Institute of Development Studies

All Content

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.

1996: Volume 27

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?

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.

Liberalization and the New Corruption?

Volume 27 Number 2 May 1996 Edited by: Barbara Harriss-White and Gordon White

While there is a widely-accepted thesis that economic liberalization and/or political democratization can reduce levels of corruption in developing societies, recent experience suggests that the relationship is variable and in some contexts corruption may increase in consequence. The contributors to this Bulletin examine the relationship between corruption and economic/political liberalization across a wide range of countries and draw implications for designing feasible anti-corruption measures as part of the wider agenda of improving the quality of governance.

Poverty, Policy and Aid

Volume 27 Number 1 January 1996 Edited by: Bob Baulch

The World Bank's new strategy for poverty reduction was launched in the World Development Report of 1990. This issue of the Bulletin re-examines the Bank's new poverty agenda focusing on three key issues: the meaning and measurement of poverty, the interaction of poverty and domestic policy, and aid and poverty reduction.