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WIDER Angle April 2012
With our temperatures now well above zero, we head for the official end of the Finnish winter on 1st May (the ‘Vappu’ holiday). As reported last month, the annual bird migration is well under way. Arriving too, are UNU-WIDER’s many visitors on our PhD internship and visiting scholar programmes, including this year researchers from India, South Africa, Ghana, the USA, and many other countries. They find a welcoming nest at UNU-WIDER for the spring and summer months. Full article.
FEATURE ARTICLES
Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Joelle Malokele Nanivazo
Sexual violence crime (SV) in wartime is not a new phenomenon. Mass rapes have occurred in armed conflicts in Rwanda, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, to give just a few examples. But the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has attracted very large amounts of international attention. Full article.
Lessons from Africa's Democratic Upheavals
Danielle Resnick
During the last month, three democracies in Africa witnessed incumbent presidents exit office in very different ways. The most dramatic was in Mali where a coup by the military resulted in the ousting of President Amadou Toumani Touré only one month before that country was due to hold elections. In neighboring Senegal, a potentially violent election resulted in the incumbent Abdoulaye Wade peacefully leaving office after 12 years and handing over power to his former prime minister and erstwhile protégé, Macky Sall. At the other end of the continent, President Bingu wa Mutharika's controversial tenure in office suddenly ended in early April with his death from cardiac arrest. Full article.
UNU-WIDER video series -
Interview with Michael Woolcock
The featured video of this month, a UNU-WIDER interview series in which researchers from our global network answer questions on hot development topics.
Michael Woolcock, Lead Social Development Specialist, the World Bank, discusses the concept and routes to aid effectiveness, capability traps, governance and gives advice for future research on development issues for students of these subjects.
RESEARCHAngle
The Politics of Inequality and Redistribution in Latin America’s Post-Adjustment Era
How did Latin America's transition to political democracy and market liberalism in the last decades of the 20th century set the scene for a new politics of inequality? The declines in social and economic inequality registered in many Latin American countries since the late 1990s coincided with a shift away from the politics of market based structural adjustment and towards a political landscape in which the social problems of poverty and inequality play a prominent role. This re-politicization of inequality has manifested itself both in the revival of mass protest movements and in an electoral turn to the left and has resulted in a diverse array of policy tools for tackling inequality, poverty and underemployment. Full article.
Zambia - Foreign aid and Democratic Consolidation
After the democratic transfer of power from the one party government of the United National Independence Party in 1991 Zambia was heralded as a model of African democracy. In 2011 the now main opposition party, Patriotic Front, won an election victory thus making Zambia one of the select group of African nations that have experienced two peaceful electoral turnovers. However institutional reforms have not produced effective watchdogs or counter forces to prevent state malpractice and corruption and over time increasing amounts of power have been concentrated in the executive office. Full article.
Democratic transitions in Africa: the impacts of development aid and democracy assistance
The question of how aid impacts democracy in sub-Saharan Africa is important for both normative and instrumental reasons. Civil and political rights are a part of human freedom and the lack of them constitutes a major deprivation. Furthermore, some research suggests that democratic regimes are more likely to be interested in the developmental outcomes of their citizens. Full article.
Employment in Tunisia: What Do We Know? What is the Way Forward?
On 10th of April, UNU-WIDER and the African Development Bank organized a workshop on 'Employment in Tunisia: What Do We Know? What is the Way Forward?'. The purpose of this one-day workshop was to bring together academics and policy-makers in Tunisia and establish the research and policy priorities on employment for the country. It also aimed to establish and strengthen partnerships between researchers and policy-makers in the country. Read more.
ANNOUNCEMENT
Call for Papers: UNU-WIDER Conference on Climate Change and Development Policy. Submission deadline is 10 June 2012.
UNU-WIDER Climate Change and Development Policy Conference 2012.pdf (537.27 kilobytes)
UPCOMING EVENTS
Results meetings: ReCom – Research and Communication on Foreign Aid, Democracy & Fragility. Sida, Stockholm, Sweden 10 May 2012
HECER-UNU-WIDER Seminar: Living through Crises: How the Food, Fuel, and Financial Shocks Affect the Poor, by Rasmus Heltberg to be held in Helsinki
05 June 2012
Book Launch: Economies in Transition: The Long-Run View. Edited by Gérard Roland. Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
To be held in London, UK 19 June 2012
RECENT EVENTS
Seminar: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? Progress, Setbacks, and Possibilities for Democratization in Africa, Helsinki,
18 April 2012
Workshop: Unemployment in Tunisia: What do we know? Where do we go? Tunis-Belvedère, Tunisia 10 April 2012
Lecture: Social transfers against poverty and malnutrition: what do we know about their effectiveness? Held at the University of Helsinki, Finland 3 April 2012
Development Policy Seminar: organized jointly by UN-DESA and UNU-WIDER. Development Strategy and Policy Analysis, 'The Economics (and Politics) Behind South Africa’s Carbon Tax'. Held in New York, NY USA
3 April 2012
Seminar: The Political Economy of Green Growth by Finn Tarp, Director of UNU-WIDER. Trinity College Dublin and the Human Development Initiative (HDI) at the University of Dublin, Ireland
23 March 2012
Seminar: ReCom Aid and Growth - an Overview at DFID, London, UK
19 March 2012
Book Launch and Seminar: Fragile States: Causes, Costs, and Responses. Edited by Wim Naudé, Amelia U. Santos-Paulino, and Mark McGillivray. Published by Oxford University Press. To be held within the CSAE annual conference, Oxford UK. 19 March 2012
Book Launch and Seminar: Fragile States: Causes, Costs, and Responses. Edited by Wim Naudé, Amelia U. Santos-Paulino, and Mark McGillivray. Published by Oxford University Press. To be held in Florence, Italy. Held in collaboration with UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre: http://www.unicef-irc.org/. Florence, Italy.
