C Cambridge University Press 2013
Jnl Soc. Pol. (2014), 43, 1, 173–200 doi:10.1017/S0047279413000342
Tracing Poverty and Inequality in
International Development Discourses: An
Algorithmic and Visual Analysis of Agencies’
Annual Reports and Occasional White
Papers, 1978–2010
DAN I E L E. E S S E R ∗ and B E N JAM I N J. WI LLIAM S ∗∗1
∗
School of International Service, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW,
Washington, DC 20016
Email: esser@american.edu
∗∗
Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, DC 20210
Email: ben.williams@fulbrightmail.org
Abstract
Noting limited attention by international development agencies to inequalities compared
to global poverty, we ask how these two challenges have been framed in agencies’ policy
publications during the past several decades. Following a recent application of algorithmic
analysis to health policy narratives in the UK, we use text-mining software to compare the
frequency of two alternative conceptualisations of poverty and inequality in three different
document categories: the World Bank’s World Development Reports, the United Nations
Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Reports and a set of white papers
by bilateral donor agencies. In a second step, we visualise each document’s degree of contextual
similarity in using the two conceptualisations of poverty and inequality with all documents in
the same source category. We find that while references to poverty have, on average, been twice
as prominent as references to inequality, conceptualisations of poverty and inequality as well
as the textual contexts in which they appear differ both temporally and substantively between
agencies included in our sample. We show how such agency-specific framing patterns can be
leveraged politically to forge more effective social policy coalitions. We also outline follow-up
research capable of capturing the politics of language underpinning our observations.
Introduction
Recent scholarship has demonstrated that within-country income inequality
can yield corrosive social and economic effects and can fuel ethnic violence
(Bauman, 2011; Stewart, 2000; Hurrell, 1999), destabilise migration patterns
and refugee flows (Wade, 2003; Oman, 1999) and bring about diminished
returns on economic growth (Ferreira and Ravallion, 2008). Developing states
appear particularly vulnerable to such negative effects of inequality. Thus,
policies aimed at reducing within-country income inequality seem critical to
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174 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
any international development agenda. Yet, while ‘for the past 30 years the
dominant discourse in international development has been the “global politics of
poverty alleviation”’(Deacon and Cohen, 2011: 234), ‘inequality has remained a
neglected policy issue’ (Cook and Yi, 2011: 135). International campaigns against
global poverty supported by donor governments (e.g., ‘Make Poverty History’,
‘ONE campaign’, ‘Stand Against Poverty’) have given little attention to inequality,
neither as a dimension of poverty nor as an exacerbating exogenous force, and the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – ‘the fulcrum on which development
policy is based’ (UN, 2005: 2) – show a similar bias. Topping this ‘global wish
list’ (Saith, 2006: 1172) set forth in the MDGs is Target 1.A, which aims at
halving the number of global citizens living under the $1 per day poverty line
(UN, 2000). While the other seven MDGs focus on a range of issues including
gender equality, child mortality, education, and environmental sustainability,
the challenges associated with unequal within-country income distributions are
left unmentioned (Fukuda-Parr, 2010). Rather unsurprising, then, ‘discussions
of [inequalities] in international organizations and policy recommendations or
conditions attached to international aid have conspicuously failed to provide
solutions’ (McBride, 2011: 134).
In the following, we explore the extent to which this underexposure of
inequality in the MDGs is a reflection of international aid agencies’ discourses,
both before and after the MDGs’ adoption in 2000. We first synthesise the
literature on inequality and its political economy and their uptake by global
development policy during the past three decades. We then explain why language
constitutes an important variable in the study of policy-making. In the empirical
sections of this article, we build on Prior et al.’s (2012) method of using
algorithms and visualisation in textual analysis. Combining frequency analysis
and comparisons of textual similarity with regard to the contexts in which
the documents evoke poverty and inequality allows us to compare and depict
discursive emergence and dynamics over time. Our sample comprises all World
Development Reports (WDRs) published between 1978 and 2010 (n = 31), all
Human Development Reports (HDRs) published between 1990 and 2010 (n =
19) and eighteen white papers from selected bilateral institutions. We provide an
in-depth introduction to our method, describe our findings and conclude with
suggestions for international social policy-making and further research.
Why do inequalities matter?
The literature on national inequality and social and economic development
varies widely in its interpretation of causal or correlative relationships between
inequality and other phenomena. Early contributors viewed inequality as
a necessary step in the process of economic development. In their article
on functional stratification, Davis and Moore (1945) wrote that differences
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 175
in compensation and status accorded to certain valued positions in society
ensure that only the most capable individuals fill those positions; a degree
of inequality thus fuels meritocracy. Kuznets’s (1955) ‘inverted-U’ model of
inequality and economic development2 predicted that inequality necessarily
increases as countries begin to industrialise, followed by a period of stabilisation,
and finally decreases as countries reach later stages of development. Hirschman
and Rothschild (1973) argued that relative inequality catalyses an environment
of economic optimism in which the gains of some individuals provide hope to
others that their fortunes might soon change as well. Referring to the initial stages
of Kuznets’s inverted-U model, Perotti (1993) argues that in very poor countries
with limited resources, a high degree of inequality may be the only context that
yields economic growth, as unequal concentration of these resources among the
upper class at least allows some development of human capital.
