• Implications of targeting

Implications and acceptability of targeting

This paper, published by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), suggests that aid donors should engage more actively with the national elites of developing countries in defining anti-poverty strategies. It argues that this does not depend on those elites being altruistic or especially “pro-poor”. Elites have some self-interest in reducing poverty, and are more likely to appreciate, explore, and be willing to act on that self-interest if they are sympathetically and constructively engaged in drawing up policies, and in shaping the ways these policies are labelled and justified. The paper also argues that history supports this case, and that contemporary elites in developing countries are in some ways more likely to be pro-poor than nineteenth century European elites, and in some ways less so.

The paper concludes by identifying types of environment where there is likely to be a positive and direct response from national elites to the phenomenon of poverty and deprivation. Examples of these environments are where the condition of the poor is perceived to pose a threat to the elite, in terms of social and political unrest, large-scale migration to cities, crime, weak national military capacity, or disease; and where proposed actions against poverty are not seen as a threat to sections of the elite.

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