Institutions and Pro-Poor Growth (IPPG)

Consortium

Member institutions

• African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), Kenya

• Consumer Unity and Trust Society (CUTS), India

• Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Senegal

• Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics (LSE), UK

• Latin American Centre for Rural Development, Chile

• Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, UK

• Overseas Development Institute, UK

• University of York, Department of Politics, UK

The consortium on Improving Institutions for Pro-Poor Growth known as the IPPG programme was launched in September 2005. The inspiration for the programme comes from two key ideas. On the one hand is the recognition that social ‘institutions’ exercise an enormously important influence upon patterns and rates of economic development and change. The second is that while economic growth is a necessary condition for the sustainable reduction of poverty, it is not a sufficient condition. The founding proposition of the IPPG programme is therefore that the interactions of economic, political, social and cultural institutions constitute a matrix that may either enhance or constrain pro-poor growth. The task of the Programme is then to identify historically and comparatively those institutional sets and contexts that enhance pro-poor growth and to show how such patterns of institutional interaction change or may be helped to change.  A further aim is to identify the conditions under which coalitions of stakeholders may be encouraged to adopt, adopt, negotiate and change institutional matrices that will be conducive to pro-poor growth.

•  Activities

  •  In the inception phase of the programme (September 2005 – February 2006 exploratory an exploratory study was carried out in Mali, Tanzania, Bangladesh and Bolivia.  CODESRIA led an exploratory study on Mali.  A dissemination meeting was held in Bamako in January, a final workshop bringing the exploratory phase to a close was held in London (Slough) in February.

  • A dissemination workshop will be held in Bamako in June.