Analysing the Post-2015 Development Agenda

In two earlier posts, I outlined the current process of creating the post-2015 development agenda, and analysed how important it will be to development practice and research.

But what will that agenda be?  The best guide at present appears to be four key documents that emerge from the totality of post-2015 activity as previously summarised:

• The foundational “Realizing the Future We Want for All” document and its update “A Renewed Global Partnership for Development”: these are the products in 2012 and 2013 respectively of the UN System Task Team; the core of the post-2015 process.
• As part of that process a High-Level Panel was set up based around the leaders of the UK, Indonesia and Liberia, which produced a report, “A New Global Partnership” in mid-2013.
• The Open Working Group, and High-Level Political Forum, and Expert Committee associated with Rio+20 and the Sustainable Development Goals are all in mid-process, so the best guide as yet is the outcome of the Rio+20 conference; a UN General Assembly resolution of 2012 entitled, “The Future We Want”.

Textual analysis of these documents was undertaken.  A simple approach to this was the creation of tag clouds: the cloud for the combined post-2015 documentation is in the figure below.

Tag Cloud for Combined Core Post-2015 Documentation

 A more detailed analysis was then undertaken via word counts within the documentation.  In all, roughly 200 terms were analysed.  The term list was developed via:

a)   selection from the top 500 words counted in the document using Wordle, which also produced the tag cloud; eliminating all non-discriminatory terms (both simple terms like “and”, “the”, “of”, etc, but also those which relate to development but do not provide any particular guide to a development agenda such as “development”, “developing”, “countries”, etc), plus

b)   similar selection from the top 500 words within the MDG documentation (see future posts), and

c)   cross-checking with terms used in a set of other current development reports and journal paper titles.

The frequency of all terms was normed to a mean count per 10,000 words.

All meaningful terms which appeared more than 10 times per 10,000 words (i.e. with a frequency of more than 0.1% of the text) are shown in the table below.

Term	Freq. per 10,000 Words	Term	Freq. per 10,000 Words	Term	Freq. per 10,000 Words
Sustainab*	94.6	Women	19.9	Water	14.8
System*	38.2	Implementation	19.5	(In)equalit*	14.0
Partnership	36.1	Food	18.7	Security	14.0
Environment*	33.9	Education	18.6	Communit*	13.5
Social	31.5	Rights	18.2	Trade	13.3
Economic	31.2	Growth	17.6	Particip*	13.1
Finan*	29.3	Energy	17.5	Business	12.5
Poverty	28.8	State/States	17.5	Local	12.3
Policy/Policies	23.7	Public	17.1	Income	11.7
Health	21.3	Inclusi*	17.0	Transform*	11.7
Technol*	21.2	Accountab*	16.7	Job	11.5
Government	21.1	Process*	16.1	Information	11.0
		Cooperation	15.7	Private	10.8
		Child	15.5	Agric*	10.6
		Institution	15.5	Impact	10.6

Most Frequent Development Terms in Post-2015 Documentation

 Detailed discussion of the dynamics of the post-2015 development agenda will be undertaken in a future post.  Here, I note the following ten conclusions:

1. The importance of sustainable development as a core model, of course arising particularly because of the presence of the Rio+20 track within the post-2015 process; with some recognition of the role of inclusive development.
2. Poverty and environment being the two most important individual development issues on the agenda.
3. Perhaps, a reasonable parity between three of the main domains of development: environmental, social, and economic.  But a question mark over the place for political development: “politic*” scores just 8.3 and so does not appear; but “govern*” would score 31.2.
4. A strong presence for items related to MDGs 1 to 6: e.g. poverty, health, women, food, education.
5. A strong recognition of the importance of technology within development.
6. A strong presence for what one might term the mechanisms or processes of development: the need for partnerships and cooperation and participation, the role of policies, but also of processes and implementation and impact.
7. Despite moves towards a more multi-stakeholder perspective on development and the presence of business and communities; still a dominant role for the state in its various guises: state, government, public sector.
8. Some sense of a systems perspective on development.
9. Maslow’s shade – or at least the importance of basic needs – stands over the agenda given the presence of poverty, health, food, energy, water, security.
10. The recognised importance of data (just outside the list at 9.2) and information as the foundation for decision-making and action in development.

Readers are encouraged to make their own analysis of the findings presented in the table, and to draw any other big picture conclusions.

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