Working Paper
Who trusts?
In the developing world, clientelism is common. In Africa, public office is often used to redistribute resources to ethnically defined constituencies, and this form of clientelistic exchange is a key determinant of vote choice. Does clientelistic...
Working Paper
The negotiated politics of social protection in sub-Saharan Africa
Social assistance programmes proliferated and expanded across much of the global South from the mid-1990s. Within Africa there has been enormous variation in this trend: some governments expanded coverage dramatically while others resisted this. The...
Working Paper
Good for now but not forever: officials’ perspectives on the relevance of the effectiveness agenda and the need for change
This paper investigates whether the current effectiveness agenda—agreed during the 2011 Busan High Level Forum on Development Effectiveness—continues to define best practice in development amidst a rapidly changing development landscape. To do so, we...
Working Paper
The loser’s long curse: electoral consequences of a class conflict
This paper presents evidence of political legacies of exposure to a violent class conflict over 100 years. We revisit the Finnish Civil War of 1918 and first trace out the impact of local conflict exposure on electoral outcomes over a quarter-century...
Working Paper
Forced migration, aid effectiveness, and the humanitarian–development nexus
Bridging the gap between humanitarian assistance and development cooperation has been a contentious issue in academia and development practice for decades. Drawing on an evaluation of Germany’s ‘Partnership for Prospects’ initiative, this paper...
Working Paper
The politics of affirmative action: ethnicity, equity, and state-business relations in Malaysia
Malaysia provides for interesting paradoxes. Poverty was reduced by adopting a horizontal perspective to policy planning through affirmative action targeting one ethnic group lagging economically in society. However, outcomes of affirmative action...
Working Paper
Clientelism and governance
Unlike much of the growing literature on political clientelism, this short paper contains mainly the author’s general reflections on the broad issues of governance (or mis-governance including corruption), democracy, and state capacity that...
Working Paper
Formalizing clientelism in Kenya
Why does clientelism persist? What determines how politicians signal responsiveness or fulfil their campaign promises? Existing works assume that politicians choose the most successful means of winning votes—either through targeted patronage...
Working Paper
Poverty, changing political regimes, and social cash transfers in Zimbabwe, 1980–2016
Since 2000, Zimbabwe has been under some pressure to provide more fully for its children. It is not clear whether child poverty has worsened, although AIDS, drought, and economic mismanagement have all compromised poverty reduction. In any case...
Policy Brief
Aid effectiveness
The questions of whether aid has impact and is effective have been the subject of considerable attention. This thematic issue brings together nine studies that speak to the diverse ways in which aid affects development outcomes including, but not...
Working Paper
What does the evidence tell us about ‘thinking and working politically’ in development assistance?
This paper critically reviews evidence on ‘thinking and working politically’ in development. Scholars and practitioners have increasingly recognised that development is fundamentally political, and efforts are underway to develop more politically...
Working Paper
The global politics of social protection
Since the early 2000s international development agencies have actively promoted social protection as a new global public policy. This process can be understood as flowing from related shifts within the global political economy and of development...