On the other hand, deleterious effects of inequality on economic growth,
social stability and institutional performance are equally well documented,
especially in recent research. Such studies have found a strong negative association
between inequality and growth, theorising that in a democratic polity, higher
inequality will lead voters to support redistributive tax policies, which in turn
inhibit economic growth (Alesina and Rodrik, 1994; Persson and Tabellini, 1994).
Chong and Gradstein (2004) point to a correlation between high domestic
inequality and poor quality of institutions in developing countries. Ferreira
and Ravallion (2008) argue that higher levels of domestic inequality reduce the
effect of economic growth on poverty reduction in a given country. EcheverriGent (2009) examines the relationship between economic power and political
power, arguing that a high degree of domestic inequality enables elites to shape
institutions and policies in ways that maintain their influence, resulting in poor or
non-existent provision of public goods. Writing on the relative import of poverty
and inequality vis-à-vis social problems, Pickett and Wilkinson, in The Spirit
Level (2009), create an index of health and social problems and then compare
national income levels and levels of income inequality in twenty rich countries.
Through regression analysis, Pickett and Wilkinson find a weak correlation
between national income and health and social problems, but find that, as income
inequality widens, health and social problems worsen (Pickett and Wilkinson,
2009).
Both scholars and policy makers at global development agencies recognised
several decades ago the need to address not only poverty but also inequality. ‘In the
1960s and early 1970s’, McNeill (2011: 149) explains, ‘the development literature
was replete with radical critiques of political and social relations both within and
between countries.’ Writing in 1980, Gary S. Fields (1980: 8), an economist at
Cornell University and adviser to several international organisations, described
international development discourse at the time as a nexus between poverty and
inequality:
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176 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
Academicians, aid agencies, and policy makers in less-developed countries (LDCs) alike have
become aware of the severity of poverty and inequality and are now trying to deal with them.
The international development community has awakened to the income-distribution problem
with calls for Redistribution with Growth (World Bank), Meeting Basic Needs (United Nations
International Labour Office), and New Directions in Development Assistance (United States
Agency for International Development).
Indeed, Redistribution with Growth (Chenery et al., 1974),3 whose principal
author was the World Bank’s Vice President for Development Policy at the time,
urged aid agencies to move beyond the conceptual dissociation in traditional
economics of optimum growth and distribution policies and put distributional
issues at the forefront of development debate, if not actual policy. Echoing
this sentiment nearly twenty-five years later, a paper presented by then-Chief
Economist at the World Bank Francois Bourguignon (2004: 2) argued that ‘the
real challenge to establishing a development strategy for reducing poverty lies
in the interactions between distribution and growth, and not in the relationship
between poverty and growth on the one hand and poverty and inequality on the
other’. Bourguignon’s rationale apparently seeped into the World Bank’s 2006
WDR, Equity and Development (World Bank, 2006; see also McNeill, 2011), which
posited that political and economic inequalities led to unequal opportunities
among groups, waste of productive potential, inefficient allocation of resources
and poor institutional development, not to mention a violated sense of
fairness – all of which undermine the poverty reduction agenda.
Language as a frame for policy formulation
Newman and Vidler (2006: 195) argue that policies constitute a ‘linguistic
repertoire on which managers, professionals, user groups and other stakeholders
can draw’, connecting the language of policy with implementation. Policies
thus reflect the ‘strategic packaging’ (Joachim, 2007: 16–17) of problems and
solutions as ‘the result of social constructions and collective attributions [and]
efforts by groups of people to fashion shared understandings of the world and
of themselves that legitimate and motivate collective action’ (ibid.). Read this
way, documents such as the WDRs, HDRs and white papers exist as nodes in a
normative framework ensuring inter-organisational cooperation among a myriad
of stakeholders (Brett, 1999) or, in Schmidt’s (2008: 310) words, as a ‘coordinative
discourse among policy actors’. Indeed, if discourse ‘encompasses not only the
substantive content of ideas but also the interactive process by which ideas are
conveyed’ (Schmidt, 2008: 305), then we should expect international development
discourses to have discernible effects on implementation, as ‘discourses determine
what is considered acceptable and appropriate within a particular institution’
(Joachim, 2007: 25; Gardner and Lewis, 2000; Motion and Leitch, 2009; St Clair,
2006). Since little communicative discourse occurs between ‘formulators’ and
‘recipients’ of resulting policies, discourses between policy actors – not between
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 177
policy actors and those affected by those policies – are the main ‘producers’ of
development policies.
It then seems warranted to argue that the framing of development challenges
in official policy documents effectively tethers implementing organisations to
certain strategies, which in turn overshadow other discourses and strategies
(Deacon, 1999). To illustrate, the MDG framework owes so much to the idea
of the ‘poverty trap’ that the latter can explain the predominance of income
poverty metrics in development policies more broadly. Sachs and Warner (1997:
185) describe this trap as a cycle in which one ‘low-human-capital generation is
succeeded by another low-human-capital generation’. Sachs (2005) elaborates on
this notion as one in which the poor use all of their income for day-to-day survival,
abrogating all possibility of saving or investing for the future; large infusions of
foreign aid are thus necessary to break this bottleneck in developing countries.
