
February 4, 2025
Whatever finally emerges from the Trump Administration’s assault on USAID (and other governments such as Switzerland jumping on the bandwagon), surely the status quo ante is unlikely to return. What to do? Yes we can keep making the case for aid, hoping that the political tide will turn, but the political consensus around aid had been under assault since long
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Searching for my voice, in fear and silence
December 17, 2024
Next up from my amazing LSE activism students, Fatima Aysha, a Syrian student with over five years of experience working with INGOs in Syria, including Action Against Hunger and the Aga Khan Foundation. I wrote this blog on 23 October 2024 and decided not to publish it because of the phrase “walls have ears”, thinking that it might cause problems
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The Sounds of Resistance
December 12, 2024
This year’s students on the LSE course on activism, which I teach with Tom Kirk, are amazing. Recently ran a blogging workshop, and quite a few of them went on to produce lovely posts. Will stick my favourites up here over the next few weeks. First up, Salma Saleh on music and politics, first published on the LSE International Development
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How did Advocacy work in Ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece, China or India?
December 4, 2024
Guest post by Tom Judd, one of my LSE activism students The tale of advocacy goes as far back as we can look. In ancient Egypt, around 1850 BC, a story known as the Eloquent Peasant emerged. It tells the story of a peasant who is cheated out of his land and has to use his eloquence to win justice.
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Where is UK development policy headed under the new government?
November 18, 2024
The recent £1.5 billion cut in the aid budget heralds an era of “less money, more policy”, with any return to spending 0.7% of GDP a long way away, says Andy Sumner of King’s College London. As we await three reviews of development policy, early signs suggest climate change and diplomatic interests will drive priorities – and there is little chance DFID will be reborn.
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Talking to aid economists about localization
October 16, 2024
Sat on a panel on localization last week in a meeting of aid economists (no more detail, sorry – Chatham House Rule). It was definitely a different tone to the usual conversation on localization, which concentrates on issues of power, equity, decolonization etc. Here, there was a striking focus on efficiency/value for money, which is of course what floats economists’
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How my new book unpacks the problem with projects
October 9, 2024
The “project” is intrinsic to modern international development – yet this basic form of organising our work is not something neutral or benign, says Caitlin Scott, but has real, often distorting, effects on the way development organisations think and act.
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State of the World (According to The Economist)
September 26, 2024
Two excellent (gated) longer essays in last week’s Economist that I thought I would excerpt for you. The first was a graphic and alarming summary of the argument that ‘The world’s poorest countries have experienced a brutal decade’. Some extracts: ‘There are now a billion fewer people subsisting on less than $2.15 a day than in 2000. [But] almost all of
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Book Review: Politics on the Edge, by Rory Stewart
September 24, 2024
As he climbs the greasy pole He fears for losing his soul It all ends in tears Betrayed by his peers Now Rory reflects on his role Think that’s my first limerick executive summary – hope you like it. I was a bit late to Politics on the Edge (my copy came via the local Oxfam shop), but was hooked
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How Change Happens: Masood Ul Mulk on what he has learned from 30 years of working on micro hydro in rural Pakistan.
September 17, 2024
FP2P’s Duncan Green writes: Although we have never met, I love my correspondence with Masood Ul Mulk, who works to achieve change in some of the remotest regions of Pakistan, and thinks deeply about the process. Some of his wonderful anecdotes have ended up (with due credit) in my books. He recently sent me a 7000-word ‘long read’ reflection on
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Big Moments in History – how should Change Makers respond?
September 11, 2024
FCDO governance guru/wonk (gonk?) Ben Powis reflects on some of the whiplash moments he’s experienced in multiple countries. Moments in history come in many forms – and I have seen a few. The 2015 earthquake in Nepal, the 2021 coup in Myanmar, a new government in Zambia in 2021, and the COVID-19 pandemic, well…everywhere. Bangladesh is experiencing one such moment
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Are killer facts ‘a strategy that can come back to bite’?
September 10, 2024
Guest post by Mike Lewis One of this blog’s foundational themes is that economic facts don’t mean much without an analysis of power. At the same time, over the last fifteen years I’ve watched big NGOs develop specific ways to wield economic facts, perhaps even to fetishise them, as a way of influencing power. With the new government favouring a
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