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Publications (39)
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– Finn Church Aid’s Secondment in Somalia
Donors face distinct challenges in operating in fragile states and supporting the building of state capacity. This paper explores one type of assistance – the ‘embedding’ of highly-skilled staff members within local government agencies – through a unique case study of Finn Church Aid’s experience...
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Rwanda and Burundi have both emerged from civil wars over the past 20 years and foreign donors have provided significant contributions to post-conflict reconstruction and development in the two countries. Yet although Rwanda and Burundi share several important characteristics, the social, political...
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– Public Financial Management Reforms in Sierra Leone
Since the end of the civil war, the Government of Sierra Leone has made substantial progress in strengthening public financial management. Improvements have been achieved across all aspects of the budget cycle and are particularly notable with regard to budget execution functions. The main factors...
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– Comparing Indonesia and Nigeria
This paper analyses the role of foreign aid to assist development in two oil-rich countries: Indonesia and Nigeria. This paper seeks to understand the way foreign aid provided assistance to transform Indonesia from a ‘fragile’ state in the 1960s into one of the ‘Asian Tigers’ in the mid-1990s, and...
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– Evidence from a Panel Threshold Framework
The aid-growth literature has been explored using a wide range of econometric methodologies. The evidence of the effectiveness of aid to promote economic growth is mixed, suggesting that the link between aid and growth is complex and may not be well identified by traditional methods. We take another...
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Why are some countries more successful at carrying out post-conflict reconstruction programmes than others? Why has Sierra Leone been more successful in the reform of its armed forces than Liberia has after the end of the Mano River Basin wars? This paper argues that the diverging outcomes are...
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– The Case of Somali-Inhabited Eastern Horn of Africa
Institution-building in Somalia has met with high levels of failure for two decades. But successes have occurred in other Somali-inhabited regions of the eastern Horn, and have been especially present at the local and municipal level. The most effective aid to institution-building in Somalia has...
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– UNICEF’s Education Programme in Somalia
The failure of the Somali state from 1993 to 2012 represents one of the world’s most profound and prolonged cases of state collapse. Initially, education and other government services came to a standstill. With the halt of fighting in some areas, local communities with the support of the United...
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– Kosovo and East Timor in Comparative Perspective
Why do some states, with foreign assistance, transition from ‘fragile’ to ‘robust?’ Scholars in state-building have argued that neotrusteeship is an effective strategy by which external organizations might build post-conflict states. This working paper tests this hypothesis, and two related...
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– Bangladesh and Pakistan Since 1971
Bangladesh and Pakistan had very divergent experiences with aid after 1971. Politics in Pakistan was less inclusive in terms of opportunities for intermediate class political entrepreneurs. In this context, the significant role of military aid to Pakistan had very negative effects on its political...
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This paper examines the questions of why and how foreign assistance was utilized successfully in South Korea but less so in Ghana, with a focus on the role of aid in the process of state building and state transition in these two countries. Before the 1960s, South Korea and Ghana shared...
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– the Cases of Greece and Italy
After the Second World War, both Greece and Italy experienced a Left-Right political polarization and a reproduction of earlier patterns of political patronage. Both Italy and Greece received international aid, including emergency relief, interim loans, and Marshall Plan funds. By the beginning of...
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– Starting from Scratch? Improving Representation and Responsiveness
After its 14-year civil war, Liberia worked with multiple donors and partners to restore security. This paper explores the Liberia National Police’s innovative efforts to create a more gender-sensitive police service and describes the international and domestic support it received in doing so. In...
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Facilitadores Judiciales is a programme run by the Organization of the American States and the Nicaraguan judiciary. The main objective of the programme is to improve access to justice for the disadvantaged people in Nicaragua. From 1998 to 2010 the programme was implemented in almost all rural and...
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– Assessing the Effects of Community-Driven Development in Afghanistan
This paper describes the results of an impact evaluation of the National Solidarity Programme, a community-driven development programme in Afghanistan that created democratic village councils and funded small-scale development projects. Using a randomized controlled trial across 500 villages, we...
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– a Review and Critique of Comparative Lessons
Since 2001 international attention has focused on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and specifically on the question of whether external intervention can assist weak or fragile states in successfully making the transition to stable democracies. Despite their differences, Iraq and Afghanistan...
