This paper presents an analysis of the broad themes of disagreement in these consultations and more generally among those concerned with poverty reduction. It has to be noted first of all that there is agreement in areas where there would not have been consensus two decades ago and any discussion of disagreements has to start with an acknowledgement of these areas of agreement. However, there are deep divisions on economic policy, distribution and poverty. These divisions spilled out in the consultations, mostly politely but sometimes in vehement discourse, written and oral, harbingers of the street battles to come.
The paper tries to answer an obvious question: How can people with seemingly the same ends disagree so much about means, and how can seemingly the same objective reality be interpreted so differently? The simple answer, which the protagonists themselves often provide, is of course to question the motives or the analytical capacity of those ones disagrees with. The suggestion that “the others” are either not truly interested in attacking poverty (quite the opposite, in fact), or that they make elementary errors of fact or interpretation, is never very far below the surface.
However, it is argued here that at least some of the disagreement can be understood in terms of differences in perspective and framework. Understanding disagreements in these terms— rather than in terms of motives or intelligence— is more conducive to encouraging dialogue rather than confrontation. The object of this paper is to provide an account of some of the underlying reasons for deep disagreements on economic policy, distribution and poverty, and to couch these in an analytical rather than a rhetorical frame. But before doing this we need to say a little more about disagreements over what and disagreements between whom.
