Join the network
Book Chapter
What COVID-19 can tell us about the statePart of Book How States Respond to Crisis
Rachel M. Gisselquist
Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow
Rachel M. Gisselquist is Professor in Governance and Development, and Director of the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (GSDRC), at the University of Birmingham (UoB), UK.
Prior to joining UoB in September 2024, she was a Senior Research Fellow with UNU-WIDER. She joined UNU-WIDER in 2011 and served as a member of the Senior Management Team from 2019–23.
Professor Gisselquist is a political scientist with two decades of experience in academia, applied policy research, and the leadership of international research projects. Her work focuses on issues of governance and development, inequality, ethnic and identity politics, state capacity, aid and development cooperation, and democratization and autocratization. She has published 30+ articles and chapters, 2 edited books (with 2 co-edited books forthcoming), and over a dozen journal special issues and sections in well-regarded academic outlets such as World Development and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. In 2007–09, she co-authored the first two editions of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which has become a standard reference on governance.
As a UNU-WIDER Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow, she is involved in the Strengthening safety nets in post-conflict and humanitarian contexts project.
178 articles, publications, projects, experts...
Filter by...
Reset all
Book
How States Respond to CrisisBOOK IN PRODUCTION | SCHEDULED FOR PUBLICATION FEBRUARY 2025We expect the state to matter in times of crisis to better provide for and protect their populations. But how is it, precisely, that the quality of the state matters? This book speaks to...
Working Paper
Legal identity and access to the state in South AfricaLegal identity is an important aspect of securing access to public services, such as education, healthcare, and social protection services, including child support grants. In the South African context, in the post-apartheid period, many poor South...
Working Paper
Statebuilding in fragile countriesSupporting state capacity is a priority for the international community, yet the record of internationally supported statebuilding to date has been mixed at best. A key question for continuing research concerns the factors influencing more versus...
Working Paper
Affirmative action around the world: insights from a new dataset (update)Affirmative action, or positive discrimination favouring the members of marginalized populations, is a key policy approach to addressing group-based inequalities. It is adopted in dozens of countries around the world in the areas of, for instance...
Journal Article
Clientelist politics and development – EditorialPart of Journal Special Issue Clientelist Politics and Development
Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and DevelopmentPolitical clientelism — which reflects strategic, discretionary, and targeted exchange of private goods and services for political support to the incumbent — has characterised distributive politics in the Global South for decades. The conditional...
Working Paper
Inequality and institutional outcomes in Viet NamBetter understanding of inequality, including its relationship to governance and other key outcomes, is relevant both to academic researchers and to policy-makers. Nevertheless, efforts to establish causal relationships empirically remain hampered by...
Blog
Affirmative action policies to increase diversity are successful, but controversial, around the worldIn a landmark judgment in June 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled against the use of race-conscious admissions in colleges and universities. This...
Blog
Taking localisation beyond labels and lip serviceDonors increasingly speak of locally led aid response, but often do not walk the walk. Case in point is the United States Agency for International...
Journal Article
Do the principles of effective development co-operation improve development outcomes?Elaborated in their current form in Busan in 2011, and reiterated in Geneva in 2022, the four Principles of Effective Development Co-operation comprise country ownership, focus on results, inclusive partnerships, and transparency and mutual...
Blog
Local governance in Ghana is more complicated than central versus regionalMeasuring the effectiveness of local government in Ghana is hampered by incomplete records, but despite that there are still visible patterns, write...
Blog
Why the Aid Effectiveness Principles are important for developmentDemonstrating empirically the Aid Effectiveness Principles' global impact on development is a challenge. But according to Rachel M. Gisselquist...
Journal Article
COVID-19 and the stateDuring the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was wealthier countries with stronger institutions that suffered the highest numbers of cases and fatalities. Many weaker countries were instead praised for more effective pandemic response. What...
Journal Article
Theoretical models of inequalityUsing illustrations from research on inequality, this essay makes a case for ‘behavioural synthesis’, that is the reconciliation between neo-classical and behavioural economics. Focusing on selected theories of absolute and relative inequality, we...
Working Paper
Do the effectiveness principles matter for development?The Principles of Effective Development Co-operation provide an important reference point for foreign aid and international development assistance. Although the principles—country ownership, focus on results, inclusive partnerships, and transparency...
Working Paper
Affirmative action around the world: insights from a new datasetAffirmative action, or positive discrimination favouring the members of marginalized populations, is a key policy approach for addressing group-based inequalities along ethnic, religious, and racial lines (e.g. horizontal inequalities). It is adopted...
Working Paper
The impact of affirmative action in India and the United StatesThis paper provides a systematic review of quantitative literature investigating the success of affirmative action policies in addressing socio-economic inequalities between ethnic groups in education and employment. We focus on two of the most...
Working Paper
Does affirmative action address ethnic inequality?Despite the good intentions behind affirmative action policies to mediate ‘horizontal inequalities’ between ethnic groups, the evidence on their effectiveness remains open to debate. In this study, we conduct a systematic review of the literature...
Policy Brief
Development effectiveness in fragile contextsThis policy brief draws on the studies presented at the International Research Conference on the Effectiveness of Development Cooperation on 17–18 November 2022, in Brussels, Belgium, jointly organized by UNU-WIDER and the European Commission (DG...