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After receiving at least US$20 billion in aid for reconstruction and development over the past 60 years, Haiti has been and remains a fragile state, one of the worse globally. The reasons for aid failure are legion but mostly relate to highly dysfunctional Haitian regimes, sometimes destructive US...
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Sharing similar colonial and post-independence civil war experiences, Mozambique and Angola’s development paths are often contrasted, with foreign aid-dependent Mozambique hailed a success compared to oil rentier Angola. This paper questions the so-called Mozambican miracle and contrasts it with...
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– the Political Economy of Effective Aid
The World Bank’s health sector projects in Timor-Leste—the Health Sector Rehabilitation and Development Project and the Second Health Sector Rehabilitation and Development Project—have been among the few successful operations it has funded in that country. This paper examines the factors...
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– Bosnia in Comparative Perspective, 1995-Present
This paper examines Bosnia with some comparative insights from Northern Ireland. Both places were extremely fragile in the immediate aftermath of their brokered peace negotiations and consociational institutions, in Bosnia in 1995 and Northern Ireland in 1998. Bosnia in particular was the recipient...
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The aim of this paper is to explain the divergent developmental outcomes between South Korea, Taiwan, and South Vietnam. Whilst US aid has correctly been cited as key factor in explaining the rapid post-war development of South Korea and Taiwan, the ultimate failure to establish strong institutions...
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– a Comparative Analysis of Donor Practice
Forty billion dollars of official development assistance during 1991-2012 reduced Ethiopian absolute poverty while underwriting more efficient but exclusionary public institutions. This aid-institutions paradox reflects a strong interest-alignment between major donors pursuing geostrategic...
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– the Yemen Social Fund for Development Approach
The Yemen Social Fund for Development (SFD) was established in 1997 with the support of the international community, and in particular the World Bank, to combat national poverty and reinforce the limited existing social safety net. Since its inception, SFD has been widely viewed as successful in...
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There has long been an emphasis on the importance of decentralization in providing better quality public services in the developing world. In order to assess the effectiveness of decentralization I examine here the case study of Uganda, which has seen major decentralization of power over the last...
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– Critical and Less Critical Questions
Recent years have seen a proliferation of ‘composite indicators’ or ‘indexes’ of governance. Such measures can be useful tools for analysing governance, making public policy, building scientific knowledge, and even influencing ruling elites, but some are better tools than others and some are better...
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Can democracy be taught? Are individuals more likely to embrace democratic values, to learn basic knowledge about political processes, and to engage the political process more effectively as a result of their exposure to donor-sponsored civic education programmes in emerging democracies? After more...
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– Policies for Autonomy and Programming for Responsiveness
Donor support for decentralization comes in two main categories: recommendations at the policy level and project activities at the programming level. At the policy level, donors promote decentralization by recommending greater autonomy for subnational actors. That is, they advocate for reforms that...
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– Empowering Change
The notion that economic development in African states requires minimal levels of security has become widely accepted in the international development community. Reforming non-functioning policing systems is an important step toward achieving security, yet the experience of changing policing systems...
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– a Review of Donor Support to Strengthen Tax Systems in Developing Countries
Recent years have seen a growing interest among donors on taxation in developing countries. This reflects a concern for domestic revenue mobilization to finance public goods and services, as well as recognition of the centrality of taxation for growth and redistribution. The global financial crisis...
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– Improving the Economic and Regulatory Environment for Supporting Private Sector Activity
This paper reviews the state of knowledge on the effectiveness of donor interventions aimed at improving the regulatory environment for private sector development in developing countries. Where regulatory reform is undertaken, the expectation is that there will be improvements to economic and...
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– a Review
Civil service reform is one of the most intractable yet important challenges for governments and their supporters today. However, civil service reform thus far has largely failed. Based on a review of existing literature, this paper presents principles for donors, governments, and advocates to help...
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The ‘right’ choice of instruments and modalities to provide aid to developing countries in support of poverty reduction and economic development is arguably the most contested issue in the current international debate on aid effectiveness. A particular controversy exists around the provision of aid...
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