Sachs’s role as Director of the Millennium Project means that these ‘practical’
and targeted solutions to the perceived problem of the poverty trap dominate the
MDG framework, potentially also explaining the absence of income inequality
and redistribution issues. After all, ‘the goal’, according to Sachs (2005: 289), ‘is to
end extreme poverty, not to end all poverty, and still less to equalise world incomes
or to close the gap between the rich and the poor’ (emphasis in the original). Thus,
if a given implementing agency looks to the MDGs as a blueprint for development,
its actions will be a direct application of the ideational content arising from
dominant policy discourses (Joachim, 2007: 16). However, as we have outlined in
the introduction, the MDGs are not the sole proxy for international development
thinking writ large; rather, they provide a mere snapshot of development policy
priorities in the year 2000. ‘[I]t is in language that policy is made’, Prior et al.
(2012: 2) remind us, and since discourses are never static (Schmidt, 2008: 322), it
is essential to examine the discursive ebbs and flows of key concepts like poverty
and inequality over time in order to gauge their impact on policy language and
implementation.
Method
Official reports and white papers provide a rich repository of data that can
be analysed to trace international attention paid to key terms such as poverty
and inequality. Such sources obviously ‘constitute only one genre of discourse’
(Prior et al., 2012: 15), but the intention with which they are produced, namely
‘to promote and support favoured narratives rather than to open a space for
public discussion’ (ibid.) is precisely why such texts are ideal units of analysis
if the objective is to measure the prominence and usage of specific concepts
among policy-makers authoring these documents. While we do not claim that
our sample is in any way exhaustive, we believe that it is large enough to highlight
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178 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
trends as well as differences in multilateral and bilateral agencies’ usage of these
concepts. Our results, which we discuss below, appear to confirm this position.
Early WDRs and HDRs typically have between 7,000 and 11,000 words,
whereas more recent reports contain between 9,000 and 25,000 words. The
length of donors’ white papers vary more substantially; some only have 2,500
words, whereas the length of others, especially those by the Department for
International Development (DFID), rival early WDRs in terms of their length.
In total, our frequency analysis covered textual data in excess of 500,000 words
from a total of sixty-eight documents, demonstrating why the use of algorithms
is both promising and necessary for the analysis of large amounts of such data.
Like Prior et al. (2012), we use co-occurrence algorithms provided by textual
analysis software to determine the frequency with which concepts appear in each
report, as well as the strength of co-occurrence across reports over time. Prior
et al. argue that automated text mining techniques help eliminate subjectivity
in concept selection (cf. Borins, 2011: 166) in their study of a specific policy
discourse at one point in time. Conversely, we pre-select ‘poverty’ and ‘inequality’
(and various signifiers of these concepts) since our aim is to examine discursive
dynamics.
To capture variation in use of language related to poverty (pov) and
inequality (ineq), we developed narrow (povn ; ineqn ) and broad (povb ; ineqb )
conceptualisations of each of the two concepts under investigation. As Table 1
shows, our narrow conceptualisation of poverty includes only one search term,
namely the word ‘poverty’. In its broader form, ‘poverty’ is complemented by
‘poor’, ‘poorer’ and ‘poorest’. In comparison, the narrow conceptualisation
of inequality comprises thirteen search terms, whereas the broader approach
includes eleven additional sub-concepts (for example, ‘access’, ‘disparities’,
‘equity’, and ‘exclusion’, inter alia) and their variations.
Using version 9 of QSR’s NVivo software application, we ran word frequency
analyses in each of the three document categories included in our sample.
Complete lists of all WDRs and HDRs analysed in this paper can be found
on the World Bank and UNDP websites.4 Table 2 lists bilateral agencies’ white
papers included as a third category of texts, based on a blinded review of executive
summaries in order to determine their relevance to the study. Since this third
category does not permit longitudinal comparison given that authoring agencies
vary, we calculated a frequency ratio for each white paper as a proxy for the
relative prominence of pov and ineq in them, using the following formula:
relative dominance of p ov b or ineq b =
p ov b
(p ov b + ineq b )
(1)
This formula has a theoretical range of 0 to 1 (assuming povb + ineqb > 0).
Values below 0.5 indicate a dominance of ineqb ; values above 0.5 indicate a
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 179
TABLE 1. Narrow and broad conceptualisations of pov, ineq
Conceptualisation
Discourse
narrow
broad
Poverty
poverty
Inequality
equali
equalities
equality
equalization
equalize
equalized
equalizes
equalizing
inequal
inequalities
inequality
unequal
unequally
poverty
poor∗
access
disparit∗
disproportionat∗
distributed
distributi∗
equali∗
equit∗ (not equities)
exclusion
inclusiveness
inequal∗
inequit∗
redistrib∗
unequal∗
uneven∗
Note: ∗ An asterisk indicates that all meaningful permutations of the
word stem were included.
dominance of povb . We chose to report the ratios between povb and ineqb rather
than povn and ineqn since a comparison of frequency ratios in the WDRs and
HDRs (calculated as well but not reported here) showed that using the broader
conceptualisation made ineq appear to be 2.2 and 1.6 times more prominent in
each of these two document categories, on average, as compared to the ratios
calculated based on our narrow conceptualisations. In other words, our broader
conceptualisations increased the frequency of ineq 1.6 to 2.2 times more than the
frequency of pov. This is hardly surprising given that povb increases the number
of words to be included in the search from one (‘poverty’) to four (‘poverty’ as
well as ‘poor’, ‘poorer’ and ‘poorest’), whereas ineqb adds entirely new concepts
such as ‘access’, ‘disparity’, ‘distribution’, ‘equity’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’, as
well as all meaningful variations of their word stems. Reporting ratios for the
white papers calculated based on the broader conceptualisation thus reflects our
desire to capture as much ineq in the white papers as our analytic framework
permits.
