INTRODUCTION

One of the most significant events in the field of development in recent years has been the effort to incorporate social concerns into the mainstream agenda of market reform and economic development. Largely excluded from the first generation reform agenda, the “social” dimension has been brought back in through the introduction of a series of additions and reforms, sometimes referred to as “second-generation” reforms or the “post-Washington Consensus,” to the development agenda of the international financial institutions (IFIs).

This is a marked shift in the framing of development policy and priorities. Prior to second generation reforms, social concerns were sharply distinguished from economic concerns; especially to the extent that they were in any sense political, they were seen as not only extraneous to but sometimes even in conflict with the pursuit of economic development. Thus, second generation reforms mark not only the recognition of the social side of development policy, but an effort to make the two sides coexist more easily.

This chapter probes the manner in which the IFIs are managing the incorporation of social justice and greater participation in the development agenda, and describes how the pursuit of social objectives, in turn, is affected by the governance agenda as a whole.

A convenient marker of the second generation reforms is the appearance of the World Bank's (Bank) Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF). Originally presented as a discussion draft circulated by the Bank's president, the CDF identifies two sides to the development agenda.