Another big book in international development just landed. Not in terms of size (330 pages) but significance. Naila Kabeer’s Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, Agency and the Bangladesh Paradox is a monumental achievement, literally: something the rest of us will be learning from, citing and pointing our students to for years to come. It’s even Open Access (viva LSE Press!). In a

When I heard that the not-quite-Nobel for economics this year had gone to Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson and Simon Johnson I went back to my 2012 review of their breakthrough book, Why Nations Fail. At the time, I had really mixed feelings about it – loved the emphasis on conclusions, but detected an extraordinary level of Western bias on which

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

Guest post from Greg Power In July the UK witnessed its highest ever rate of electoral turnover, with 335 MPs – or 51% – elected to the House of Commons for the first time.  This is exceptionally high by UK standards, which usually has a rate of around 20%.  But many parliaments routinely lose at least half their members at

This is one of those books that makes you ask, ‘why haven’t we had one of these before?’ The Politics of Development starts from the premise that all development is political, and expertly unpacks the evidence for that assertion and the implications for thinking and practice. In terms of content, as well as the focus on politics, and its ‘3I’

The GELI courses I teach are full of conversations that really challenge the assumptions behind my thinking. One recent example was a frustrated UN leader asking, ‘how do I try to influence a minister who is both more expert than me in the topic, in this case education, and has a chaotic mind?’ Think Donald Trump, but with added expertise.

This is my last day at Oxfam. Pause for mass sobbing….. But when I explained my plans to keep blogging in some form, including on whatever post-Dexit FP2P emerges, a colleague accused me of resembling some kind of ageing rocker who keeps announcing his retirement, only to reappear within months. It’s quite common, apparently. Seems that bands like Mötley Crüe

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The photo I dug up for Tuesday’s post of me wandering about in rainswept paddyfields in Vietnam got me thinking about a recurrent theme of the last 20 years at Oxfam (and earlier jobs too): the role of personal humiliation, shame and failure in learning. First the Vietnam example. I went there full of the 2005 hubris I described earlier.

To prepare for leaving a job I have loved, first as head of research, then as strategic adviser, I have been re-reading a work diary I kept from my arrival in 2004 until about 2010 (when it fizzled out). It helps bring back those early days, and prevents rewriting my experiences, whether for good or bad, with the benefits of

Guest post from Warren Krafchik and Peter Evans The ‘Open Movement’ is 20 years old. This reflection is written with love – one of us was deeply involved from the start, the other a fellow traveller looking from the sidelines. Tough love from firm friends, if you will. As we wrote, the think piece got bouncier and longer as it

Guest post from Kelly Hawrylyshyn, Head of Global Resource Mobilization at Fairtrade International; and Harriet Lamb (CEO WRAP, former CEO of Fairtrade International & Fairtrade Foundation UK) On February 13th, the Fair Trade movement mourned the passing away of the liberation-theology worker-priest,  Father Frans von der Hoff,  the co-founder of a global movement that now generates over €8 billion in