The second step in our analysis consisted of a longitudinal comparison of the
degree of similarity of different documents in the same document category. Using
an algorithm and visualisation techniques offered in NVivo, we calculated textual
similarities, or co-associations, within our three categories – WDRs, HDRs and
white papers – based on each of the four conceptualisations (povn ; ineqn ; povb ;
ineqb ). In order to measure co-association solely in terms of the concept of interest
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180 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
TABLE 2. Selected white papers∗
Agency
Year of
publication
AusAID
CIDA
2006
2007
Danida
DFID
2005
1997
DFID
2000
DFID
2006
DFID
2009
Dutch Development
Cooperation
Irish Aid
Japan Official
Development
Assistance
Japan Official
Development
Assistance
NORAD
SDC
2007
SDC
2004
SIDA
2008
USAID
2002
USAID
2004
USAID
2006
2006
2008
Title of publication
Australian Aid: Promoting Growth and Stability
Canada’s International Assistance at Work:
Development for Results
Globalisation: Progress Through Partnership
Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for the
21st Century
Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalization
Work for the Poor
Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance
Work for the Poor
Eliminating World Poverty: Building Our
Common Future
Our Common Concern: Investing in
Development in a Changing World
White Paper on Irish Aid
Japan’s Official Development Assistance White
Paper 2008: Japan’s International Cooperation
2009
Japan’s Official Development Assistance White
Paper 2009: Japan’s International Cooperation
2004
1994
Peacebuilding: A Development Perspective
Guidelines: North–South. Report by the Federal
Council on Switzerland’s North–South
Relations in the 1990s
Creating the Prospect of Living a Life in Dignity:
Principles Guiding the SDC in its Commitment
to Fighting Poverty
Global Challenges – Our Responsibility:
Communication on Sweden’s Policy for Global
Development
Foreign Aid in the National Interest: Promoting
Freedom, Security, and Opportunity
US Foreign Aid: Meeting the Challenges of the
Twenty-First Century
Policy Framework for Bilateral Foreign Aid:
Implementing Transformational Diplomacy
Through Development
Note: ∗ Retrieved from agencies’ websites.
(povn ; ineqn ; povb ; ineqb ; povn and ineqn ; povb and ineqb ), we defined all other
words included in our source documents as so-called ‘stop words’ (QSR, n.d.),
with the effect that similarity between documents was reported based only on
the position of our search terms (e.g., ‘poverty’) within the text. To illustrate, two
documents in which ‘poverty’ is mentioned frequently in the same sentences
as, for instance, ‘violence’ and ‘politics’ would likely be reported as similar
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 181
Figure 1. (Colour online) Example of NVivo-generated circle graph: ineqn at r ≤ 0.5 in WDRs,
1978–2010
(or co-associated). Conversely, documents in which ‘poverty’, ‘violence’ and
‘politics’ appear frequently, but on different pages, would be reported as
dissimilar. Using Pearson’s correlation coefficient r, we then ran similarity
calculations at nine different levels of correlative strength, with r ≤ 0.1 being
the most weakly correlated to r ≤ 0.9 being the most strongly correlated. We call
these nine different levels of r the ‘sensitivity levels’ of our analysis and expect coassociations between two documents in the same category to be highest at r ≤ 0.1
and lowest at r ≤ 0.9. Put another way, lower sensitivity levels (those approaching
r ≤ 0.1) cast a wider net, leading to more, but weaker, co-associations, while higher
sensitivity levels (those approaching r ≤ 0.9) zero in on fewer, but stronger coassociations. This technique allows us to determine which reports and white
papers use each of the four concepts as well as their combinations in most similar
ways, thus demonstrating which reports and papers have, over time, framed a
dominant discourse on poverty and inequality.
Results are visualised in ‘circle graphs’ (see Figure 1). A circle graph is ‘[a]
circle where all the items are represented as points on the perimeter’ (ibid.).
Each of our circle graphs thus contains all documents included in the category
in question. Given that our sample includes three document categories, we
work with three different circle graphs (see the following section for examples).
‘Similarity between [source documents] is indicated by connecting lines of
varying thickness . . .’ (ibid.); the thicker a line between two documents, the
more similar (i.e., co-associated) these are at a given level of r with regard to
the conceptualisation (e.g., povn ) measured. Comparing circle graphs at different
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182 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
Figure 2. Comparison of frequencies of ineqn , povn , ineqb and povb as a percentage of total
words in WDRs, 1978–2010
levels of r (sensitivity levels) helps us differentiate further between weaker and
stronger co-associations between documents in one category.
