Political scientists have generally seen two key features of African political economies—a relatively small or absent middle class, and a middle class that is unusually embedded in the state—as key explanations of the troubled political and economic...
South Africa has seen a significant increase in the size of the black middle class in the post-apartheid period, but the attitudinal consequences of indicators of the middle class, as of 2011, are inconsistent and modest in size. While members of the...
A survey of the changing relationship between the market for political services and the market for financial services.
The recent history of Zaire presents a unique opportunity to understand and explain humanitarian emergencies. This monograph follows an inductive approach in analysing the trajectory of state-building in Zaire as a significant explanatory variable of...
The city of Medellín, Colombia was a cauldron of violence with 185 homicides per 100,000 people in 2002. By 2006, this rate had declined to 32.5. Such successful transformation was termed the ‘Medellín miracle’ and credited to policies of the city’s...
Despite the widespread use of paired comparisons, we lack clear guidance about how to use this research strategy in practice, particularly in case selection. The literature tends to assume that cases are systematically selected from a known...
Part of Journal Special Issue Urban Governance and Service Delivery in sub-Saharan Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue Urban Governance and Service Delivery in sub-Saharan Africa
Rachel M. Gisselquist Almost all major development institutions today say that promoting good governance is an important part of their agendas. The...
Part of Book Pathways to Industrialization in the Twenty-First Century
In 2015 the Government of Uganda agreed to start rolling out a social pension programme, and increasing its own contribution to it. This was driven by the highly politicized efforts of a transnational policy coalition, led by international donors and...
Part of Journal Special Issue Developing Countries in the WTO Regime
Part of Journal Special Issue Explaining Violent Conflict
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid Allocations and Development Financing
Part of Book Financial Openness and National Autonomy
Tony Addison This month saw the visit of Kaushik Basu, the World Bank’s new Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, to...
Part of Book The WTO, Developing Countries and the Doha Development Agenda
New research for UNU-WIDER explores the differences between revolutionary mass mobilizations in democracies versus dictatorships. Evidence from...
Measuring the effectiveness of local government in Ghana is hampered by incomplete records, but despite that there are still visible patterns, write...
Dr Miguel Niño-Zarazúa explores the complex effects of clientelism on economic development, state capacity, and governance, emphasising the need for...
This study provides the first country-wide research evidence that an affirmative action policy may induce a backlash. I exploit the timing of the implementation of castebased electoral quotas across and within the states of India. The results show...
Part of Book The Politics of Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa
Part of Book The Politics of Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa
As elsewhere, the Colombian private sector has been accused of promoting or profiting from violence in the country. However, the private sector’s role in the armed conflict and the impact of conflict on entrepreneurial activity vary, as reflected by...
The class and social structure of developing nations has undergone profound transformation in recent decades as each nation has incorporated into an increasingly integrated global production and financial system. National elites have experienced a...
What explains the divergent political paths that the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have followed since the fall of the Berlin Wall? While some appear today to be consolidated democracies, others have all the...
Institutions are altered by conflict, depending on the scale, duration and type of war. At one extreme, formal political, social and economic institutions may be completely destroyed (e.g. Somalia), while the importance and type of informal...
This paper analyses a number of the challenges confronting developing countries seeking to use the WTO Doha negotiations to promote their economic growth and performance. A precondition for success is to have clear objectives and to take a pro-active...
Countries compete with one another for funds distributed by nongovernment organizations (NGOs). We examine the competition over poverty and governance conducted by a NGO in the allocation of its funds among potential recipient countries. The NGO in...
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