Global Policy Models, Globalizing Poverty Management: International Convergence or Fast-Policy Integration?

The millennial 'rediscovery' of poverty as a global challenge, by the United Nations and other multilateral agencies, was accompanied by the (rather premature) announcement that a 'global consensus' had been established on the philosophy and policy of poverty alleviation. The paper presents a critical account of the origins and character of this global consensus on poverty alleviation, which is based on a family of supply-side, 'human-capital' approaches that incentivize risktaking, investment-oriented behavior on the part of poor households. It concludes that such global models of poverty management represent more than carriers of best practices or conveyors of multilateral policy accords; they epitomize a form of 'fast policy' integration in which policy problems themselves are effectively redefined (or 'reformatted') through preconstituted strategies, with outcomes that nevertheless remain geographically uneven and deeply contradictory.