We structure the presentation of results from our comparison of similarity as
follows. First, building on our first analytical step, i.e. the frequency analysis (see
Figures 2 and 3), we now compare the strongest case for the claim that ‘ineq has
dominated the emerging discourse in this category (as opposed to pov)’ with the
opposite claim that ‘pov has dominated the emerging discourse in this category
(as opposed to ineq)’ (see Figures 4 through 6). To do so, we first compare the
pattern of similarities using povn with the pattern of similarities using ineqb at
the same level of sensitivity; this comparison depicts the strongest case for a
discourse dominated by ineq in this category. Conversely, a comparison of povb
with ineqn at the same sensitivity level then renders the strongest case for an
pov-dominated discourse in this category. Depending on intensity of patterns
observed, we conduct this comparison at either two or three levels of sensitivity.
For the white papers, we add a third circle graph to each pairing in order to
illustrate similarity patterns at much lower sensitivity levels since the pairings at
identical sensitivity levels render little insight, which is not surprising since the
eighteen documents included in this category were published by eleven different
bilateral agencies.
Second, we compare patterns of similarity based on povn with patterns based
on povb at different sensitivity levels, followed by patterns based on ineqn with
patterns based on ineqb , in each of our three categories. These comparisons –
reported at either two or three sensitivity levels depending on the intensity
of patterns observed – allow us to gauge the extent to which variation in
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 183
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
ineqn
(in)equal
0.8
povn
poverty
Allineq
(in)eq
b
0.6
povb
pov/poor
0.4
0.2
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2009
0
Figure 3. Comparison of frequencies of ineqn , povn , ineqb and povb as a percentage of total
words in HDRs,1990–2009
conceptualising each of the two concepts changes the pattern of similarities
between documents in each category (see Figures 7 through 12).
Results
Our longitudinal comparison of frequency counts of povn , ineqn , povb and ineqb ,
respectively, in WDRs from 1978 until 2010 (see Figure 2) shows that both povb
and povn spiked with the 1990 WDR that defined the $1/day poverty line, and
again a decade later when the World Bank chose Attacking Poverty as the theme
of its annual report. Conversely, both ineqb and ineqn were evoked considerably
less until the recent past. Ineq was slightly more prominent in the 1990 and 2000
WDRs, suggesting that frequent mentions of pov also spur mentions of ineq. The
first time that ineq dominated pov in both conceptualisations was in the 1989 WDR
on Financial Systems and Development, albeit at very low frequencies. Conversely,
the 2006 WDR on Equity and Development constituted a real trend reversal.
Here, ineqb was three times as prominent as povb and ineqn was almost four times
as prominent as povn . Although the subsequent WDR in 2007 returned to the
dominant pattern observed prior to Equity and Development, ineqb was again
more prominent than povb in the 2009 WDR on Reshaping Economic Geography.
As in earlier WDRs published between 1985 until 1989 and again in 1991, however,
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184 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
Figure 4. (Colour online) WDR: comparison of povn and ineqb versus povb and ineqn
povn (i.e., solely the word ‘poverty’) in the 2009 WDR outnumbered all terms
included in our narrow conceptualisation of ineq.
The longitudinal analysis of frequency counts of povn , ineqn , povb and ineqb in
HDRs published between 1990 and 2009 (see Figure 3) generates a similar picture
compared to the case of WDRs, although the temporal pattern is distinct. Here,
too, one report stands as leading to a clear – although less dramatic as in Equity
and Development – domination of ineq over pov: the 1995 HDR, which focussed
on gender and development. Notions of gendered dimensions of inequality thus
emerge as a major building block of the discourse on equalities writ large. Despite
this specific approach to broaching inequality, it is equally noteworthy that the
first UNDP report to do so predated the first WDR with a clear focus on equality by
more than a decade. Since then, only the 2002 and 2004 HDRs contained language
balancing ineq and pov. In several other HDRs, including those published in 1990,
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 185
Figure 5. (Colour online) HDR: comparison of povn and ineqb versus povb ∗ and ineqn
Note: ∗ We report r ≤ 0.8 rather than r ≤ 0.7 since the pattern remained the same at the higher
sensitivity level.
1993, 1999, 2001 and 2004, ineqb trumped povb , but always by a very small margin.
Conversely, the 1997 HDR, which introduced the human poverty index, mirrored
the 1990 and 2000 WDRs in terms of the dominance of pov over ineq.
In the third category analysed, bilateral donors’ white papers since 1994 are
characterised by moderate to considerable dominance of povb over ineqb (see
Table 3). Recent papers by the Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA, 2007) and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA, 2008)
are the only two notable exceptions. Povb and ineqb appear balanced in the papers
by the Norwegian (Norad) and Dutch agencies. The 2005 paper by the Danish
agency (Danida) is most skewed toward povb . Notably, whereas all four DFID
white papers published between 1994 and 2009 are moderately dominated by
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186 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
Figure 6. (Colour online) White papers: comparison of povn and ineqb versus povb and ineqn
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 187
TABLE 3. Relative dominance∗ of povb or ineqb in 18 white papers, 1994–2009
1994
AusAid
CIDA
Danida
DFID
1997
2000
2002
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
0.60
0.43
0.90
0.77
0.78
0.78
0.77
0.56
Dutch
Irish
Japan
0.71
0.68
0.68
Norad
SDC
0.54
0.69
0.78
SIDA
USAID
0.48
0.58
0.88
0.78
∗
Note: Values between 0 and 0.49 indicate a dominance of ineqb ; values between 0.51 and
1.00 indicate a dominance of povb . The closer the value is to the extremes of 0 or 1.00, the
stronger the relative dominance of either povb or ineqb .
povb – a pattern also visible in the cases of the Japanese (JICA) and Swiss agencies
(SDC) –, povb and ineqb across the three papers by the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) vary substantially between a near-balance
in the 2002 paper (see Table 2 for themes) and a clear dominance of povb over
ineqb in two subsequent papers.
