Feature

After the MDGs: Citizen Deliberation and the Post-2015 Development Framework

Scott Wisor*

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an unprecedented set of global commitments to reduce various forms of human deprivation and promote human development, are set to expire in 2015. Despite their promise, the MDGs are flawed in a variety of ways. The development community is already discussing what improved development framework should replace the MDGs. I argue that global justice advocates should focus first on the procedure for developing the post-2015 development framework. Specifically, they should create spaces for citizens, especially the most marginalized and oppressed, to actively deliberate about the form and content of a future global development framework, and ensure that this deliberation receives political uptake in formal intergovernmental processes for deciding the post-2015 framework.

Scott Wisor is a Research Fellow at Australian National University. His work focuses on contemporary moral, social, and political philosophy, with particular emphasis on global justice, development ethics, and feminist philosophy. He is the author of Measuring Global Poverty: Toward a Pro-Poor Approach (2012). Scott.Wisor@anu.edu.au

Footnotes

* I am grateful to a range of individuals for comments, discussions, and critical thoughts on the general idea of citizen deliberation about the post-2015 framework. Archie Law, Marc Chenery, Thomas Pogge, Christian Barry, John Dryzek, Alison Jaggar, Robert Chambers, Paul Ladd, Simon Burrall, Mukesh Kapila, Amy Pollard, Claire Melamed, an audience at Australian National University, a workshop on engaging poor people in the post-2015 period hosted by CAFOD, and many others have provided insightful comments and thoughts on the ideas in this article. I am also grateful to John Tessitore, Zornitsa Stoyanova, and Zach Dorfman for excellent editorial support. All mistakes remain my own. I first considered the idea of citizen deliberation for the post-2015 framework in Measuring Global Poverty: Toward a Pro-Poor Approach (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), chapter 10.