Institutionalized Poverty Reduction

Poverty is a common economic phenomenon in social life.In the traditional sense,poverty refers to material scarcity,and was limited within a certain region or country.Along with the process of globalization,poverty had broken through borders of countries,and become a global problem.Poverty is a social problem that a specific population lack of the access and ability to enjoy a normal life.With the founding of the UN,the reduction of poverty and the promotion of development become one of the core issues of the UN.Since the 1960 s,the UN has carried out four “development decade”,put forward “Millennium Development Goals”(MDGs)and “Sustainable Development Goals”(SDGs).Under the action of the UN,the world gradually formed a huge poverty reduction mechanism,that covered all the actors,bilateral and multilateral agreements,and voluntary cross-border collective actions.It aims to focus resources to deal with the global poverty problem that a single country unable to solve.This article is based on the following assumptions: 1),the international society is anarchic,there is no coercive power over sovereign states,nor a binding legal structure.2),sovereign states are the main actors in the international political and economic engagements.Decisions were made according to the national interests of all the countries,to seek biggest gains on security,power and wealth.3),cooperation between countries is possible,cooperation may bring a win-win situation.But the behavior of actors depend on the comprehensive consideration of the costs and benefits of providing public goods,and it conform to a “logic of collective action”,that it is hard to achieve and maintain cooperation.This article attempts to adopt the public choice theory and public goods theory to analyze the supply and distribution mode of global public goods and the behavior of different actors in the practice of global poverty reduction.The United Nations made development agenda as one of its core issues,committed to promote global economic development,poverty reduction and human well-being improvement.Since the early 1960 s,the UN successively conducted four “development decade”,put forward “Millennium Development Goals”(MDGs),and “2030Sustainable Development Agenda”(SDGs).The development philosophy has experienced from “economic growth as the center”,to “establish a new international economic order”,to “promote person’s full scale development”,to “achieve a sustainable development”,the UN had gradually set up a comprehensive poverty reduction system with the UN economic and social council as the core,along with a complete procedure and a supervision system.The Purpose of the system is to focus resources of different actors to deal with the problem of global poverty that a single country cannot solve.In the year 2015,the final report of the MDGs indicated that there were still many indicators had not yet reached,and the developed countries failed to fulfill their financing commitment.Global public goods in the field of poverty reduction were in short supply,and the development in various regions and countries are unbalanced,the procedure of poverty reduction of low-income countries were slow.After the millennium project,the UN put forward “2030 Sustainable Development Agenda”,further expand the contents of the MDGs,and expect to achieve economic developed,environment sustainable and social inclusive goals.This article argues that the cause of this result lies in the imbalance of the contradiction of supply and demand of GPGs,in the field of poverty reduction,GPGs were supplied by the developed countries and consumed by the developing countries.Developed countries provide GPGs according to their state interests,and it took a long period to gain earnings and was not correlated with the country’s core interests,developed countries would not give priority to such products.Once the costs were to high or the supply procedure conflicts with the core national interests,developed countries will reduce or give up on the investment.Developing countries can not involved in the decision-making procedure of GPGs supply,can not change the rules of supply and distribution of GPGs according to their domestic interests,they can only passively accepted,this process is inefficient and chaotic.International organizations in GPGs supply and distribution plays an incentive and bridging role,but due to lack of unified authority with coercive power,and with the enlargement of the poverty reduction issue,international mechanism appears to be fragmented,it leads to the increase of transaction costs and the inefficient of international mechanism.This article introduced the debate about the MDGs financing issues and the GPGs supply mode since Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development in 2002,through the case further discusses why it was hard to promote reform in the GPGs supply and distribution in the field of poverty reduction.Although the UN puts forward“Sustainable Development Agenda in 2030”,but the kernel and operation mode of the global poverty reduction mechanism did not changed essentially,that the contradiction between GPGs’ supply and demand in poverty reduction still exists.The UN has always wanted to ensure an adequate supply of GPGs for poverty reduction through an institutionalized global partnership that the developed countries would easily raise funds when facing domestic financial of political crisis and provide developing countries more resources to advance their poverty reduction efforts.Since China’s reform and opening up,the domestic poverty reduction has made great achievements,and accumulated rich experiences.In order to transfer China’s experience to other developing countries,China actively participated in the operation of the poverty reduction mechanism,increased the foreign aid,and put forward an “ equality and mutual benefit,common development” concept of aid.The Chinese aid model was different from the traditional aid idea of western developed countries,but it fits better with the UN’s win-win concept of new poverty reduction mechanism.The innovation and contribution of this article is: first,combing the change of development concept and the procedure of development agenda since the founding of the United Nations,including the process and result of the millennium project,summarizing the exist mechanism of poverty reduction of the decision making process,organization structure,operation mode and the participation of different actors.Secondly,using “transaction costs” theory and public choice theory of new institutional economics to analyze the supply and distribution of public goods in the international relation mode.Analyze the differences between the behavior of a “rational man” and a“rational state”;the differences between the public choice of actors under the power or in an anarchy;and also the differences between different global problem domains(according to whether or not related to the core national interests,and whether the actors can obtain immediate interests).All the above analysis focuses on the related issues in the field of global poverty reduction.Third,analyzing the GPGs supply and distribution mechanism and the behavior patterns of different actors in the field of poverty reduction,demonstrate why there is contradiction between supply and demand of GPGs,and why global poverty reduction mechanism failed to achieve the goals.