What are your favourite, well-documented examples of a) public campaigning and b) influencing developing country and donor governments? I’m asking because, as part of the LSE’s impending training programme for senior aid peeps, part of the ‘Global Executive Leadership Initiative’. I have to put together brief annotated ‘further reading/listening/watching’ lists on those two issues. I want more examples of donors

Understandably, perhaps, progressive researchers often prefer to try to understand the lives, challenges and struggles of the poor. Who wants to spend their time talking to sleazy fatcats? But if you want to change things, it’s often necessary to understand the people in charge. So I was very happy when public philosopher and political scientist Roman Krznaric sent over the

Not sure if this is normal behaviour, but holidays is when I tend to read the big heavy tomes – see previous posts on Piketty, War and Peace, or other random novels. Last month’s holiday saw me chow down on Linda Colley’s The Gun, the Ship and the Pen, a Big Book with the grandest of sweeps on warfare, constitutions

Guest post from Anna Landre, one of my amazing students, who has bunked off class (with permission) to do some amazing work on Ukraine. And she’s pretty angry about what she’s seen. As a 23-year-old wheelchair user halfway through a Master’s degree at the London School of Economics, I didn’t expect to spend my past week working 16 hours a

Guest post by the always-original Pablo Suarez The science of climate change impacts can be painfully confusing, and at times infuriatingly complex to communicate, especially for those of us who need to act and help based on what is known. Last week the IPCC released “Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”, a full report with over 3,000 pages of

Calling this ‘Links I Liked’ seems even more unsuitable than ever, hence the change of title. Last week, I tweeted a request for thoughtful background pieces, to complement the blow by blow reportage and moral outrage, and this is what I got, with excerpts. Would welcome more links, esp from non-Western sources. And women – this is a male-only set

More reaction to this week’s IPCC report, horribly overshadowed by events in Ukraine Whether you have one or not, impacts on children often invoke the strongest feelings in times of crisis, be it the recent flood victims of Madagascar or the civilian casualties of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But another thing we know about children is that they can

A timely guest post from Deborah Burton Stumbling Upon A Rather Well-Funded Gas-Guzzling Elephant in The Room As a former trade and tax campaigner (Christian Aid), I was fascinated by the progression of development sector campaigns – from debt to trade, from trade to tax. I now see something similar in the climate/military relationship because conveniently, deliberately, hidden away inside

Sometimes your (or at least, my) thinking gets stuck without you even realizing it, until a chance conversation brings it home. So it was in a recent conversation with some great participants in LSE’s Executive Masters in Cities programme. They were presenting their personal projects on various aspects of urban transformation, from access to water, to reviving pollinators/bees in urban

Had an interesting exchange with a friend active in UK grassroots politics this week, who asked ‘What’s the best reading around how to build effective networks? I’m basically a little suspicious atm as it all seems a bit stakeholder mappy / retrospective analysis of change, rather than practical, pro-active strategy. It’s not that I don’t understand the importance of systems,

Guest post by Mary Mwangi and Brenda Wangari In recent years, we have seen more capacity building support directed towards locally-led enterprise support organizations (ESOs) such as accelerators, incubators, seed funds and consulting practices. These ESOs are at the frontline, providing critical business development services to local entrepreneurs. In Africa and many developing regions, such entrepreneurs are key drivers of

This blog was first published on the EADI/ISS Development Research Blog Series, written by Oxfam’s Nicole Walshe and Anne Mai Baan. In our work to strengthen and support civic space worldwide (i.e. the space for freedoms of association, assembly and free expression) we often see that certain narratives are used to undermine the work of activists. Narratives – the collection