Structural Adjustment and Poverty Alleviation: An Interpretative Survey

There are few simple generalizations about the effects of adjustment programmes on poverty. There remain many data and methodological problems, and outcomes are complex and varied. Poverty groups often are harmed by adjustment programmes, especially the urban working poor, but there has been a tendency to over-emphasize negative outcomes. There are many other influences on poverty. In the long term, adjustment is essential to the eradication of poverty. The principal responsibility for achieving anti-poverty objectives must lie with national governments but they do not always display much concern with the poor. However, the international financial institutions must share the responsibility and could do more to design structural adjustment programmes within a cost-minimizing framework. The principal policy tasks are to formulate a long-term anti-poverty strategy and ensure that adjustment policies are consistent with that, without detracting from the imperative of adapting the economy to changing circumstances.     

Reviews Australian

Francis G. Castles, The Working Class and Welfare: Reflections on the Political Development of the Welfare State in Australia and New Zealand, 1890–1980, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1985, pp.128. $11.95 (paper)

B. Costar and D. Woodward (eds), Country to National: Australian Rural Politics, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1985, pp.150. $24.95 (cloth), $12.95 (paper)

Jim Moss, Sound of Trumpets: History of the Labour Movement in South Australia, Adelaide, Wakefield Press, 1985, pp.454. $20.00 (paper).

Julianne Schultz, Steel City Blues: the human cost of industrial crisis, Ringwood, Penguin, 1985, pp.282. $7.95 (paper)

Jane Ross, The Myth of the Digger, Sydney, Hale & Iremonger, 1985, pp.251. $14.95 (paper)

Pat O'Malley, Law, Capitalism and Democracy: A Sociology of the Australian Legal Order, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1983, pp.204. $12.95 (paper)

A. Patience and J. Scott (eds), Australian Federalism: Future Tense, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1983, pp.217. $14.99 (paper)

Trevor Barr, The Electronic Estate: New Communications Media in Australia, Ringwood, Penguin, 1985, pp.271. $8.95 (paper)

Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives: Vitalism in Bourgeois Social Thought 1890–1960, St Lucia. University of Queensland Press, 1984, pp.328. $40.00 (cloth)

Strobe Talbott, Deadly Gambits, London, Pan Books, 1985, pp.380. £3.95 (paper)

Ian Clark, Limited Nuclear War, Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1982, pp.266 £9.95 (paper)

Peter Pringle and William Arkin, SIOP: Nuclear War from the Inside, London, Sphere Books, 1983, pp.225. £2.95 (paper)

R.F. Miller and F. Feher (eds), Khruschev and the Communist World, London, Croom Helm, 1984, pp.237. $31.95 (cloth)

N. Nugent and D. Lowe, The Left in France, London, Macmillan, 1982, pp.275. $18.95 (paper)

C. O'Faircheallaigh, Mining and Development: Foreign‐financed Mines in Australia, Ireland, Papua New Guinea and Zambia, Sydney and London, Croom Helm, 1984, pp.302. $33.95 (cloth)

D. C. Pitt and B. C. Smith (eds), The Computer Revolution in Public Administration, Brighton, Wheatsheaf Books, 1984, pp.214. £6.95 (paper)

R. L. Wettenhall, Architects of Departmental Systems: Five Profiles, Canberra, CCAE, Canberra Series in Administrative Studies, Occasional Paper 3, 1984, pp.60 (no price given).

Ian McAllister & Richard Rose, The Nationwide Competition for Votes: The 1983 British Election, London and Dover, Francis Pinter, 1984, pp.257. £12.00 (cloth)

F. Feher, A. Heller, G. Markus, Dictatorship Over Needs: An Analysis of Soviet Societies, Oxford, Blackwell, 1984, pp.299. $14.95 (paper)

Lea Campos Boralevi, Bentham and the Oppressed, European University Institute — Series C:I, Berlin and New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1984, pp.xii + 248. DM88.00 (cloth)

Conal Condren, The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts: An Essay on Political Theory, Its Inheritance, and the History of Ideas, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1985, pp.xiii + 303. US$36.00 (cloth)

J. M. Barbalet, Marx's Construction of Social Theory, London, Routledge & Regan Paul, 1983, pp. 228. $25.95 (cloth)

Dag Anckar and Erkki Berndtson (eds), Essays on Democratic Theory, Helsinki, Finnish Political Science Association, 1984, pp.166, US$10 (paper); and Ilkka Heiskanen and Sakari Hanninen (eds), Exploring the Basis of Politics, Helsinki, Finnish Political Science Association, 1983, pp.132, US$10 (paper).

Brian W. Head, Ideology and Social Science: Destutt de Tracy and French Liberalism (International Archives of the History of Ideas: 112), Boston & Dordrecht, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985, pp.229. US$45.00 (cloth)

Z.A. Pelczynski (ed.), The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel's Political Philosophy, London, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 300. £8.95 (paper)

Michael J. Shapiro (ed.), Language and Politics, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1984, pp.261. $17.95 (paper)

James M. Enelow & Melvin J. Hinich, The Spatial Theory of Voting : An Introduction, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 238. $59.50 (cloth), $21.00 (paper)

Jocelyn Clarke and Kate White, Women in Australian Politics, Sydney, Fontana Books, 1983, pp.216. $8.95 (paper)

Marian Sawer and Marian Simms, A Woman's Place: Women and Politics in Australia, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1984, pp.235. $11.95 (paper)

Marian Simms (ed.), Australian Women and the Political System, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1984, pp.222. $11.95 (paper)

Race Mathews, David Bennett — a Memoir, Melbourne, Australian Fabian Society (Pamphlet 44), 1985, pp. v + 59. $3.00 (paper)     

Short notices

AGERON, C.‐R. and MICHEL, M. (eds), L'Ere des décolonisations, Karthala, 1996, 516 pp., 170F., ISBN 2 86537 579 X

BRIAN, E. and DEMEULENAERE‐DOUYERE, C. (eds), Histoire et mémoire de l'Académie des sciences. Guide de Recherches, TEC & DOC Lavoisier, 1996, 449 pp., no price indicated, ISBN 2 7430 0148

CORRÉARD, M.‐H. (ed.), The Pocket Oxford‐Hachette French Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1996, 784 pp., £7.99, ISBN 0 19 864534 1

CORRÉARD, M.‐H. and O'NEILL, M. (eds), Oxford Starter Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1997, 400 pp., £6.99, ISBN 0 19 864527 9

DURAND, P., Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé, Gallimard, 1998, 252 pp., 54F., ISBN 2 07 038939 1 (collection ‘Folio')

HAFEN, L. (ed.), French Fur Traders and Voyageurs in the American West, (Selected with an Introduction by Janet Lecompte) University of Nebraska Press, 1997, 333 pp., £13.95, ISBN 0 8032 7302 9

SOULEZ‐LARIVIÈRE,, D. Grand Soir pour la justice, Seuil, 1997, 175 pp., 110F., ISBN 2 02 032215 3

STEINBERG, P., Chroniques d'ailleurs, Ramsay, 1996, 190 pp., 92F., ISBN 2 84114 133 0