Institute of Development Studies

All Content

1996: Volume 27

War and Rural Development in Africa

Volume 27 Number 3 July 1996 Edited by: Jeremy Swift

Rural development thinking can no longer claim that conflict falls outside its mandate, according to this edition of the IDS Bulletin. The nature of warfare in Africa is changing dramatically. War is being used as an instrument of policy, and becoming a way of life in the worst affected areas, with civilians, not combatants, the most vulnerable. The Bulletin explores new thinking on some of the critical issues that need to be addressed by development policy makers in order to adjust to these new realities. It argues that planners and researchers need to understand the causes and conduct of war, learn new skills, and develop new alliances - including, in some circumstances, with the military.

Evaluating Programme Aid

Volume 27 Number 4 October 1996 Edited by: Howard White and John Toye

Programme aid (import support, budgetary support and debt relief) has become an important form of aid in recent years. Unlike conventional project aid, there is no agreed evaluation methodology for these funds. At a time when aid budgets are under scrutiny in many countries it is important to know if these funds are well spent. Are they a good use of aid funds as compared to, for example, primary education? What impact, if any, do they have on the poor?

1997: Volume 28

Health in Transition: Reforming China's Rural Health Services

Volume 28 Number 1 January 1997 Edited by: Gerald Bloom and Andreas Wilkes

This issue of the IDS Bulletin asks whether China will be able to maintain cost-effective rural health services as it is transformed into a market economy. The papers were prepared as contributions to an intense debate underway in China. They explore how the re-organisation of the health sector and changes in the economic and institutional context within which it operates have affected the performance of rural health services. They also identify options for reform. Policy-makers in low and middle income countries can learn a great deal from the experience of the decade's most radical experiment in health sector reform.

Urban Poverty: A New Research Agenda

Volume 28 Number 2 May 1997 Edited by: Arjan de Haan

The developing world is urbanising fast, and urban poverty is on the increase. By 2025, it is estimated that 57% of the population in less developed countries will be living in urban areas. This Bulletin focuses on trends in urban poverty, and the challenges these present. It discusses concepts, the scale, and nature of urban poverty. It looks at the role of migration: do the migrants increase or decrease poverty in urban areas? Finally, it analyses the experience of poverty alleviation programmes in the fields of urban social development, infrastructure and employment creation. The focus is not just on developing countries. Poverty exists in Europe, too, and some of the articles draw attention to the problems nearer to home, comparing lessons on how to alleviate poverty.

Tactics and Trade-offs: Revisiting the Links Between Gender and Poverty

Volume 28 Number 3 July 1997 Edited by: Naila Kabeer

This Bulletin brings together a range of contributions analysing the interaction between gender and poverty from different disciplinary perspectives. Given the relevance of cultural context in defining the meaning of both gender and poverty, empirical case studies from different parts of the world are used to explore local constructions of the inter-relationship in order to move beyond the global generalisations which continue to dominate policy discussions. Contributions also reflect on the 'gender sub-texts' of the various official and grassroots discourses on poverty and on the political sub-texts of their discourses on gender and poverty. Who is defining these different agendas and whose reality really does count?