The Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) is an intergovernmental advisory body, which formally came into existence in June 2006. The PBC, the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) and the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) comprise the UN’s new peacebuilding architecture. ‘The PBC (and by extension, the PBF and PBSO) were designed to:bring sustained attention to the pressing needs of countries ...» more
Helpdesk Reports
These rapid-response reports provide digests of key research findings, lessons and expert thinking on specific questions from development practitioners and policymakers. If your question is not already covered below, ask us for a report (free for staff of agencies that we have existing arrangements with).
Technical Assistance for Post-disaster Recovery
There is a paucity of literature making explicit recommendations for technical assistance to support long-term recovery in post-disaster conflicts. Nevertheless, much of the criticism leveled against TA is the same as that leveled against early recovery interventions, including:the fact that TA remains largely supply-drivena low level of ownership and involvement on the part of ...» more
Performance of Civil Society Organisations
There is no clear consensus that civil society organisations necessarily perform better or worse than private sector, government, or multilateral organisations. Few studies make direct comparisons of performance, but those that do show mixed results. This is not surprising, considering the wide range of organisations and country contexts.This report focuses primarily on the ...» more
Support to Public Administration Reform in Central and Eastern Europe
In general MDTFs are a popular way of organising donor support for public administration reform (PAR) in difficult transition environments. The perceived benefits are: lower transaction costs for donors coordination of donor priorities and approaches attracting a wide range of donors to contribute facilitating easier harmonisation with country strategies and ...» more
Deteriorating Governance
The literature on the causes and forms of deteriorating governance is in its infancy, and draws heavily from the broader and more established literature on the causes of forms of fragility. Some of the prominent themes on the causes of deteriorating governance are: Common pathways to deterioration are escalation of communal conflict, state predation, regional or guerilla ...» more
Economic Growth and Statebuilding
There is very limited literature that explicitly discusses linkages between (1.) economic growth and employment generation and (2.) state- and peace-building. As such, this helpdesk report relies on literature that makes implicit references to such connections. The following are a summary of key points that emerged from the review. The review did not uncover any information ...» more
The World Bank in Fragile States
Some of the recurring findings from the literature on the World Bank’s performance in fragile and conflict-affected states include the following:Despite efforts to become more conflict-sensitive, the Bank’s approach to conflict-affected and post-conflict states focuses more on ‘doing things differently’ than ‘doing different things’. This is partly due to a continued reluctance ...» more
Public Financial Management and Frontline Service Delivery
A review of the literature suggests that in designing PFM reform programmes it is essential to consider the following:PFM reforms must be understood as part of a more general public sector reform process.PFM reforms should have poverty reduction as a central objective.PFM reforms need to be designed at sector level in order to accommodate the needs, capacities and willingness ...» more
Political Economy of Sub-National Government
Of the limited recent literature that considers the political economy of sub-national (state and provincial) government, the case of Afghanistan is prominent. International support to sub-national governance in Afghanistan has been relatively well documented, with much of the literature emphasising that reform efforts have often neglected to account for the political economy of ...» more
Political Economy of Civil Service Reform
Much of the recent literature on civil service reform (CSR) emphasises that reforms have tended to fail and that political factors are critical to the success or failure or reform efforts. Political contextual factors and the impact of bureaucrats’ and politicians’ personal interests are most frequently discussed. Regional and ethnic political factors were generally not ...» more
Long-Term Job Creation in Fragile States
There is very limited literature on the promotion of sustainable longer-term employment in fragile states. Most resources on job creation focus on short-term job creation and income-generation in conflict-affected contexts. There is, however, some discussion on how to link short-term job creation efforts with longer-term action that lays the foundation for sustainable jobs ...» more
Civil Service Reform in Rwanda
It is generally asserted that the Government of Rwanda has embarked on an impressive array of public sector reforms, with little criticism of their commitment or political willingness to support change. Public sector reform is discussed in the following policy contexts: human resource development; good governance and institutional strengthening; decentralisation to district- ...» more
Donor Engagement with Social Movements
There is very limited literature on donor engagement with social movements. Of the literature that exists, the majority have been critical of such engagement. It is argued that donor funding of social movements, often through the funding of civil society organisations (CSOs) and NGOs, has co-opted and diluted these movements and led to the defection of its members. This has ...» more
Social Movements and Poverty Reduction
There is limited research available on the role of social movements in development processes. It is widely acknowledged that establishing a causal relationship between social movements and any observed change in societies is problematic. In particular, attribution is difficult because there are usually multiple variables involved in any process of social change, including other ...» more
Vetting Public Employees
Vetting refers to “processes for assessing an individual’s integrity as a means of determining his or her suitability for public employment.” Vetting may be applied to people who already hold public service positions, typically in post-conflict, post-authoritarian, or otherwise transitional contexts with the objective of removing individuals responsible for war crimes, human ...» more
Research on Social Movements
A number of specific research programmes and projects are using a multidisciplinary approach to probe the questions surrounding the dynamics, influence and prospects of social movements (as variously defined). The prominent programmes are located in the United Kingdom, but operate through international partnerships with other universities and research centres. Social movement ...» more
Arab Donorship in Yemen
There is limited literature on Arab donorship. This is due in part to insufficient attention paid by the academic and donor community to Arab aid, and also to inadequate sharing of information by Arab donors themselves. Of the resources that do exist, there are none that provide in-depth research, analysis or evaluation on aid to Yemen. As such, this helpdesk research ...» more
Budget Support and Civil Society
The following points are repeatedly made in the literature with regard to civil society engagement in the context of budget support: The key role for civil society in PRBS is in holding government to account, along with parliament. Donors providing budget support to governments have tended to simultaneously provide support to civil society to strengthen their capacities ...» more
African Regional Governance Institutions
There are vast literatures on regional integration and the role of regional institutions in Africa, ranging from official documentation to academic commentary. There are fewer evaluations or assessments of the attempts by regional institutions to promote good governance in Africa.Notwithstanding, the following challenges are identified in the literature:lack of political will ...» more
Costs of Urbanisation
Half of the global population now lives in cities. Urban growth is occurring most rapidly in the developing world, where cities gain an average of 5 million residents every month (UN-HABITAT, 2008). Urbanisation processes have been prevalent in Asia and while they have raised living standards in many countries, they have also produced other economic, social and environmental ...» more
