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