The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were a set of measurable goals and targets agreed to by all United Nations (UN) member countries in 2001 or thereafter to achieve substantial socio-economic improvement for all developing countries by 2015. The MDGs were defined by some as an ‘international super-norm’ that made the eradication of extreme poverty a global policy and responsibility. In this article, we examine the broader historical and discursive context that facilitated this institutional emergence and draw on Rorty and Braithwaite to suggest that the MDGs can be considered an ‘institution of hope.’ The paper contextualises the political economy of despair that prevailed in the 1990s before outlining Rorty's critique of neo-liberalism and post-developmentalism and explaining the political value of hope as a collective motivating emotion. The paper then examines critiques of the MDGs before concluding that the MDGs performed a valuable function in reinvigorating global concern over poverty eradication, even if, in retrospect, the MDGs themselves remained only what Rorty referred to as a ‘plausible narrative of progress.’
Policy implications
- Hope can be a powerful motivating force for people to work together to achieve a better imagined future as has been seen with the MDGs, the struggle to abolish slavery, the civil rights movement in the US and the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa
- Hope must be grounded in a ‘plausible narrative’ that supports the idea that ambitious policy goals can be achieved. To give substance to the goal achievement it is important to gain the commitment in action of relevant organisations.
- To harness hope in the pursuit of worthy policy goals, it needs to be institutionalised as the MDGs did to reinvigorate efforts to reduce poverty across the globe.
- It is important to distinguish between ‘false’ and ‘authentic’ hope. The former leads to disappointment and despair with extravagant claims while the latter empowers, is grounded in reality and allows for realignment.
- Openness to scepticism helps to maintain measured hope and a balance between the hoped-for vision, what is likely and the worst-case scenario.
- ‘Backcasting’ is a policy technique involving hope. It begins with identifying desirable alternative futures and then building policy to achieve those futures; for example, President Kennedy's decision to put a ‘man’ on the moon when it did not seem technically feasible.
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