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
Aid Instruments
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