviewed by the first
author, New York, 18 May 2010.
47. Malloch Brown interview.
48. IMF, OECD, UN, and the World Bank Group, A Better Worldfor All: Progress
Towards the International Development Goals (Washington, DC: IMF, OECD, UN,
and World Bank, 2000), www.paris2l.org/betterworld/pdf/bwa e.pdf.
49. See letter from the World Council of Churches, 28 June 2000, www.wcc
-coe.org/wcc/news/press/00/22pu.html (accessed 26 June 2010).
50. Richard Jolly, "Global Development Goals: The United Nations Experience,"
Journalof Human Development 5, no. 1 (2004): 69-95.
51. Barbara Adams, former chief of UN NGO liaison office, interviewed by the
first author, New York, 3 September 2008.
52. See Roberto Bissio, "Civil Society and the MDGs," Development Policy 3
(2003): 151-160.
53. Adams interview; Marina Ponti, director of UN MDG campaign, telephone in-
terview with the first author, 22 January 2009.
54. David Hulme, "Politics, Ethics and the Millennium Development Goals: The
Case of Reproductive Health," Brooks World Poverty Institute Working Paper No. 104
(Manchester: University of Manchester, 2009).
55. Mortimer personal communication; Ruggie interview; Mack personal commu-
nication.
56. World Bank, World Development Report 2000/2001:Attacking Poverty (Wash-
ington, DC: World Bank, 2000), http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/extemal/topics
/extpoverty/0,,contentmdk:20194762-pagepk: 148956-pipk:216618-thesitepk:336992
,00.html (accessed 12 December 2010).
57. A. Sylvester Young, director of statistics, International Labour Organization, in-
terviewed by the second author, Geneva, 30 May 2007.
58. Results-based management calls for goals that are stretching, measurable,
agreed, realistic, and time limited (SMART).
59. Doyle interview.
60. Ibid.
61. Thoraya Obaid, former Executive Director, UNFPA, interviewed by the first au-
thor, New York, 12 August 2008.
62. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, "Reducing Inequality-The Missing MDG: A Content Re-
view of PRSPs and Bilateral Donor Policy Statements," IDS Bulletin 41, no. 1 (2010):
26-35. Note, however, that the reference is rhetorical.
63. For a report on this summit, see the UNDP website, www.undp.org/mdg
/summit.shtml (accessed 12 December 2010).
64. Brookings Institution, Brookings Blum Roundtable: The Private Sector in the
Fight Against Global Poverty, Aspen, Colorado, August 2005, www3.brookings.edu
/global/200508blum agenda.pdf.
65. Millennium Campaign 2009, "European Local Authorities Unite to Call for
Achievement of Millennium Development Goals," 23 April 2009, www.endpoverty
2015.org/europe/news/european-local-authorities-unite-call-achievement-millennium
-development-goals/28/apr/09; David Hulme, Global Poverty (London: Routledge,
2010), chap. 4.
66. See, for example, the collection of articles in the special issue of IDS Bulletin
41, no. 1, edited by Andy Sumner and Clare Melamed, "The MDGs and Beyond."
67. Malloch Brown interview.
36 international Norm Dynamics and the "End of Poverty"

68. Quoted in Bissio, "Civil Society and the MDGs," p. 157.

69. Chakravarthi Raghavan, "Annan Replies to WCC over Better World for All Re-
port," Third World Network, 4 July 2000, www.twnside.org.sg/title/wcc.htm. See also
28 June 2000 letter from World Council of Churches to the Secretary-General and re-
sponse, www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/news/press/00/22pu.html.
70. Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch, interviewed by the first author,
Geneva, 12 January, 2010 ; Ponti interview.
71. UNDP, Human Development Report (New York: Oxford University Press,
2003); Philip Alston, "A Human Rights Perspective on the Millennium Development
Goals," Background Paper for the Work of the Millennium Project Task Force on
Poverty and Economic Development, 2004, www.hurilink.org/tools/HRsPerspectives
_ontheMDGs--Alston.pdf; UN, The United Nations Development Agenda.
72. UN OHCHR, Claiming the MDGs: A Human Rights Approach (Geneva: United
Nations, 2008).
73. Hulme, "The Making of the Millennium Development Goals."
74. See, for example, UN OHCHR, Claiming the MDGs, for a detailed critique of
the MDGs from this perspective.
75. Peggy Antrobus, "Critiquing MDGs from a Caribbean Perspective," Gender
and Development 13, no. 1 (March 2005): 94-104; Rosalind Eyben, "The Road Not
Taken: International Aid's Choice of Copenhagen over Beijing," Third World Quarterly
27, no. 4 (2006): 595-608; Saith, "From Universal Values."
76. Maia Green and David Hulme, "From Correlates and Characteristics to Causes:
Thinking About Poverty from a Chronic Poverty Perspective," World Development 33,
no. 6 (2005): 867-879.
77. Morten BOAs and Desmond McNeill, Multilateral Institutions: A Critical Intro-
duction (London: Pluto, 2003).