GDI Lecture: What social network analysis can tell us about multi-stakeholder partnerships with Moira Faul & Jordan Tchilingirian
Listen or watch Moira V. Faul, Université de Genève, Switzerland and Jordan Tchilingirian, University of Bath, talk about ‘What social network analysis can tell us about multi-stakeholder partnerships’
Listen or watch to the lecture in full below. read more…
Hrishipara daily financial diaries: Tracking transactions, understanding lives part 2
Since May 2015 we have been recording the daily money transactions of up to 70 households living near a small market town in central Bangladesh. These ‘daily financial diaries’ shed light on the money-management behaviour of low-income households, described in papers which can be found on the project’s website. Up to now we have explored matters that face all our ‘diarists’, such as savings and credit, income and expenditure, health, and education.
‘Tracking transactions, understanding lives’ is a new series focusing on individual diarists. We aim to create vivid pictures that give readers a sense of what these lives are like. We hope this will help researchers and activists design better interventions for low-income households. read more…
The roles of the state in global value chains: the growing debate and agenda
By Rory Horner and Matthew Alford, January 2019
In a new paper in the GDI Working Paper Series we argue that the state-GVC nexus is, and will continue to be, especially significant in shaping development outcomes.
Research on global value chains (GVCs) has broken with state-centric approaches to understanding development, providing a more contemporary perspective on trade, industrial organisation and development outcomes. Partly based on a belief that little else was possible in a liberal economic context, the key emphasis in research on GVCs (and related global production networks (GPNs)) has been on how states facilitate GVCs – including both domestic firms and global lead firms. Yet other roles of regulator, producer (state-owned enterprises) and buyer (public procurement) are significant, and are now attracting growing attention.
How can we eradicate poverty by 2030?
The Project Syndicate created a video on the research done by Antonio Savoia and Niaz Asadullah on whether state capacity made an impact on achieving the MDGs.
- Download their original open access research paper
- Read commentary on World Economic Forum.
Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole.
Call for papers for Effective States and Inclusive Development conference on ‘rethinking the politics of development’
We are delighted to announce a flagship international conference convened by Effective States and Inclusive Development research centre, Global Development Institute, The University of Manchester.
Confirmed plenary speakers include world leading experts Anne Marie Goetz (New York), Merilee Grindle (Harvard), Lant Pritchett (Harvard), James Robinson (Chicago), Prerna Singh (Brown) and E. Gyimah-Boadi (Afrobarometer, Ghana).
Pratap Mehta (Ashoka), Dan Slater (Michigan ), are to be confirmed.
From Politics to Power? Rethinking the politics of development 9-11 September 2019, Manchester, UK
Politics was finally brought into the mainstream of international development around a decade ago. However, whilst most development academics and agencies accept that politics plays a central role in shaping development in the Global South, the incorporation of politics within development theory and practice remains partial and subject to backsliding. This international conference will take stock of what work on the politics of development has achieved to date, identify further opportunities for incorporating the full range of scholarship on politics and development, and set out future research agendas for the field.
This flagship conference will showcase the findings of the Effective States and Inclusive Development research centre (ESID), which has been researching the politics of state capacity and elite commitment to development since 2011. ESID findings will be presented and debated alongside the much broader range of research into the politics of development.
Migration, fake news and reality
Gabriele Restelli, PhD Researcher, Global Development Institute
The United Nations recently approved the Global Compact for Migration. This has come shortly after the endorsement of the other compact, for refugees. These agreements have sparked tensions, protests and even a government crisis in Belgium – especially within right wing parties and movements who allege that the controversial nature of these compacts impedes national sovereignty and adversely impacts security.
Although it is hard to understand what is controversial about a non-binding pact to foster international cooperation, it is fair to wonder why the world needs a global compact on migration to begin with. It has often been argued that unprecedented levels of mobility and migration require unprecedented intergovernmental efforts at tackling such a globally relevant phenomenon.
Indeed, in absolute terms, more individuals than ever before are on the move; but that’s simply because the world population has now increased to seven billion. Global migration data show no evidence of discontinuity in overall international migration trends, that is: the total number of people living outside their country of birth (migrant stock) has remained relatively stable as a percentage of the world’s population since 1960, ranging from 3.1% to 3.3% in 2015. Similarly, only 0.75% of the world’s population emigrated in 2014 (migrant flow) – just like in 1995. read more…
How academia is contributing to the SDGs
The goals addressing the challenges in the sustainable development goals are all intimately linked; progress towards one goal depends on, and affects, other goals. And as economies and societies are globally interconnected, countries will need to work together to achieve progress. GDI’s multidisciplinary research allows solutions to come from social scientists, geographers, politicians, economists and those working in business and engineering to address aspects of the SDGs. It’s an approach being documented in a new collection of special issue journals: The SDG Perspectives Project – which aims to build an environment for collaboration, where experts from all over the world can engage with the SDGs in an interdisciplinary way.
GDI researcher Johan Oldekop was on the editorial board of the first of three special issues which will focus on environmental sustainability, world development and health policy. Each special issue will look at the ways in which the SDGs are influencing academic and research debates and vice versa. read more…
Reflections on our 60th year
As 2018 draws to a close, seismic shifts are taking place globally, nationally and locally. While headline poverty rates continue to fall, will growing inequality choke off the benefits of growth? In increasingly urbanised societies, are new forms of disadvantage becoming manifest and how can we secure positive change for all? How can organisation be effectively managed in turbulent times? And does the increasingly urgent threat of climate change mean we need to develop a radically different vision of development? These are just some of the urgent questions we have been grappling with this year but in effect for the last 60 years.
It’s not all been bad!
With so much news of political, social and environmental doom it’s easy to forget that good things have also been happening in the world. We asked our researchers to tell us some nuggets of good that took place in 2018:
Working governance for working land
In their Review “Landscapes that work for biodiversity and people” (19 October, p. eaau6020), C. Kremen and A. M. Merenlender discuss techniques that can preserve both ecosystem services and biodiversity in landscapes that have been modified by humans. They suggest that working lands can form useful peripheries to core protected areas. However, if appropriately managed, working lands can do more than just provide appropriate land use around strictly protected areas. Some working lands and less-strict forms of protection afford comparable conservation outcomes to state-controlled protected areas.
Whether as core or periphery, the critical challenge is to understand what governance works best to conserve the biodiversity of private, communal, and state-managed resources (3, 4). On working lands, the potential for biodiversity- rich management depends on who owns and controls land or water use, on what terms, and with what objectives. Rights to resources, the rules controlling their use, and the arrangements by which these are forged, enforced, and revised are critical to conservation success. Even as there are calls for improved governance, knowledge about the relative effectiveness of different governance arrangements, and the political and social coalitions necessary to support them, remains in its infancy.
Rural people play a vital role in the protection of biodiversity in most landscapes, both within and outside protected areas. The conservation challenge lies in identifying what specific forms of governance arrangements will work in particular locations and with which rural peoples. Models must vary; we should design governance arrangements for different contexts. Only solutions tailored to the particularities of each region can win the enduring social and political support needed for maintaining biodiversity in the long term.
- Dan Brockington, Sheffield Institute for International Development
- William M. Adams, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge
- Bina Agarwal, Global Development Institute, The University of Manchester
- Arun Agrawal, School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan
- Bram Büscher, Sociology of Development and Change, Wageningen University
- Ashwini Chhatre, Department of Economics and Public Policy, Indian School of Business
- Rosaleen Duffy, Department of Economics and Public Policy, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad
- Robert Fletcher, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield
- Johan A. Oldekop, Global Development Institute, The University of Manchester
This letter first appeared in Science on 14 December 2018.
Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole