Over the past decade, a series of events in India have brought the question of food security into sharp focus. Vast famine-affected areas versus surplus production and stocks of grains, the impact of globalization and World Trade Organization laws on...
Basic human rights recognize the intrinsic value of freedom, only not for the value of freedom itself, but also for its instrumental role enabling an individual to choose a bundle of commodities and wellbeing. The role of food, a basic necessity of...
We analyse policymakers’ incentives to fight corruption under different institutional qualities. We find that ‘public officials’, even when non-corrupt, significantly distort anti-corruption institutions by choosing a lower detection probability when...
Tony Addison Mid-September finds UNU-WIDER very busy preparing for our big conference on climate change and development policy that takes place later...
27 May 2013 Matt Andrews, Harvard Kennedy School A growing governance agenda and post-2015 ambitions The governance agenda has grown rapidly in the...
The northeast region of India remains fraught with severe violence, poor growth and acute frustration among its youth. Success of policies to resolve the region’s crisis has proved less than encouraging. What could be the way out of the violence–poor...
This paper examines the literature on the rule of law and economic development, and in particular the influential argument by La Porta et al., on the superiority of the Anglo-American common law system in fostering financial development. In this...
This paper conceptualises foreign aid as a geopolitical form of rent in order to help distinguish the conditions under which aid is detrimental to sustained economic recovery from those where it is beneficial. Foreign aid shares with natural resource...
Tony Addison This month saw UNU-WIDER in Stockholm for the ReCom results meeting on ‘aid and the social sectors’, which took place at Sida on 13 March...
22 August 2013 Patrick Gregory ‘Justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done’. In its shortened form this...
It's imperative to demolish myths around the economic achievements of China and India and get a better sense of the real challenges. The author of the...
After receiving at least US$20 billion in aid for reconstruction and development over the past 60 years, Haiti has been and remains a fragile state, one of the worse globally. The reasons for aid failure are legion but mostly relate to highly...
How does aid impact democracy in sub-Saharan Africa? Drawing on existing literature, this study elaborates on the various channels, direct and indirect, through which development and democracy aid has influenced transitions to multi-party regimes and...
Tanzania has been a relative success story in Africa in terms of political reform. While foreign aid has helped strengthen institutions that advance accountability, it simultaneously supports a status quo that undermines accountability and...
The study examines Zambia’s evolving aid relationship in relation to the country’s democratic trajectory. The impact of aid in terms of democratic consolidation is linked to the development of the party system, the efficacy of key democratic...
In the 1990s, analysts were almost unanimous in considering Benin to be one of the most important aid recipients among the newly democratizing African countries. After more than two decades of democratic practice, the country has clearly completed...
This paper begins by noting that Uganda has been a public sector reform leader in Africa. It has pursued reforms actively and consistently for three decades now, and has produced many laws, processes and structures that are ‘best in class’ in Africa...
Part of Book Democratic Trajectories in Africa
In examining the study of government performance, this paper asks whether field experiments can improve the explanatory precision of results generated by public opinion surveys. Survey research on basic health and education services sub-Saharan...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aiding Government Effectiveness in Developing Countries
Part of Journal Special Issue Urban Governance and Service Delivery in sub-Saharan Africa
Part of Book Democratic Trajectories in Africa
Many public sector reforms in developing countries fail to make governments more functional. This is typically because reforms introduce new solutions that do not fit the contexts in which they are being placed. This situation reflects what has...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid Allocations and Development Financing
Rents tend to be relatively high in developing countries and also very fungible, so that differences in the scale of the rent and in its distribution among economic agents profoundly affect the nature of the political state and the development...
Since the early 1990s, Malawi has tried to undertake economic reforms, including the restructuring of the public sector, even as it embraced democratic reforms. Paucity of human and financial resources has made the process difficult and drawn out...
Part of Book Achieving Development Success
Part of Book Foreign Aid for Development
Part of Book Falling Inequality in Latin America
This paper grew out of our bewilderment with the insouciance with which some in the donor community seem ready to abandon accounting for the use of aid. If one listens to the rhetoric surrounding the new approach to aid, one gets the impression that...
The present paper adds to the already large existing literature on aid distribution as it runs an equation on bilateral aid allocation on a very rich dataset, covering 20 years (1980-99), 22 donors and 137 recipients, which permits a three...
Privatization, together with liberalization and deregulation, constituted the core of Mozambique's economic transition. Privatization in Mozambique has taken place on an unusually large scale in comparison with the rest of Africa. Privatization...
This paper assesses the preparation of Ghana’s Poverty Reduction Strategy paper (GPRS), paying particular attention to its likely influence on the institutionalisation of anti-poverty measures in the country’s political economy. After examining...
We analyse policy makers’ incentives to fight corruption under different institutional qualities. We find that ‘public officials’, even when non-corrupt, significantly distort anti-corruption institutions by choosing a lower detection probability...
I argue that the economic success of Botswana can be explained by the historical development of its institutions which is related to the trajectory of the Tswana states over the past 200 years. These institutions created a much more stable and...
In this paper I analyze the economic incentives that govern the strategic relationship between the government and the independent media using a consistent analytical framework. The analysis focuses on the extent to which the ‘free’ press can act as a...
The recent emphasis on governance in Africa is unique in that it was initiated by donors and not by domestic leaders under pressure from their own constituencies. Thus while many countries have embraced the market economy and liberalized their...
22 March 2013 The share of aid to social sectors has grown over the past 20 years. Evidence shows clear links between support to these sectors and...
Omar Shahabudin McDoom What should donors do when confronted with regimes that violate important normative standards of state behavior and commit...
Part of Book The Prevention of Humanitarian Emergencies
Part of Book From Conflict to Recovery in Africa
Danielle Resnick In just a little over a month, policy makers will converge in Busan, South Korea for the fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness...
Part of Book Advancing Development
Part of Book Food Insecurity, Vulnerability and Human Rights Failure
Part of Book Social Security in Developing Countries
Part of Book Institutional Change and Economic Development
Part of Book The Impact of EMU on Europe and the Developing Countries
Part of Book Resource Abundance and Economic Development
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid Policy and the Macroeconomic Management of Aid
Tanzania has been a relative success story in terms of African political reform. In the early 1990s Tanzania shifted from a one-party to a multiparty system, allowed greater freedoms for the press and civil society, and in 1995 held its first...
President Yayi Boni of Benin was one of the eight African leaders invited to attended the May 2012 G8 summit at Camp David to discuss the issue of food security. This is perhaps an indication that the country is doing something right, at least from...
Development aid was effective in promoting democratic transitions during the 1990s in African countries beset by economic crisis domestic discontent, and a high dependency on aid. Development aid also influenced democratic transition indirectly...
Democracy assistance and donor support have been key in fostering a new type of civil society, dominated by NGOs, the legal community and churches. The bulk of donor funding to Zambia is channelled to the executive through budget support, this has...
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