Comparative Research Program on Poverty

Comparative Research Program on Poverty (CROP; www.crop.org) is an international nongovernmental organization created in 1992 by the International Social Science Council (ISSC). It is hosted by the University of Bergen in Norway. Its main aim is to form an international and interdisciplinary research network on poverty to further the understanding of the theoretical and practical causes and consequences of poverty and their implications for public policy. In 2009, the ISSC and the University of Bergen relocated CROP into the University of Bergen Global (UiB Global), which is responsible for initiating and coordinating multi- and transdisciplinary research and related activities at the institution. Also in 2009, the Norwegian National Committee was founded to advise and support CROP’s scientific director and the CROP Secretariat in the [Page 274]effective implementation and achievement of the program’s goals. The Secretariat, in coordination with CROP sponsors, oversees the activities of the program and promotes, coordinates, and raises resources for new poverty research and activities. The Scientific Committee is composed of academicians and researchers from different disciplines and countries, with a reputation for high achievement and significant work in poverty research. The committee oversees the scientific goals of the program.

In addition, CROP fellows, who themselves are distinguished scholars or activists, are appointed by the ISSC as ambassadors of the program and help promote its vision and mission to the broader outside world.

CROP defines its vision as the eradication of global poverty and its mission as facilitating independent, alternative, critical research and education on poverty that may lead to public policies targeting eradication of poverty.

To achieve its goals, CROP organizes its activities around six thematic groups, listed in detail on its webpage: (1) climate change and the poor; (2) rights, values, and global justice; (3) social cohesion, welfare, and global dimensions; (4) child poverty; (5) feminization of poverty; and (6) methodological and integral research design tools. The outcomes of the research in these thematic groups are disseminated using the following outlets: CROP and Zed Books, the CLACSO-CROP Series on Poverty in Latin America, and the CROP Poverty Brief Series. The CROP Newsletter regularly provides an update on poverty-related activities and research. CROP also organizes workshops, roundtables, and other events that bring scholars and activists with different perspectives and alternative approaches to poverty and related issues. In 2014, in association with Zed Books, CROP initiated a CROP International Studies in Poverty Prize, soliciting original research that challenges the conventional thinking in the field and provides alternative critical knowledge regarding the causes and effects of poverty.

Alternative and critical knowledge in poverty research is a theme continuously worked into CROP research and activities. In order to contextualize CROP’s cutting-edge contributions to poverty research, one has to go back to the late 1970s and 1980s. Then, the prevailing conventional approach to poverty analysis assumed that poverty was a domestic problem and argued that only economic growth and free markets could provide a solution. Antipoverty policies in industrial as well as developing countries were based on the establishment of free markets and on minimization of the role of government in the economy. The Washington Consensus and the Third Way were both supply-side approaches that addressed poverty with business-oriented policies. Among their common characteristics are fiscal austerity, privatization, corporate tax cuts, and deregulation. Later on, inefficiency of domestic institutions and domestic corruption were included as additional foci in poverty research. A large number of scholars and policymakers in industrial countries focused on what poverty is and how to define it. In their research, they reduced the causes of poverty to a handful of measurable factors and linked them to growth in per capita gross domestic product. The positivist models they used provided empirical evidence that supported the dictum “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Economic growth within a free-market framework with the assistance of industrial countries became the most efficient and effective way of addressing poverty.

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