14 March 2012
ReCom Project event: Sida Development Talks – Development Assistance and Growth, Stockholm , Sweden 13 March 2012
PUBLICATIONS
Book: Economies in Transition: The Long-Run View
Edited by Gérard Roland
What is the (New) Deal with Fragile States?
Wim Naudé UNU Policy Brief 01/2012
WIDER Working Papers 2012
Ghana: The Limits of External Democracy Assistance
E. Gyimah-Boadi and Theo Yakah WP/040
Social Capital, Network Effects and Savings in Rural Vietnam
Carol Newman, Finn Tarp and Katleen Van Den Broeck WP/039
Risk experiments in gains and losses: A case study for Benin Jonathan Gheyssens and Isabel Günther WP/038
Donor Assistance and Political Reform in Tanzania
Aili Mari Tripp WP/037
Ordinal Welfare Comparisons with Multiple Discrete Indicators: A First Order Dominance Approach and Application to Child Poverty Channing Arndt, Roberta Distante, M. Azhar Hussain, Lars Peter Østerdal, Pham Lan Huong, Maimuna Ibraimo WP/036
Consequences of Aid Volatility for Macroeconomic Management and Aid Effectiveness
John Hudson WP/035
Mapping the Impacts of Food Aid: Current Knowledge and Future Directions
Amy Margolies, and John Hoddinott WP/034
Beyond Electoral Democracy: Foreign Aid and the Challenge of Deepening Democracy in Benin
Mamoudou Gazibo WP/033
International Coordination and the Effectiveness of Aid
Arne Bigsten and Sven Tengstam WP/032
Aid and Growth Accelerations: Vulnerability Matters
Patrick Guillaumont, and Laurent Wagner WP/031
Good Governance as a Concept, and Why This Matters for Development Policy
Rachel M. Gisselquist WP/030
Fiscal Composition and Aid Effectiveness: A Political-Economy Model
Paul Mosley WP/029
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Limits of Foreign Aid on Malawi’s Democratic Consolidation
Danielle Resnick WP/028
Corruption and the Efficiency of Capital Investment in Developing Countries
Conor M. O’Toole and Finn Tarp WP/027
Aid and Dutch Disease in Sub-Saharan Africa
David Fielding and Fred Gibson WP/026
How Aid Supply Responds to Economic Crises: A Panel VAR Approach
Joanna Gravier-Rymaszewska WP/025
Aid as a Second-Best Solution: Seven Problems of Effectiveness and How to Tackle Them
Richard Manning WP/024
Macroeconomic Policies, Growth, Employment, and Inequality in Latin America
Mario Damill and Roberto Frenkel WP/023
Aid, Growth and Private Capital Flows to Ghana
Robert Darko Osei WP/022
Aid, Structural Change and the Private Sector in Africa
John Page WP/021
Foreign Aid and Democratic Development in Africa
Simone Dietrich and Joseph Wright WP/20
Foreign Assistance and the Food Crisis of 2007–08
Philip Abbott WP/19
The Changing Dynamics of Foreign Aid and Democracy in Mozambique
Carrie Manning and Monica Malbrough WP/018
The Dynamics of Inequality Change in a Highly Dualistic Economy: Honduras, 1991–2007 Stephan Klasen, Thomas Otter and Carlos Villalobos Barría WP/017
Foreign Aid and Democratic Consolidation in Zambia
Lise Rakner WP/16
Foreign Aid in Africa: Tracing Channels of Influence on Democratic Transitions and Consolidation
Danielle Resnick WP/15
Changes in Labour Market Conditions and Policies: Their Impact on Wage Inequality during the Last Decade
Saúl N. Keifman, and Roxana Maurizio WP/014
Social Policies or Private Solidarity?: The Equalizing Role of Migration and Remittances in El Salvador
Carlos Acevedo and Maynor Cabrera WP/013
Redistribution without Structural Change in Ecuador: Rising and Falling Income Inequality in the 1990s and 2000s
Juan Ponce, and Rob Vos WP/012
The Political Economy of Green Growth: Illustrations from Southern Africa
Danielle Resnick, Finn Tarp, and James Thurlow WP/011
The Rise and Fall of Income Inequality in Mexico, 1989–2010
Raymundo Campos, Gerardo Esquivel, and Nora Lustig WP/010
Inequality Trends and their Determinants: Latin America over 1990-2010
Giovanni Andrea Cornia WP/09
The Politics of Inequality and Redistribution in Latin America’s Post-Adjustment Era
Kenneth M. Roberts WP/08
Impact of Foreign Aid on Economic Growth in Sierra Leone: Empirical Analysis
Philip Michael Kargbo WP/07
Transitional Justice and Aid
Sirkku K. Hellsten WP/06
How to Spend it: The organization of public spending and aid effectiveness
Paul Collier WP/05
Policy Regimes, Inequality, Poverty and Growth: The Chilean Experience, 1973-2010
Dante Contreras, and Ricardo Ffrench-Davis WP/04
Did Trade Openness Affect Income Distribution in Latin America? Evidence for the years 1980–2010
Miguel Székely, and Claudia Sámano WP/03
Contested Relationships: Women’s Economic and Social Empowerment, Insights from the Transfer of Material Assets in Bangladesh
Lucy Scott WP/02
Aid and Government Fiscal Behaviour: What Does the Evidence Say?
Oliver Morrissey WP/01
Information on all of WIDER's publications is available on our website: http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/
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