Policy Brief
Building evidence around the effectiveness principlesThis policy brief draws on the studies presented at the International Research Conference on the Effectiveness of Development Cooperation on 17–18 November 2022, in Brussels, Belgium and jointly organized by UNU-WIDER and the European Commission (DG...
Blog
COVID-19 in India: cases, deaths, and vaccinationsThe Omicron variant resulted in a third major wave of Covid-19 in India, with the number of cases exceeding those in the second wave, albeit causing...
Journal Article
On the impact of inequality on growth, human development, and governanceInequality is a major international development challenge. This is so from an ethical perspective and because greater inequality is perceived to be detrimental to key socioeconomic and political outcomes. Still, informed debate requires clear...
Working Paper
Aid's impact on democracyThis paper investigates the impact of foreign aid on democratic outcomes using a panel of countries for the period between 1995 and 2018. In so doing, it speaks to a major critique of foreign aid, which is that it negatively impacts democratic...
Journal Article
Involuntary migration, inequality, and integrationPart of Journal Special Issue Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and Integration
Journal Special Issue
Involuntary Migration, Inequality, and IntegrationMigration is an inherent feature of human history. A rich literature considers the experiences of global migrants across diverse environments. This special issue explores such experiences with a focus on inequality between migrants and host...
Blog
COVID-19 and the Global South — From crisis response to sustainable development
Around the world, the pandemic, and the measures taken to address it, have had far reaching effects on poverty, inequality, and governance. And even...
Book Chapter
Foreign aid and peacebuildingForeign aid is a core component of peacebuilding and among the largest external financial flows to fragile states and conflict-affected areas. Nevertheless, troubling critiques have been raised about its overall impact and effectiveness. Some of the...
Blog
Why countries best placed to handle the pandemic appear to have fared the worstDuring the first year of the pandemic, it was wealthier countries, with their comparatively stronger health systems, civil services, legal systems and...
Working Paper
COVID-19 and the stateWe expect effective state institutions to matter in a country’s ability to respond to crises. Yet notably in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, what has stood out in simple global snapshots is that wealthier countries with stronger institutions...
Blog
Foreign aid can help stem the decline of democracy, if used in the right wayDemocracy is having a hard time. In India, once the world’s largest democracy, the pandemic has hastened the country’s slide toward authoritarianism...
Working Paper
Consolidating behavioural economics and rational choice theoryUsing illustrations from research on inequality, this paper offers evidence on the strengths of ‘behavioural synthesis’, i.e. the reconciliation between neoclassical and behavioural economics.We compare how theoretical models of absolute and relative...
Blog
A ‘data revolution’ for sustainable development leaves gaps on inequality
Among the many things said about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the description by the President of the UN General Assembly’s 70th...
Working Paper
On the impact of inequality on growth, human development, and governanceCountering recent rises in many countries of inequality in income and wealth is widely recognized as a major development challenge. This is so from an ethical perspective and because greater inequality is perceived to be detrimental to key...
Blog
Clientelism – another reason to worry about US democracy
The last several months have given us many reasons to worry about US democracy – not least the riot at the US Capitol and the president’s refusal to...
Working Paper
Does aid support democracy?This study draws on a rigorous systematic review—to our knowledge the first in this area—to take stock of the literature on aid and democracy. It asks: Does aid—especially democracy aid—have positive impact on democracy? How? What factors most...
Blog
Coronavirus: five ways some states have used the pandemic to curtail human rights and democracyIn the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, at least 95 countries declared a national emergency, empowering governments to act in ways they would not...
Report
Effects of Swedish and international democracy aidDemocracy aid is a significant component of development cooperation. As a share of total aid, it has increased steadily since the mid-1990s. In 2018, countries in the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) devoted roughly 10 per cent of overseas...
Blog
Headline data suggests low-income states are coping better with the pandemic than high-income states. But is this true?States with fragile state health systems have been commended for effective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. But if we take into account factors...
Working Paper
Horizontal inequality, COVID-19, and lockdown readinessA growing body of research shows that COVID-19 both reflects and exacerbates existing inequalities. However, there are significant gaps in this research area with respect to ‘horizontal’ or group-based inequalities in Global South countries. Lack of...
Policy Brief
Migration governance in the Global SouthBuilding knowledge about migration governance and policy in the Global South is a priority for research and policy. Migration is a defining feature of our time and one closely linked with processes of economic and political development. Sustainable...
Journal Article
How the cases you choose affect the answers you get, revisitedExternal validity is a major challenge for experimental research. I offer a new perspective on this challenge, drawing on work on case studies and causal inference – the sort of material regularly covered in introductory methods courses in political...
Working Paper
Social mobility and inequality between groupsThe relationship between social mobility and inequality is well studied in the literature, but far greater attention has been paid to ‘vertical’ than to ‘horizontal’ inequality. This paper focuses on mobility and horizontal inequality between ethnic...
Working Paper
Involuntary migration, inequality, and integrationAcross the world, we observe different experiences in terms of inequality between migrant and ‘host-country’ populations. What factors contribute to such variation? What policies and programmes facilitate ‘better’ economic integration? This paper...
Journal Special Issue
Horizontal inequality in the Global SouthInequality and social exclusion receive considerable contemporary policy attention. In the field of international development, inequality—both vertical (between individuals and households) and horizontal (between groups)—is a core concern in the 2030...
Displaying 80 of 178 results