Our comparison of best cases for ineq and pov, respectively, supports the
findings from our frequency analysis. This becomes easily visible in the WDRs
(see Figure 4). In the strongest case for an ineq-dominated discourse, we see
how at the same sensitivity level (r ≤ 0.7) similarities between reports when
measured based on ineqb cluster among WDRs published during the last decade.
When based on ineqn , the only similarity at r ≤ 0.7 that can be detected links
the 2000 WDR on Attacking Poverty and Equity and Development from 2006.
This suggests that these two WDRs in particular frame ineq as part of pov, the
aforementioned hypothesis which we will investigate further below. We note that
conceptualisation seems to play a relatively more decisive role in the HDRs than
in the WDRs. Figure 5 illustrates this argument from a different vantage point.
The strongest case for an ineq-dominated discourse shows connections that are
scattered across the category; in the strongest case for pov, the algorithm detected
no similarities between any of the HDRs at r ≤ 0.7. Conversely, all but one HDR
(the 1992 report) are similar in terms of the contexts in which both povn and povb
appear in them.
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188 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
Figure 6 depicts semantic similarities between the eighteen different white
papers included in our third category. It shows that whereas all of these papers
use pov in similar contexts, similarities in the usage of ineqb only connect four
documents in the category; these are the four papers by DFID. When using ineqn
as the basis for detecting similarities, these connections already disappear at r ≤
0.3. The two circle charts at the bottom of Figure 6 show that patterns of similarity
with respect to ineqb beyond the four papers by DFID can only be detected at a
low-level sensitivity. Still, these connections – which again exclude the 2004 and
2006 USAID papers – are weaker than those forged by povb at r ≤ 0.9.
Figure 7 illustrates the effect of varying sensitivity levels in the analysis of
semantic similarities among the WDRs. Compared at three different levels (r ≤
0.4, 0.7 and 0.9), the patterns shaped by povn and povb are highly analogous;
however, increasing the level of sensitivity again demonstrates the function of
the 1990 WDR as a lynch pin for the World Bank’s pov. Given the larger number
of search terms included in ineqn and ineqb , the picture in Figure 8 is necessarily
more varied, but suggests that in the WDRs, notions of ineq may, in fact, be
subsumed in pov. Both circle charts in the left column suggest that this is indeed
the case. The circle graph depicting ineqn at r ≤ 0.4 even shows similarities not
only between the 2000 and 2006 WDRs, as already observed above, but also
between these two and the two WDRs characterised by spikes in ineqb (2009) and
povb (1990), respectively. At the highest level of sensitivity, however – depicted
in the right column of Figure 8 – this effect disintegrates: whereas ineqn still
connects the 2000 and 2006 WDRs, ineqb shapes a completely different pattern.
When applying this broader conceptualisation of ineq, the WDRs from 1998
(Knowledge for Development), 2002 (Building Institutions for Markets) and 2008
(Agriculture for Development) use this conceptualisation similarly. Thus, while the
narrow conceptualisation of inequality appears to have been integrated into the
Bank’s poverty discourse, critical dimensions of inequality only captured in our
broader conceptualisation still co-exist independently from the Bank’s poverty
discourse. This is particularly noteworthy as these dimensions might potentially
forge an alternative, broader ineq provided that future reports adopt language on
inequality as it appeared in the 1998, 2002 and 2008 WDRs.
Figure 9 shows how HDRs since the mid-1990s have converged on a consistent
pov, which – unlike the discourse framed by recent WDRs – does not subsume
notions of inequality as well. The 1995 HDR on gender equality is a case in point;
excluded from the general pattern in both povn at r ≤ 0.8 (and therefore also at r ≤
0.9) and povb at r ≤ 0.9, its focus on inequality as it results from gender dynamics
renders it the strongest outlier in this category. Focussing on the HDRs’ framing
of ineq (see Figure 10) illustrates that our two alternative conceptualisations of
ineq result in different patterns of similarity between documents in this category.
Whereas ineqn at a medium level of sensitivity (r ≤ 0.5) suggests, on the one
hand, semantic similarities between the 1995 HDR and its successors published
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 189
Figure 7. (Colour online) WDR: comparison of conceptualisations: povn and povb
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190 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
Figure 8. (Colour online) WDR: comparison of conceptualisations: ineqn and ineqb
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 191
Figure 9. (Colour online) HDR: comparison of conceptualisations: povn and povb
in 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004 and, on the other hand, similarities between the
2005 HDR and the reports from 1996, 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2004, measurement
on the basis of ineqb renders stronger similarities between the 2006 HDR (Beyond
Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis) and earlier reports published
in 1993, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2003. Corresponding variation is visible at the
highest levels of measurement sensitivity in this comparison. Whereas ineqn still
connects the 2005 HDR with its predecessors from 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2003 at
r ≤ 0.6, the only similarity for ineqb at r ≤ 0.8 exists between the 2003 and 2006
HDRs. Unlike ineq in the WDRs, in which ineqn has been included in a broader
pov while ineqb has remained separate, the main distinction in the case of the
HDRs is between a homogenous pov on one side and a highly varied ineq on the
other.
