This paper explores the social, economic and ideological context within which the World Summit for Social Development took place. As its subtitle implies, the discussion focuses particularly on some of the assumptions about global trends that were prevalent in 1995 and evaluates their adequacy...

The paper argues that over the years aid has lost its initial “developmental purpose” which was to help developing countries to overcome structural constraints on their mobilisation of domestic resources or conversion of these resources into investment. This shows up in the low levels of...