How can legal systems in the Asia-Pacific region be reformed to ensure that men and women receive equal treatment under the law? This report argues that despite the region's success in legislating against gender discrimination, Asia-Pacific still lags behind in the many basic issues of gender equality. Reforms must address both the overt discrimination that characterises many ...» 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.
Rule of Law Tools for Post-Conflict States: National Consultations on Transitional Justice
How can national consultations support effective transitional justice programmes? This report presents national consultations as a crucial element of the human rights-based approach to transitional justice. A process of consultations ensures that there is local ownership and participation and can bolster transitional justice programmes by reigniting stalled peace processes and ...» more
Making Social Transfers Appropriate, Achievable and Acceptable: A Practical Tool for Good Targeting
How can social transfers best be targeted to address financial poverty? How can decision-makers navigate trade-offs between different targeting choices? This guidance note presents a 'targeting decision tree'. It outlines the minimum data and information requirements for good targeting and the questions requiring answers. Decisions should be based on whether targeting is ...» more
Cash Transfers and Voting Behaviour: Redistribution and Clientelism in Developing Democracies
What was the political impact of the government's Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme in the 2006 Brazilian elections? This study estimates the extent to which the programme increased the probability of voting for President Lula. It concludes that Bolsa Família undoubtedly helped to re-elect Lula. While there is still considerable debate over the long-term ...» more
Promoting Citizen-Centric Public Service Delivery in Post-Conflict Situations
What challenges and strategies are involved in rebuilding public service delivery after conflict? This chapter considers the benefits of a multi-stakeholder approach and the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Effective delivery of public services contributes to peace and stability, which in turn facilitates economic development. Post-conflict ...» more
Capacity and Capacity Development: Coping with Complexity
What has been learned about capacity and capacity development (CD), and their relationship to achieving sustainable results? What are the implications for analysis and practice? This introductory article to a symposium on capacity and CD highlights: the benefits of viewing capacity and CD through systems lenses; the salience of politics; and the need for new approaches to the ...» more
The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace
Should international actors support the emergence of democracy? This book provides an empirically-grounded analysis of the development track record of poor countries with both democratic and oppressive political systems. It argues that democracy supports development and reduces the likelihood of violent conflict, recommending that democracy be made central to international ...» more
Introduction: Negotiating Empowerment
Why are conventional interventions that seek to promote women’s empowerment insufficient? This article highlights the choices, negotiations, narratives, and context of women’s lived experience. It finds that empowerment is a complex process of negotiation rather than a linear sequence of inputs and outcomes. Governments and development agencies need to give more consideration ...» more
The State’s Legitimacy in Fragile Situations: Unpacking Complexity
State legitimacy provides the basis for rule by consent rather than coercion, but in fragile situations multiple, conflicting sources of legitimacy co-exist. How can the complex interactions between these different sources be better understood and constructively combined? Donors should pay particular attention to: (a) legitimacy deriving from shared beliefs and traditions; and ...» more
Assessing the Extent to Which the News Media Act as Watchdogs, Agenda Setters and Gatekeepers
This review from the World Bank's Communication for Governance and Accountability Program finds that news media are important in furthering democratic governance, provided they are set up in a way that allows them to act as effective watchdogs, agenda setters and gatekeepers. Barriers to the fulfilment of these roles include restrictions on press freedom, market failures, lack ...» more
Struggles for Freedom of Information in Africa
How far have rights to information progressed in Africa? The conditions that make information access rights both important and hard to implement are seen in their most extreme forms in Africa. This chapter presents case studies from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique and South Africa. The advance of information rights in Africa has been limited. However, low-key activity ...» more
Election Campaigns, Partisan Balance, and the News Media
What is the impact of partisan balance in the news media during elections in democracies and societies in transition? This book chapter from the World Bank examines the impact of balance and bias in the news media on public opinions, political behaviour and, ultimately, on election outcomes. Drawing on case studies of recent elections in Kenya, Russia, Mexico and Turkey, it ...» more
Do No Harm: International Support for Statebuilding
How can donor interventions hinder or assist statebuilding processes? This report from the OECD's Development Assistance Committee draws on country case-studies to examine five key areas of statebuilding. Donors operating in fragile states need to analyse where their own countries’ strategic objectives contradict statebuilding objectives and where statebuilding objectives are ...» more
Citizen-centric Governance Indicators: Measuring and Monitoring Governance by Listening to the People and Not the Interest Groups
How can governance measurement be improved? Governance indicators influence development work and foreign direct investment, but this World Bank paper argues that current indicators are inadequate because they fail to conceptualise governance or to capture citizen opinion. It offers instead a citizen-centric framework for measuring governance quality based on four dimensions: ...» more
What is the case for a security and justice focus in development assistance programming?
Why should DFID and other development agencies see security and justice as core business? This review finds a growing body of empirical evidence to support the argument that shortfalls in security and justice are central to poverty, underdevelopment and limit the ability to meet the MDGs. It highlights how the question of the ways in which donor assistance programmes can be ...» more
Bringing wellbeing into development practice
There has been growing interest in wellbeing within international development. This paper addresses the lack of clarity on how to translate interest in wellbeing within international developing into practice at programme and project level. It reviews a number of different approaches and proposes a new conceptual framework that builds on their strengths. It reflects on how the ...» more
Democratic decentralisation programming handbook
This report provides an introduction to key concepts in decentralization, with a particular focus on decentralization’s essential characteristics: authority, autonomy, accountability, and capacity. It describes the primary dimensions and forms of decentralization; and the three major goals that countries often pursue through decentralization.The report also looks at the major ...» more
Gender as an Entry Point for Addressing Social Exclusion and Multiple Disparities in Education
This paper proposes that multiple disparities in education might be best addressed by working through gender. It provides an exploration of the gender disparities pointing out links to the social and educational exclusion of marginalised groups. The discussion is structured around three main themes: Identities, Power and Processes and Methodologies. This paper was presented at ...» more
Gender and Care: Overview Report
Providing care can be both a source of fulfilment and a terrible burden. For women and girls in particular, their socially prescribed role as carers can undermine their rights and limit their opportunities, capabilities and choices – posing a fundamental obstacle to gender equality and well-being. This paper explores the issue of care and gender in terms of development and ...» more
Analysing Wellbeing: a Framework for Development Practice
This paper is a piece of advocacy for the use of wellbeing analysis in social and development policy and practice, drawing on the work of the Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research Group (WeD) at the University of Bath, UK. The paper offers a simple definition of wellbeing, and then explores the three basic dimensions that this comprises. It notes some potential hazards in ...» more
