experience). One such is Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu (MIT) and James Robinson (Harvard). Judging by the proliferation of reviews and debates the book has provoked, my experience is…
A Promising new debate on the financial crisis
…and Yung Chul Park. Here are some excerpted highlights from Dani’s opening pitch ‘Let developing nations rule’: ‘There is just possibly a silver lining for developing nations in the present…
What happens if the climate change talks fail? Botswana bakes, Shanghai submerges etc
…degree warmer world. I’m not sure that Botswana would actually be habitable at those kinds of temperatures, but the report doesn’t go into that. The report’s rather limp recommendations fail…
Thirty Years of Anti-Corruption: A Personal Reflection
…African nations – many enjoying media and a host of other individual freedoms in a real way for the first time – were treated to graphic details of the excesses…
The Pope’s New Broadside on Globalization, the Crisis and Everything
…recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth….
What happens when negotiations fail to prevent 2 million deaths? Not much, apparently
…work towards the ATT marked the recognition by a majority of nations that the current patchwork of laws, regional agreements, and embargoes is ineffective, and insufficient to limit the catastrophic…
Why did the Street Movements of the 2010s fail?
…a journo, on ‘Why did the Street Movements of the 2010s fail’. The piece is based on his new book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing…
The new UN Human Development Report on vulnerability and resilience: ignoring trade-offs and an epic fail on power and politics
…it argues for a return to full employment as an economic policy objective. That’s a brave and radical proposal, but fails to acknowledge, let alone discuss, any possible trade-offs between…
Why do global campaigns succeed or fail?
…Global Campaign for Climate Action at Copenhagen (GCCA and TckTckTck). The report distils the lessons of success and failure under: Collective Action, Structure, Campaign Objective, Leadership, Political Strategy, Branding, Celebrities,…
Can a Political Economy Approach explain aid donors’ reluctance to think and work politically? Guest post from Neil McCulloch
…country’s polity than from outside. Perhaps the most famous recent example of this line of thinking is Acemoglu and Robinson’s 2012 book Why Nations Fail. Acemoglu and Robinson conclude that…
UN Women: the United Nations gets its act together on gender
…to be accountable for its own commitments on gender equality, including regular monitoring of system-wide progress.” U.N. diplomats said four years of negotiations between Western developed nations and developing countries,…
How the United Nations and the World Bank can turbo charge the effort to reduce Inequality
Guest post from Oxfam’s Anthony Kamande Over the past decade, many leading economists and global institutions such as the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World…