‘Twinning’ typically entails a form of formalised partnership between similar institutions in the North and South for an indefinite period (Jensen, 2007; Baud et al., 2010), with the aim of strengthening the capacity of partners in developing countries (Jones and Blunt, 1999; Ouchi, 2004). Institutional twinning inherently implies that the primary focus of the capacity ...» more
Aid Instruments
Using Zakat for international development
This review focuses on Zakat, a particular form of almsgiving within Islam. The value of Zakat is estimated to range from US$ 200 billion to US$ 1 trillion per annum across the world (Stirk, 2015) or around US$ 187 million among countries in the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (Shaikh, 2016). Therefore, interest in mobilising Zakat for poverty alleviation in Muslim ...» more
Donor funded alliances promoting regional cooperation
There are a significant number of donor funded regional cooperation arrangements across a broad range of thematic areas. However, the level of their success varies considerably, and the literature search carried out for this report did not identify any unqualified successes. Areas of cooperation include defence, environmental issues and economic integration. There is a ...» more
Linkages between private sector development, conflict and peace
The private sector can both exacerbate drivers of conflict and contribute to peacebuilding in post-conflict states. Examples of the role that the private sector can play in conflict and peace at the macro, meso and micro levels include the following: Macro level There is a general consensus in the literature that illicit trade in natural resources can increase in the ...» more
China’s aid to developing countries
Definitions and types of aid China’s measurement of “foreign aid” differs from “official development assistance”, for example by including military assistance and excluding donor administrative costs. The main forms of Chinese foreign aid are: complete projects; goods and materials; technical cooperation and human resources development cooperation; medical teams and ...» more
Sustainable Development Goals and current trends
This report focuses on Agenda 2030 and the challenges of delivering the Global Goals and the implications of trends for the UK’s international development work. Section 2 focuses on the Global Goals for Sustainable Development (SDGs/Global Goals) and the challenges of delivering them. These Global Goals will shape the world’s approach to growth and sustainable development ...» more
International development, UK aid and Official Development Assistance spending
This report aims to introduce someone unfamiliar with the field of international development to some of its complexities. It includes hyperlinks to sources rather than a traditional referencing system, to make follow-up learning as easy as possible for the reader. The report introduces international development, its the global context, and the UK parliament’s guiding ...» more
Flexibility in funding mechanisms to respond to shocks
In order to better and more rapidly respond to shocks such as sudden onset disasters, there have been increasing efforts to build flexibility into humanitarian or development funding arrangements, as current emergency responses are often slow to arrive and/or unresponsive to forecasts of disasters (Start Network, 2017; Rüth et al, 2017, p. 2). This rapid reviews looks at ...» more
Impact of economic sanctions on poverty and economic growth
Key findings are as follows: Economic sanctions lead to an increase in the poverty gap and deprived sections of the population feel the most impact. For the most part sanctions fail to achieve their aims and elites manage to negotiate the adverse effects to a far greater level than poorer citizens. Sanctions have a damaging effect on income inequality and impact ...» more
CSOs supporting accountability in cash transfer programmes
Cash transfer programmes, like most social protection programmes, are vulnerable to fraud, errors, corruption and misuse of funds, which undermine their achievements. Civil society organisations (CSOs) have supported, or provided, accountability mechanisms in countries around the world: working to improve transparency to help citizens hold authorities accountable; checking ...» more
Legislative oversight in public financial management
This Rapid Evidence Assessment examines the quality of the available evidence on the effectiveness of reforms aimed at improving legislative oversight to attain improved development outcomes, and summarises the available lessons from the literature. The specific research questions considered are: What is the effectiveness of the different public finance legislative ...» more
Donor interventions on women’s political empowerment
The evidence base on donor interventions for women's political empowerment (WPE) in low- and middle-income countries is rigorous overall, but limited in size and scope. Feminist scholarship and practice have long emphasised that WPE is a multifaceted, complex process. However, evidence suggests that most donors have tended to build their approaches on oversimplified models of ...» more
Political dynamics and the effectiveness of aid programmes
There is an increasing recognition amongst development scholars and practitioners that the obstacles to effective change in developing countries are not only related to technical or financial issues, but are also bound up with domestic politics and power relationships (DfID 2010a; DfID 2010b; Di John and Putzel, 2009; Leftwich: 2011; Parks and Cole, 2010; DFID 2016). As a ...» more
Religion and development
Why would you want to mix religion with development? They appear to be completely different things – at best incompatible; at worst highly combustible. After all some strands of religion have an overtly political agenda, while other strands promote or condone violence, including terrorism. In some instances religions promote discrimination against women, children and other…» more
Economic impacts of humanitarian aid
This review argues that few studies look at all aspects of economic impact of humanitarian aid. Individual studies tend to focus on one or two specific effects (e.g. on food inflation) rather than give an overall perspective of economic impact. The exception is humanitarian aid given in response to the recent Syria crisis, for which a number of studies look at a wide range of ...» more
Micro levies for global public goods
One type of innovative development finance is the micro levy, also referred to in donor literature as taxes, dues and solidarity levies for development. Donor proponents of this type of innovative finance for development make the case for linking new taxes on globalised activities (finance, travel etc) or global public bads (carbon emissions) to financing global public goods. ...» more
Measuring the performance of PFM systems
Government budgets and their supporting systems – often referred to as Public Financial Management (PFM) systems – are one of the key tools that governments use to turn policy statements and intentions into the delivery of goods and services. In fact, much of what governments do depends on raising, borrowing and spending public resources. Interest…» more
Impact of multilateral organisations on humanitarian outcomes
Even with strong evidence on programme impact, it is hard to attribute humanitarian results directly to multilateral organisations’ (MLOs) or specific forms of aid architecture. In an emergency context, there tend to be many actors and interventions and it is difficult to show a direct chain of causality between specific funding streams or organisations and results. The key ...» more
Incentives from donor funding mechanisms for civil society organisations
This review examines the evidence on some of the outcomes of donor funding to civil society organisations (CSOs). However, it is difficult to attribute causality to specific funding mechanisms, and few evaluations look directly at this issue. Scattered evidence in donor evaluations does reveal some commonalities and lessons: The literature presents a strong message from ...» more
Climate finance and public finance management
Much attention has been directed at the international commitments to assist developing countries respond to climate change. This is reflected in the debate over the commitments made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: at the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries committed to jointly mobilise $100 billion climate finance per…» more
