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Publications (20)
Working Paper
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This paper investigates the impact of foreign aid on democratic outcomes using a panel of countries for the period between 1995 and 2018. In so doing, it speaks to a major critique of foreign aid, which is that it negatively impacts democratic governance. The analysis distinguishes between...
Blog
Democracy is having a hard time. In India, once the world’s largest democracy, the pandemic has hastened the country’s slide toward authoritarianism. In the US, the Trump administration’s attacks on democratic norms reached new lows when the former president, backed by the Republican party, refused...
Working Paper
pdf
– A systematic review of the literature
This study draws on a rigorous systematic review—to our knowledge the first in this area—to take stock of the literature on aid and democracy. It asks: Does aid—especially democracy aid—have positive impact on democracy? How? What factors most influence its impact? In so doing, it considers studies...
Development assistance to fragile states and conflict-affected areas is a core component of peacebuilding. It includes support for the restoration of core government functions, delivery of basic services, the rule of law, and economic revitalization. Yet, while aid has been among the largest...
– How to support effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions for sustainable development?
Aiding government effectiveness in developing countries has been a priority issue for the international donor community since the 1990s. With the Paris Declaration in 1994, donors further committed to aiding government effectiveness in a manner consistent with local ownership and harmonization with...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Finn Church Aid‘s Secondment in Somalia
Part of Journal Special Issue
Development Assistance for Peacebuilding
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Learning from ‘Successful’ Interventions in Fragile Situations
Part of Journal Special Issue
Development Assistance for Peacebuilding
Development assistance to fragile states and conflict-affected areas can be a core component of peacebuilding, providing support for the restoration of government functions, delivery of basic services, the rule of law and economic revitalization. Despite a wealth of research, however, significant...
Working Paper
pdf
– 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...
Journal Article
– What Do We Know? What Can Comparative Analysis Add?
Part of Journal Special Issue
Aid and Institution-Building in Fragile States
– Findings from Comparative Cases
Why and how some states transition successfully from fragile to more robust—and some do not—are both topical and age-old questions. This volume of The ANNALS addresses these questions with particular attention to the role of foreign aid, offering new traction on theory development on state-building...
For more than two decades, addressing constraints to better governance in developing countries has been a priority issue for the international donor community. Recent changes to aid modalities have further prioritized the need for improving governance in a manner that ensures local ownership and...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Aiding Government Effectiveness in Developing Countries
– 10 Questions
Recent years have seen a proliferation of composite indicators or indexes of governance and their use in research and policy-making. This article proposes a framework of 10 questions to guide both the development and evaluation of such indexes. In reviewing these 10 questions – only six of which, it...
– Considerations for Case Selection
Despite the widespread use of paired comparisons, we lack clear guidance about how to use this research strategy in practice, particularly in case selection. The literature tends to assume that cases are systematically selected from a known population, a major assumption for many topics of interest...
Blog
30 October 2013 Roger Williamson The UNU-WIDER meeting held last week in New York on the topic of fragility and aid argued forcefully that you cannot ‘fix’ failed states as you would a broken window. Drawing on over 80 papers from the governance and fragility theme of the ReCom—Research and...
Displaying 16 of 20 results