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192 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
Figure 10. (Colour online) HDR: comparison of conceptualisations: ineqn and ineqb
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 193
Figure 11. (Colour online) White papers: comparison of conceptualisations: povn and povb
Our final sensitivity analysis, which focuses on the eighteen white papers’
use of pov and ineq, demonstrates that measuring semantic similarity at different
levels of sensitivity adds important facets (see Figures 11 and 12). While Figure 11
merely confirms our observations from Figure 6 in greater detail, Figure 12
establishes the 2008 SIDA paper and the 2006 Irish Aid paper as additional
nodes of ineq among bilateral donor agencies. Albeit at relatively low sensitivity
levels, these two papers are similar to at least two of the aforementioned
papers by DFID, as well as to the 2007 paper by the Australian Government
(AusAID). DFID, SIDA, CIDA, AusAID and Irish Aid thus emerge as those
bilateral agencies whose discourse on inequality share at least some semantic
features.
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194 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
Figure 12. (Colour online) White papers: comparison of conceptualisations: ineqn and ineqb
Discussion
Four observations described in the previous section stand out and require further
discussion. These are, first, the overall dominance of pov over ineq in all three
categories; second, the timing of frequency in the WDRs and HDRs; third, the
difference in the usage of ineqn and ineqb in the WDRs as opposed to the HDRs;
and, fourth, the patterns of semantic similarity observed between documents
included in our sample of bilateral donor agencies’ white papers.
To those already familiar with the course of development policies during
the past three decades, the overall dominance of references to poverty over
mentions of inequalities is hardly surprising; however, we believe that the agencyspecific patterns revealed by our analysis add an important degree of nuance. In
particular, they seem to point to distinct agency-level approaches to discursively
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 195
including or excluding the politically contentious challenge of inequality. Schmidt
(2008: 307) reminds us that for issues to eventually trigger policy-level responses,
they must have ‘administrative and political viability’. The agenda of absolute
poverty reduction embraced by the MDGs, with its clear-cut income indicators
for poverty reduction and seemingly ‘practical’ approach to solutions such as
‘roads, power, transport, soils, water and sanitation, disease control’ (Sachs,
2005: 289) speaks to relative administrative feasibility. Contrasted with addressing
distributional issues, a focus on poverty also appears politically more feasible
since inequalities stem from ‘structural relationships that are singularly skewed
in favour of the rich’ (Bracking, 2009: 32; cf. Maxwell, 1999). Changing these
‘structural relationships’ is politically risky, and politicians have limited incentives
to address inequalities through unpopular measures (Milanovic, 2011: 160–1).
Indeed, Milanovic (2011: 84–5) warns that ‘inequality studies are not particularly
appreciated by the rich’ and reminds us that ‘the World Bank refused to call
[the 2006 WDR] a report on inequality: it was, more tamely, called a report on
“equity” instead’.
As noted above, the UNDP’s 1995 HDR on gendered dimensions of inequality
preceded the World Bank’s (2006) Equity and Development by over a decade. In
an essay on the 1995 HDR’s political significance, Seguino (2006: 5) correctly
characterised it as ‘one of the first to shift emphasis from consumption and
income measures of gender gaps in well-being to an expanded list of capabilities
and empowerment measures’. However, our analysis shows that this foray
into dimensions of inequality beyond incomes did not get much traction in
subsequent HDRs. While this may seem surprising, it appears likely that two
developments taking place soon after the publication of the 1995 HDR played
a role in its limited discursive impact. First, UNDP’s own decision to focus
on multiple dimensions of poverty in its 1997 report may have inadvertently
narrowed the discursive space for inequality, especially given the heterogeneous
conceptualisations prevalent in the HDR that became apparent through our
analysis. By failing to frame a coherent position on inequality as a precondition
for launching a debate on adequate measures to address it, UNDP missed an
opportunity in the mid-1990s to catalyse political action in this area. Second,
the Millennium Declaration in 2000 was, as all political institutions, a pathdependent expression of power (Moe, 2005); its near-exclusion of inequality
reflects the dominant interests of the Declaration’s 189 signatories. As several of
the visual comparisons in the previous sections demonstrate (e.g., Figures 4 and
7), the MDGs have succeeded in forging a unified discourse on poverty since
2000. Our findings echo and add nuance to McNeill’s (2011) contravention of
the common assumption held in progressive circles that UNDP – rather than the
World Bank – is the agency relatively better suited to carrying out independent,
critical political and social analysis. In fact, McNeill writes that not only has the
gap between HDRs and WDRs narrowed significantly in recent years, but the
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196 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
UNDP ‘is constrained in a different way: it needs to work closely with national
governments – many of them quite resistant to both the language and practice of
justice for their citizens’ (2011: 151). Whereas the World Bank’s poverty discourse
increasingly integrates central notions of inequality – namely those that we
included in our narrow conceptualisation – as well as framing complementary
dimensions of inequality in an alternative discourse, UNDP has thus far failed to
effectively pursue either of these strategies, instead opting for cacophony when
broaching the different facets of inequality.
