The 1975 and 1997 White Papers compared: enriched vision, depleted policies?

The 1997 White Paper on international development is the first such policy statement since 1975. Comparison of the two thus gives us an opportunity for assessing how official thinking and politics in the UK have responded to the many changes that have occurred in the meantime. This article first compares the views of the two papers on the nature of development and of the poverty problem; and then compares the treatment of EC/EU issues. Neither Paper was just about aid. We conclude that WP75 appears comparatively narrow in focus and unsophisticated in its appreciation of the problems addressed, but is better at taking a strategic view and more forthcoming about specifics. What WP97 gains in the breadth and sophistication of its appreciation of problems it loses in detachment from reality and retreat from specifics. Its treatment of EU issues is surprisingly laconic. But overall WP97—in its various forms—is more accessible and decidedly more populist. It has already been disseminated to a far wider audience than WP75 ever reached. Its success is in simplifying a world which development officials know has grown more complex; its failing is that they seem unsure about specifically how their influence and modest resources can best be applied to improving it. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]