Public Policy and Expenditure Mailing List Archive

["Jock Campbell" <<address removed>>]

PUBLIC POLICY AND EXPENDITURE 

 

Response from Jock Campbell, IMM Ltd

To place this response in context, IMM is a private sector research and 
development group based at Exeter University Campus.   

 

If we are to address the issue of how the role of public policy and expenditure 
on agriculture can be made more effective in achieving poverty reduction then 
we should address several key issues:

 

  a.. The importance of viewing agricultural policy in a holistic and 
integrated context
  b.. The need to improve policy research that targets the poor
  c.. The gap between the poor and the policy process
  d.. Improving both service delivery mechanisms and the ability of the poor to 
take-up those services and thus make policy implementation more effective
 

Holistic policy

Whereas much of the debate in this electronic forum has so far focused on 
agriculture in the narrow sense, we need to broaden it to address areas such as 
fisheries, forestry, and livestock.  The reason being that these are all 
intrinsically linked.  For example the rapid turn-over of fisheries products 
(because of the daily harvesting and perishability) provides much needed 
investment in goods and services in agriculture when seasonal cash-flow 
shortages would otherwise exist;  fuelwood  collection and fishing provides 
seasonal work to many agricultural labourers; livestock is a capital reserve 
for many in agricultural communities.  The SLA encourages us to link these 
sectors together and to address many other cross-sectoral issues as well.  
Recent work we have been doing in fisheries in Ghana and in Cambodia clearly 
shows that many of the poor's priorities are for health and education with 
economic activities coming along behind.  This does not mean that agriculture 
(in the broadest sense) should not be a priority but that it needs to be 
closely linked in to these other areas. We also need to share experiences 
between agriculture, forestry and fisheries and learnt from each others 
successes. 

 

Targeted policy research

There is a growing realization that research that informs policy in many 
countries is irrelevant to the poor and misses them completely.  The mechanisms 
to allow effective participation by the poor in all stages of the policy 
process, whilst well known, are rarely used effectively.   Even when research 
is relevant to the needs of the poor it rarely gets to the diversity of 
stakeholders that influence the development and implementation of policy in 
forms that changes their behaviour. 

 

There is a need to engage the poor in the policy research process much more 
effectively at all stages of the research process.  There is also a need for 
much more systematic approaches to the way policy research outputs are 
disseminated and used.



Poverty-Policy Gap

For many poor people the policy process is remote and largely irrelevant.  They 
are rarely consulted in the formulation of policy and policy implementation 
often passes them by.  Even in areas where development appears to be working 
well the poor tend to become "interstitial poor" falling into the gaps between 
peaks of development activity.  

 

There is a need for much greater involvement of the poor in all stages of the 
policy process and for mechanisms to allow this to take place.  This in turn 
requires considerable capacity building in government, private sector and civil 
society to work with the poor and capacity building with the poor to contribute 
to the policy process. 

  

Service delivery and uptake

Pro-poor policy in agriculture is of little value unless policy implementation 
also addresses the needs of the poor in ways that they can understand and 
respond to.  So often market liberalization is seen as the panacea to poverty 
reduction whereas the poor are rarely able to respond to market change with the 
speed and innovation that the better off can.  Improved service delivery of all 
forms needs to be closely linked to support to the poor to take up and use 
those new opportunities quickly.  Without this poverty is likely to become 
interstitial in nature and remain unseen within a wider development process.

 

 

Without an emphasis on greater and more effective inclusion of the poor in the 
policy process through these mechanisms then the debate on the effectiveness of 
public expenditure in poverty reduction is likely to be largely lacking in 
relevance to the poor.  This requires a greater focus on vertical and 
horizontal integration processes and mechanisms and on the capacity and 
institutional structures to put them into practice. 



Jock Campbell
IMM Ltd
Website: http://www.ex.ac.uk/imm/ 
The Innovation Centre,
Rennes Drive,
University of Exeter Campus,
Exeter, EX4 4RN, UK
Tel: +44 1392 434143
UK Mobile: 07770 940 122
Email: <address removed>