In addition to uncovering such differences in strategic communication
between the World Bank and UNDP, our analysis also detects substantial variation
in bilateral donor agencies’ approaches to framing both poverty and inequality.
Unlike the Bank and UNDP, both of which operate globally, these bilateral
agencies seek to translate national perceptions of priorities into policies in selected
recipient countries. In this context, Schmidt (2008: 307) has pointed to the ‘role
of national values and political culture in the adoption of transnational policy
ideas’ into programs and actual policies, and this phenomenon is clearly evident
from our comparison of semantic patterns in the different white papers included
in our investigation. McCall and Kenworthy (2009), in their recent study of
US social policy preferences, found that most Americans still object to wealth
redistribution in the form of welfare programmes or direct transfers to the poor.
Conversely, the relatively greater prominence of inequality across white papers
authored or commissioned by agencies such as DFID, SIDA and CIDA seems
to reflect, at least to some extent, societally shared values that are commonly
associated with these nations (cf. Benabou and Ok, 2001; Osberg and Smeeding,
2008).
Conclusion
Our findings suggest that the prompt by one of the architects of the MDGs
to draw a sharp line between ‘development’ on the one hand and ‘clos[ing]
the gap between the rich and the poor’ on the other (Sachs, 2005: 289) is
slowly losing influence. In this sense, our research highlights a slight shift away
from the ‘economic/technocratic approach’, which has ‘proved quite effective
in “framing” debate’ among and within international organisations (McNeill,
2011: 150), toward a new current shaped by the moderate ascendancy of power
dynamics and inequality in the global development discourse. Although political
incentives ‘to pass inequality in silence’ (Milanovic, 2011: 84) are unlikely to
change, the more recent WDRs have moved beyond the dominant discourse
of the ‘roaring nineties’ (Stiglitz, 2003) when inequality was portrayed as
a motivation rather than a challenge. Although there is no doubt that the
ideological battle inside the Bank continues (Broad, 2006; Yusuf, 2009), internal
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poverty and inequality in development discourses 197
political dynamics during the past few years create reason for hope that the
debate on inequalities’ negative effects on human development globally has
entered into a new round. Recent adjustments in the calculation of the Human
Development Index (HDI) made in 2010 lend additional gravitas to this diagnosis.
Although the suggestion took thirteen years to gain traction (Hicks, 1997),
the HDI now also includes measures of inequality. From the perspective of
progressive social policy-makers, the facilitation of and participation in alliances
between those inside the Bank who have been furthering this agenda (e.g.,
Bourgignon et al., 2007) and those representing bilateral agencies such as DFID,
SIDA and CIDA are a promising strategic option. While we share the concern
about globally manufactured social policies for developing countries, it strikes
us that ‘the continuing global contestation between agencies’ (Deacon, 2011:
147) to shape such policies may be altered for the better as a result of such
alliances.
Moving forward, we hope that our study will serve as a basis for qualitative
studies of how discourses at the level of specific organisations have been shaping
global development policy-making and programmatic planning. Beyond the
context of development policy, we hope our research will spur both qualitative
and quantitative discourse analyses of national social policies in the rich world
as well, perhaps by examining the discourse of national agencies vis-à-vis the
well-documented rise in poverty and inequality in OECD countries over the past
two decades (Deacon and Cohen, 2011). While such national- and international
agency-level inquiries are beyond the scope of this investigation, they are
necessary to capture the politics of language underpinning our observations and
thus to mitigate some of the limitations of our method. Frequency counts tell us
little about concepts’ underlying meaning; this constraint can only be addressed
through classic discourse analysis. We also acknowledge that our quantitative
treatment of language in this study risks solidifying and objectifying it, thus
potentially stripping it of its inherently interpretive nature. Still, we hope to
have shown that software-aided analyses of large amounts of textual data can
complement established approaches to studying discourses by adding important
insights on the nexus of power and knowledge in social policy formulation across
the globe.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the editors as well as two anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments.
Very helpful feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript was provided by Deborah Bräutigam,
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Mary K. Good, Craig Hayden, Patrick Th. Jackson, James Mittelman, Julie
Novkov, Vivien A. Schmidt and Robert H. Wade. Jed Benjamin Byers, Sonja Egeland Kelly and
Michael Schmitz provided invaluable editorial support. All remaining errors are entirely the
authors’ responsibility.
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198 daniel esser and benjamin j. williams
Notes
1 The views presented in this article are the personal views of the author, and do not represent
the official views of the U.S. Department of Labor.
2 Although Kuznets acknowledges using a small, unrepresentative sample (the United States,
Germany and the United Kingdom), his findings nonetheless have influenced economic
thought for decades.
3 First issued as a World Bank Strategy Paper in September 1974, afterwards published jointly
by the World Bank and the Institute for Development Studies at Sussex University, Brighton.
4 For a list of World Development Reports used herein, please see: http://wdronline.
worldbank.org/worldbank/a/browsebytitle. For a list of Human Development Reports used
herein, please see: http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports.
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