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The article discusses the relation between research on development in the post colonial world and the academic discipline of post-colonial studies. Thus, the article pursues two objectives: firstly, it attempts to provide an overview about works from the academic field of post-colonial studies that investigate into the theme of development. Secondly, the article examines some of the central critiques of post-colonial studies concerning the neglect of the aspect of material practices. The article consequently draws on questions as to the meaning of post-colonial studies, and in particular of the term development.

The article discusses the beginnings and evolution of global social policy initiatives, moving from government dominated projects and private foundation work to public-private partnerships, international human rights declarations and programs coming from the United Nations, and transnational efforts led by non-state actors particularly in medical care. A lack of global centralization and coordination for these social initiatives is noted, together with the "empowerment" processes which strengthen marginalised groups and potentially threaten political conflict.

Whereas some authors argue that global social policy—defined as global redistributive policies, global social regulatory policies and elements of global provision and empowerment — does exist, other observers challenge this claim. These contradictory positions are the starting point of our article. In the first part, we investigate to what extent elements of global social policy can be found; we demonstrate that only fragments of global social policy exist, namely some norms of social justice and some weak global regulatory mechanisms. In the second part of our article, we identify reasons for the limited articulation of global social policy. We sketch social policy theories which have been developed for the national level and discuss their relevance for global social policy. In doing so, we highlight limited industrialization at the global level, the weakness of global trade unions and churches, the dominance of liberal international organizations, the veto power of powerful national governments and the weakness of (Scandinavian) welfare states in global politics as possible reasons for the rather fragmentary existence of global social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]