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Publications (146)
Book Chapter
– A global look at the first year of the pandemic
From the book:
How States Respond to Crisis
– Pandemic Governance Across the Global South
BOOK IN PRODUCTION | SCHEDULED FOR PUBLICATION FEBRUARY 2025We expect the state to matter in times of crisis to better provide for and protect their populations. But how is it, precisely, that the quality of the state matters? This book speaks to this question through comparative study of how...
Working Paper
pdf
Legal identity is an important aspect of securing access to public services, such as education, healthcare, and social protection services, including child support grants. In the South African context, in the post-apartheid period, many poor South Africans benefited from well-organized civil...
– A guide for billionaires seeking impact
Where should billionaires spend their money if they want to make a positive difference? I spoke to the experts in our network and took a look at recent UN flagship reports to gain insights into this critical question.In 2021, Elon Musk made a claim on social media that he would sell Tesla shares to...
Working Paper
pdf
– What can we learn from past stateness?
Supporting state capacity is a priority for the international community, yet the record of internationally supported statebuilding to date has been mixed at best. A key question for continuing research concerns the factors influencing more versus less successful interventions. We show that the...
Working Paper
pdf
Affirmative action, or positive discrimination favouring the members of marginalized populations, is a key policy approach to addressing group-based inequalities. It is adopted in dozens of countries around the world in the areas of, for instance, university enrolment, public employment, and...
Dr Miguel Niño-Zarazúa explores the complex effects of clientelism on economic development, state capacity, and governance, emphasising the need for nuanced research to understand these dynamics in the context of rising populism and autocracies.The intricate relationship between clientelistic...
Journal Special Issue
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Political clientelism — which reflects strategic, discretionary, and targeted exchange of private goods and services for political support to the incumbent — has characterised distributive politics in the Global South for decades. The conditional nature of exchange between political parties and...
Working Paper
pdf
– A combined principal components and clustering analysis
Better understanding of inequality, including its relationship to governance and other key outcomes, is relevant both to academic researchers and to policy-makers. Nevertheless, efforts to establish causal relationships empirically remain hampered by the quality and availability of data, especially...
UNU-WIDER operates at the intersection of research, capacity development, and policy engagement, with a mission to improve the lives of the world’s poorest people. Each year, we publish hundreds of papers, open access books, journal articles, convene dozens of events and capacity development...
In a landmark judgment in June 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled against the use of race-conscious admissions in colleges and universities. This decision marked a controversial end to affirmative action in US higher education admissions.Race-conscious admissions policies at American universities have...
Report
pdf
This study is part of a series of ten country-focused desk studies on aid and democracy prepared under the project The state and statebuilding in the Global South. They are prepared under the guidance of Rachel M. Gisselquist as background to a broader research effort on aid, governance, and...
Report
pdf
This study is part of a series of ten country-focused desk studies on aid and democracy prepared under the project The state and statebuilding in the Global South. They are prepared under the guidance of Rachel M. Gisselquist as background to a broader research effort on aid, governance, and...
Report
pdf
This study is part of a series of ten country-focused desk studies on aid and democracy prepared under the project The state and statebuilding in the Global South. They are prepared under the guidance of Rachel M. Gisselquist as background to a broader research effort on aid, governance, and...
Report
pdf
This study is part of a series of ten country-focused desk studies on aid and democracy prepared under the project The state and statebuilding in the Global South. They are prepared under the guidance of Rachel M. Gisselquist as background to a broader research effort on aid, governance, and...
Donors increasingly speak of locally led aid response, but often do not walk the walk. Case in point is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the humanitarian and development agency of the largest donor country in the world. In late 2021, USAID set a target that 25% of its...
Displaying 16 of 146 results