Reform of world trade long overdue
More commonly, the WTO is associated with what are rather wearisome disagreements between industrialised economies and their developing counterparts, as well as with the periodic crises that have afflicted the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations which have staggered on for almost a decade and a half.
What is the future of the green economy?
By Carl Death
As the 2015 Millennium Development Goals target date looms near and the successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change is due to be negotiated, Dr Carl Death, senior lecturer in International Political Economy, considers the increasing focus on the green economy and breaks the concept down into four key discourses that are competing to define its meaning. He argues that it is a big idea for dramatic change but it could also reinforce rather than challenge prevailing forms of inequality and injustice.
Training in Political Economy Analysis
by Sarah Hunt.
Over the past year training donor agency staff in Political Economy Analysis (PEA), I have found the topic inevitably means facilitating a debate. The overt aim of training is to introduce practical tools for carrying out Political Economy Analysis. But, from the outset, talking about politics in development means engaging with ideas of change – and this touches not just on the contexts where donor agencies work, but on the internal systems of donors themselves. In my experience, practitioners value the space to reflect on these issues.
Buying with a conscience: Should we buy clothes from Bangladesh?
A year on from the collapse of the Rana Plaza building which claimed more than 1,100 lives, Stephanie Barrientos and Rosey Hurst ask whether the world has since changed for garment workers in Bangladesh.
Only collective action from all key actors will ensure worker rights and safety standards improve in Bangladesh’s garment industry in the wake of the Rana Plaza building collapse. This was the key message from a special debate at The University of Manchester held as part of their Social Responsibility Goal and Capturing the Gains research programme promoting better worker rights and fairer international trade. Panellists from across Bangladesh’s clothing industry relayed their own experiences in the country since last year’s tragedy which claimed more than 1,100 lives, and whether the disaster had led to a step-change in the industry.
Restructuring ICT4D and WSIS Beyond 2015
By Richard Heeks
Around the time of the MDGs, ICT4D became the focus for a critical mass of activity; a “sidestreaming” approach that saw specialist ICT4D units arise in a number of international and national organisations. Following the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), this was largely mainstreamed with specialist units being disbanded or shrinking, and ICT4D expertise seen as diffused into the main development sectors. There is a logic to mainstreaming – if done right – in ensuring integration of ICTs into a broad range of development goals.
ICT4D Research Priorities from the Post-2015 Development Agenda
By Richard Heeks
What should be the future priorities in researching ICT4D?
The post-2015 development agenda will be the single most-important force shaping the future of international development. In planning our priorities for development informatics (DI) research – the academic study of ICT4D policy and practice – we should therefore pay close attention to the post-2015 agenda.
A Development 2.0 Research Agenda
by Richard Heeks
A key theme in the post-2015 development agenda is transformation: a belief that the incremental developmental changes achieved to date will no longer be sufficient in the remainder of the 21st century; and an aspiration for a step-change in approach.
Analysis reported earlier argues development informatics research – studying ICT4D policy and practice – should give a higher priority to researching the relation between ICTs and the transformation of development. Such research already has a terminology – Development 2.0; understood as the ICT-enabled transformation of development.
Can growth in Africa be sustained?
by Chris Jordan
Over the last few years, African economies have been some of the fastest growing in the world. But significant doubts remain: why aren’t the proceeds of growth doing more to help those at the bottom of the pile, and in any case, is the boom sustainable?
An important report from the Accra based African Centre for Economic Transformation argues that big changes are needed within African countries to ensure that growth is equitable and can be sustained.
Working Paper: Pro-poor urban politics
ESID‘s latest Working Paper explores “what we have learnt about how to instigate and embed pro-poor government in towns and cities of the global South”, with a particular focus on how politics emerges in informal settlements. Politics, informality and clientelism – exploring a pro-poor urban politics was written by Diana Mitlin, who is Associate Director at the Brooks World Poverty Institute, coordinates of ESID capacity-strengthening activities, and leads our research project on the Jawarlahal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in India.
The zeitgeist of political economy analysis
On Monday David Hulme and I attended a half-day workshop at ODI entitled “Aiding reform: Lessons on what works, what doesn’t and why”. It was basically a gathering of scholars, consultants and practitioners working on/with political economy analysis (PEA), of the sort that takes place every few months around the UK and Europe. What David calls the “aspiring” epistemic community of PEA was well represented around the table: all the familiar faces and usual suspects from ODI, The Policy Practice, The Asia Foundation, The IDL Group, LSE, Africa Governance Initiative, or the Developmental Leadership Program, as well as representatives from DFID and the World Bank (the latter presenting their recent volume of PEA case studies).