2007: Volume 38
Volume 38 Number 5 September 2007
Edited by: Joanna Chataway, Harro Maat and Linda Waldman
Science and technology need society. But does society need science and technology? This is one of the questions posed in this issue of the IDS Bulletin, which brings together insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Development Studies (DS).
Research proposals and technological planning have little chance of success without anticipating their effects on society. They gain wider acceptance by engaging citizens in debates on potentially controversial developments such as nanotechnology. This acceptance may be guided by norms or ethical principles, or may also be commercially viable.
The participatory agenda for science and technology is pushed by global supra-national networks, with programmes across all continents. So how does participation relate to science and technology? What are the power relations between scientists, policymakers and members of the public? What types of scientific and technological decisions can be influenced through participation?
Science and technology is everywhere and taken for granted in our daily lives - drinking water from a tap, buying food from a supermarket - and are implicit in development assumptions about modernisation and economic growth. Nonetheless, this is a changing world where questions of risk, safety and innovation are paramount. Scientific expertise can no longer rely on its assumed inherent authority.
News headlines broadcast controversies about how people mobilise around topics like climate change or GMO crops. Innovative new measures - such as consensus conferences, citizens' juries and community-based environmental audits - have been adopted to encourage public participation, and now frequently characterise science and policy processes both North and South.
Volume 38 Number 4 June 2007
Edited by: Stephany Griffith-Jones and Ricardo Gottschalk
Much of Asia, and especially East Asia, is growing at an impressive rate, though less than before the East Asian crisis. This allows for a very significant reduction in poverty. Continued high growth in this area is crucial as it has a large proportion of the world's poor.
Dynamism and growth in Asia is important for growth in the rest of the world, and for meeting the MDGs. A financial crisis could undermine this progress - the financial and development costs from the 1997/8 East Asian crisis were massive.
Over the last 25 years currency and banking crises have reduced incomes of developing countries by around 25 per cent, emphasising the importance of minimising the risk of crises occurring as much as possible. Sustaining high rates of growth is the challenge for East Asian policymakers. East and South-east Asian countries are increasingly dependent on exports; adjustment of global imbalances leading to a global economic slowdown could hit these countries hard.
Also the low-income countries analysed here have a narrow export base (though very dynamic), which make them even more vulnerable. Several articles in this IDS Bulletin highlight a shift in the banking system. If in the past it was good for supporting growth but weak for risk management, since the crisis it has moved towards better risk management but also towards weaker support for corporate activity. Credit is shifting from producers to consumers and the mortgage sector (following a worldwide trend in bank lending). Of concern is whether these trends could undermine the high growth of East Asia.
Volume 38 Number 3 May 2007
Edited by: Stephen Devereux and Rachel Sabates-Wheeler
The rapid rise of social protection up the development policy agenda has been startling: it can achieve bigger development objectives, such as economic growth and the MDGs. Its predecessor 'social safety nets' was disparaged and attacked during the 1990s, and was then reborn as 'social protection' at the turn of the millennium.
The new agenda comes with a fresh array of conceptual frameworks, analytical tools, empirical evidence, national policy processes, heavyweight agencies and big names in development studies behind it. It is amenable to the 'right' and 'left', and prioritises moving people productive livelihoods. Advocates for social protection fall into two broad camps - the 'instrumentalists' and the 'activists'.
For instrumentalists social protection is about putting in place risk management mechanisms that will compensate for incomplete insurance (and other) markets, until poverty reduction and market deepening allow private insurance to play a more prominent role. Activists view the persistence of extreme poverty, inequality and vulnerability as symptoms of social injustice and structural inequity, and campaign for social protection as an inviolable right of citizenship.
These issues are debated in this IDS Bulletin. Commentators were encouraged to be provocative and pithy - and the protagonists are given a 'right to reply' to their critics. Some stirring encounters result. This overview highlights how rapidly thinking and practice have moved forward in a few short years, but it has also revealed that a range of conceptual, empirical and policy issues remain unresolved.
Volume 38 Number 2 March 2007
Edited by: Lawrence Haddad and Caroline Knowles
Does development research need reinventing? If it does, why now and in what ways? These are the questions addressed by the papers in this issue of the IDS Bulletin, many of which were presented at IDS Fortieth Anniversary Conference in late 2006. They were also asked by the 46 Roundtables held throughout the world in 2006, organised by IDS partners and alumni, which preceded and helped frame the Conference agenda. Much is changing in 'development' and its political context. International development issues are becoming more global; inequality, capacity to use and generate knowledge, China's emergence altering Western assumptions, new sources of financial capital, information shared through the internet, new transnational alliances, sustainable development, consciousness in the West about living conditions in other countries, shrinking spheres of influence of the aid donors, and the blurring of boundaries between domestic and international policies.
Development research has constantly reinvented itself over the years, but for those involved in the IDS40 activities there was a sense that there is a need for development research to make a conscious decision to change direction. In the West, one's fortieth birthday is known as a watershed year - an ending of one phase of life and a beginning of another. But in many countries the fortieth birthday signals a very different kind of transition as one draws closer to the end of life expectancy. It is natural therefore to reflect on how much has changed in the world since IDS was founded in 1966 and to characterise the above changes as some kind of fork in the road or threshold for development and therefore for development research.
Volume 38 Number 1 January 2007
Edited by: Mark Robinson
Does the devolution of responsibility for service provision to elected local authorities improve the delivery of services to the poor? This is the major challenge of democratic decentralisation and a key benchmark for assessment.
Many governments devolve power and resources to local bodies which assume responsibility for health, education and other essential services. Decentralised service delivery is now a key determinant for less developed countries (LDCs) to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
While decentralisation potentially increases accountability and participation at the local level, for poor people the real test lies in whether it improves services and material well-being. Improvements in democratic accountability and service delivery are not mutually exclusive but can complement and reinforce each other.
However, decentralisation policy initiatives often strengthen local democracy without considering benefits to service delivery. The challenge is that evidence to support decentralised service delivery is fragmentary and inconsistent, and conditions for successful devolution of services are poorly understood.
The articles in this IDS Bulletin discuss these issues, with evidence on service delivery outcomes from a range of developing countries, and implications for designing reforms that maximise prospects for improvements in the quality and access of services for the poor.
Democratic decentralisation is still a relatively new phenomenon in most LDCs and positive results will take time to mature. Short-term and time-bound interventions will not work; steady, incremental and well-resourced initiatives that build capacity and increase accountability are instead the surest route to realising the promise of democratic decentralisation.
