This briefing note aims to provide some practical guidance on how different services can offer differing opportunities and challenges for improving service performance through increased accountability and, especially, citizen engagement. It illustrates an approach to identifying these opportunities, using examples from two services: curative health care and urban networked ...» more
Library
This e-library contains more than 4500 external publications on governance, social development, conflict and humanitarian issues. It includes academic and grey literature selected for its basis in good quality research and coverage of a range of perspectives. Policy-oriented summaries of each document are provided, plus links to the full text.
What Do Indian Middle Class Attitudes to Poverty Tell Us About the Politics of Poverty Reduction?
What makes the middle classes oppose or support initiatives intended to lift people out of poverty, and how can the development community secure their interest in and approval of such policies? The assumption among donors, development practitioners and researchers is often that the middle class are either not interested in helping the poor, or are motivated by self-interest ...» more
Income inequality in Latin America: Recent decline and prospects for its further reduction
The paper reviews the extent of the income inequality decline that took place in Latin America in 2002-10 and then focuses on the factors that may explain such decline. These include a lowered skill premium following an expansion of secondary education among the poor, and the adoption of more equalising tax, labour market subsidies and macro policies by a growing number of ...» more
Disaster-related displacement risk: Measuring the risk and addressing its drivers
This report applies the concept of risk to disaster-related displacement and quantifies human displacement risk around the world. It reflects an awareness of the need to see disasters as primarily social, rather than natural, phenomena. This view acknowledges that humans can act and take decisions to reduce the likelihood of a disaster occurring or, at the very least, to reduce ...» more
Why corruption matters: understanding causes, effects and how to address them
What are the conditions that facilitate corruption? What are its costs and what are the most effective ways to combat it? This paper assesses the current literature on corruption. It notes that corruption is a symptom of governance dynamics and institutional quality, and is enabled by economic, political, administrative, social and cultural factors. The collective and ...» more
Rights and social action for risk management: Reflections on local, national and international roles and responses
This report explores the links between risk management, rights and collective action through a set of case studies. Risk is defined here as the possibility of loss. Case studies involving elements of social mobilisation across Ecuador; Bangladesh; Brazil; South Africa and Zimbabwe demonstrate ways in which the language and practice of human rights can support better conditions ...» more
Balancing Paid Work and Unpaid Care Work to Achieve Women’s Economic Empowerment
It is widely known that women's economic empowerment can lead to economic growth. However, it is important to understand women's economic empowerment as not simply about labour force participation, but also about the choice to work, the choice of sector, location and working hours. Taking unpaid care work into account in policies and programmes has the potential to ...» more
Realising the Potential of Civil Society-led South-South Development Cooperation
Civil Society Organisations from the BRICS countries and Mexico are leading a huge range of South-South Development Cooperation (SSDC) initiatives. New research shows how these initiatives are promoting social accountability, supporting post-disaster reconstruction and effectively sharing rural and urban development knowledge. Given this experience and expertise, these ...» more
Deterrence as a security concept against non-traditional threats: In-depth study
This study focuses on the international dimension of five threats that could affect the Netherland: terrorism; threats in the cyber domain; organised crime; threats in the economic domain; and ambiguous warfare. It also analyses the applicability of deterrence as an instrument in the context of each area. These main areas of threat are discussed in terms of the following ...» more
Promoting Active Citizenship: What have we learned from 10 case studies of Oxfam’s work?
This paper pulls together insights and lessons that arise from ten case studies of Oxfam’s work in promoting active citizenship. The case studies cover a wide range of programmes, both in terms of geography and sector (humanitarian, long-term development, advocacy and campaigns). Lessons on promoting active citizenship include building citizens’ self-confidence and ...» more
World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2015
This report assesses the employment and social impacts of the recent global slowdown and examines longer term socio-economic consequences associated with the prolonged period of economic turbulence that started in 2008. The world economy continues to expand at rates well below the trends that preceded the advent of the global crisis in 2008 and is unable to close the ...» more
Corruption and Collective Action
This paper argues that both the collective action and principal-agent theories are valuable in understanding corruption. They add to our understanding of the scope and scale of challenges that anti-corruption efforts face, leaving one perspective out hollows this understanding. However, both miss out an important third perspective, which is that corruption can serve important ...» more
Textbook development in low income countries: A guide for policy and practice
This manual on textbook provision in low income countries serves as an accompanying publication to a World Bank elearning course. It responds to the challenge of getting affordable books to school children when and where needed and aims to be a practical resource that covers key issues encountered in textbook development, ranging from authorship through to publication and ...» more
Assessing the added value of strategic funding to civil society
This IELG-commissioned study looks at the strengths and challenges of strategic (unrestricted) funding across 37 organisations drawing on Independent Progress Reviews carried out for DFID’s PPA funding recipients after the first 18 months. It seeks to understand the added value of this funding for CSOs, their impact populations, funders and the wider development sector. The key ...» more
Gender, climate change and health
How do climate change, gender and health relate? This report shows how gender norms, attitudes and behaviours affect climate-related health risks and climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. It aims to provide a framework to strengthen World Health Organization (WHO) support to member states in developing health risk assessments and climate policy interventions that ...» more
Rebuilding state-society relations in post-war states: Assessing a theory of change approach to local governance reform in Timor- Leste
This paper analyses the Theory of Change underlying The Asia Foundation’s local governance reform programme in Timor-Leste. It explores the country's political and governance context and considered how well the Suku Governance Support Programme (PAGOS) responds to this. The paper highlights successes of, and tensions within, the programme approaches to state-society relations. ...» more
Function versus form in public sector reform
This book chapter aims to broaden the options for public sector reform. It explores micro-level initiatives that aim to support the emergence of institutions capable of fulfilling governance expectations. One approach is to focus on comprehensive reforms along Weberian principles with trickle-down principles. The other is more incremental via targeted efforts and ...» more
State of the industry 2014: Mobile financial services for the unbanked
Now available in over 60% of developing markets, mobile financial services (MFS) are firmly established in the financial sectors of the majority of the developing world and are increasingly being used to increase access to low-cost financial services including payments, transfers, insurance, credit and savings. This report outlines 2014 trends in availability, accessibility and ...» more
Men, masculinities, and changing power
The world is still far from achieving equality between women and men, but by many measures—including health, education, political participation, and income— it is closer to it than it was 20 years ago. This discussion paper draws on examples of various initiatives and research from around the world that illustrate global progress on men's engagement in gender equality in ...» more
Cash transfers and temptation goods: a review of global evidence
Cash transfers improve education and health outcomes and alleviate poverty in various contexts. This study finds that concerns that poor households will use transfers to buy alcohol, tobacco, or other "temptation goods" are unfounded. There is clear evidence that transfers are not consistently used for alcohol or tobacco consumption across different contexts and types of cash ...» more
