
April 17, 2023
The Action for Empowerment and Accountability research consortium, led by IDS and with quite a lot of involvement from Oxfam (including me) is now winding up with the customary emission of academic papers (think puffballs reaching maturity). One of these is a whole issue of Development Policy Review (now Open Access â yay!) on âCitizen Action for Accountability in Challenging
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How Beijing Commands: how the Communist Party combines Ambiguity and Clarity to Maximum Effect
March 30, 2023
Yuen Yuen Ang is a rising star in International Development scholarship. Understandably, she doesnât want to be pigeon-holed as âthe China personâ despite her brilliant book, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, and has written more global works on corruption, among other things. But in a recent paper, she returns to the topic of China â analysing the combination of
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What can a Water Project in DRC tell us about Adaptive Management in fragile/conflict affected settings?
March 23, 2023
My last trip pre-Covid was to the DRC, to look at a water project in Goma, and the resulting research paper (co-authored with Patrycja Stys, Tom Kirk and Tom Mosquera) has just been published (yep, just three and a half years later). It charts an attempt by MercyCorps to drive change in a water sector that has massively failed citizens in the
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UK Budget 2023: What the Big Red Box leaves outÂ
March 16, 2023
British (or British adjacent) readers will by now probably have digested the main headlines of yesterdayâs budget, but Katy Chakrabortty digs deeper in this guest post. Since election manifestos tend to appear only twice a decade, party leadership pledges can be made in TV debates and quietly forgotten and the Kingâs Speech is delivered with an air of regal deference,
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Book Review: Political Settlements and Development: Theory, Evidence, Implications
February 2, 2023
If you hang around conversations on âthinking and working politicallyâ, as I do, youâll hear a lot of references to âPolitical Settlementsâ as itâs grown up, more academic, but sometimes incomprehensible cousin. As this new bookâs blurb declares âAt its most ambitious, âpolitical settlements analysisâ (PSA) promises to explain why conflicts occur and states collapse, the conditions for their successful
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Book Review: Hypocrisy and Human Rights: Resisting Accountability for Mass Atrocities
January 26, 2023
What is the point of all the noise on human rights violations, all that âspeaking truth to powerâ to repressive regimes who donât listen, if no-one is ever brought to justice? When all those lawyers, Amnesty reports, email campaigns and UN treaties simply bounce off the brute realities of national power? Kate Cronin-Furmanâs intriguing new book uses a political economy
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Whether in Asia, Africa or North America, itâs been a profitable polycrisis for billionaires
January 18, 2023
Guest post from Anthony Kamande on Oxfamâs Davos Inequality Report 2023 Iâm having supper with my friend Reuben, a teacher who still hasnât received last monthâs salary (equivalent to around $167) and is struggling with the cost of living. I tell him that if the 1,890 richest Kenyans, those with wealth over Ksh600 million ($5 million), paid as little as
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Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies: the politics of saving the planet
January 17, 2023
Neil McCulloch introduces his new book Hands up if you would like petrol prices to go up? Iâm guessing not too many hands. The cripplingly high costs of energy (whether petrol, diesel, gas or coal as well as electricity) have posed a huge challenge for households and firms all around the world. Massive increases in these costs, driven by the
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Taxation of the Worldâs Super-Rich has collapsed: as 1 in 8 people go to bed hungry, that has to change
January 16, 2023
Max Lawson introduces Oxfamâs 2023 Davos report, âSurvival of the Richest: How we must tax the super-rich now to fight inequalityâ Walter is the father of my sonâs best friend at school. He works nights as a security guard at a bank in the City of London. He has three kids. They are really struggling, as the prices of everything
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What do LSE Activism Students do after they leave?
January 13, 2023
Teaching is weird. You engage on quite an intense level with each yearâs cohort of students, and then they fly the nest, and you hear very little about what happens next. Still less whether their studies actually helped (Iâm still trying to work out whether my Physics degree has been a help or hindrance in grappling with the complexities of
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How well does the IMF engage with civil society?
January 12, 2023
Oxfam has a new paper out this week on how the IMF engages with civil society around the world. A bit process-y, I know, but this is good â based on a lot of serious case studies and coming up with the odd surprise (notably Ghana, highlighted below). My summary of the summary: âThe International Monetary Fund (IMF or âthe
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Is Extinction Rebellion really quitting? Analysis of their New Year’s Day statement
January 4, 2023
As well as the headlines, First Edition, the Guardianâs excellent daily news summary (free subscription here), includes an in-depth conversation between the editor and one of its specialist journalists. Yesterdayâs, with environment correspondent Damien Gayle, was on âExtinction Rebellionâs New Yearâs Day statement, which led with the headline-grabbing phrase âwe quitââ. Not true, apparently. Hereâs the Guardianâs analysis: âThis is
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