1986: Volume 17
Volume 17 Number 2 May 1986
Edited by: Michael Lipton
Despite their diverse origins - and despite the deliberate inclusion of one outspokenly sceptical view of aid - these eleven papers imply clear conclusions about aid-effectiveness. 1. Most aid raises growth and/or reduces poverty (Section II). 2. A disturbingly large, possibly rising, proportion does neither. 3. Partly, this is because much aid serves mostly donor interests. 4. Partly, it is because of inappropriate recipient policies (Section III). 5. Donors' interests impede their, and recipients', efforts to improve recipients' policies. 6. Each donor to, and each ministry in, a recipient country is imprisoned in a dilemma. By pursuing self-interested policies, it often harms aid-effectiveness in that country (for a//donors and ministries). By avoiding them, it may lose out to less scrupulous donors and ministries. 'Coordination' is not a magic solution (Section IV). 7. Macroeconomic conditions - unlike sector dialogues - seldom work, but may be implicit in a shift from project to programme aid. 8. That shift, and the associated aid shift to Africa, require better institutional and manpower aid, to maintain adequate effectiveness of other aid (Section V). 9. Many factors - the limitations of conditionality; the record of antipoverty aid; the record of inefficiency, inequality, and arguably near-scandal, in aid allocation among recipients - suggest that major country reallocations are the key to increased aid-effectiveness
Volume 17 Number 1 January 1986
Edited by: Theo Mars and Gordon White
This Bulletin issue is based on the premise that policy discussions about the current 'crisis' in African agriculture will not prove useful unless they take into account the political and organisational factors which shape the capacity of states to define and deliver policies. We wish to investigate the hypothesis that many of Africa's economic failures have political foundations, and that the economic crisis is fed by and feeds a political crisis in the developmental role of African states. We focus on agriculture because the human problems it poses are the most urgent and since it lies at the roots of both crises.
1985: Volume 16
Volume 16 Number 4 October 1985
Edited by: Robin Luckham
Recession has coincided with a marked acceleration in the global arms race. After a period of decline (both in constant price values and relative to GNP) the military spending of the major Western powers, especially the United States, has increased sharply (Table 1). Trends in the socialist bloc are less easy to discern because of' the absence of reliable official figures, though most sources are in agreement that steady increases have occurred in the Soviet Union [SIPRI 1985: 2511 contrasting with the more cyclical behaviour of the United States. The deployment in Europe of Soviet SS2O and American Cruise and Pershing missiles has gone ahead. Having broken down altogether at the end of 1983, negotiations concerning nuclear weapons have (since January 1985) resumed; though for the present they remain little more than 'talks about talks', being stalled over the United States' Strategic Defence Initiative for defence against ballistic missiles ('Star Wars'). Meanwhile there has been no sign of a resumption of the talks between the two superpowers concerning the limitation of conventional arms transfers to developing countries or of those about military restraints in the Indian Ocean, broken off in the late 1970s.
Volume 16 Number 3 July 1985
Edited by: Caroline Allison and Reg Green
IDS has been involved in study, research, teaching and advising on sub-Saharan African development since its inception over two decades ago. Some IDS Fellows' experience in Africa goes back a quarter of a century. In the late 1970s most IDS members working in Africa were optimistic. Problems, mistakes and areas of uncertainty were clear, but the general impression was one of growing knowledge, more and - perhaps - more equitable development. SSA as a whole had apparently weathered the 1973-75 global economic shocks fairly speedily and appeared (as GDP figures later confirmed) to be doing better over 1976-79 than in any previous four-year period. Some countries were exceptions, and in 1979-80 IDS members tended to see the signs of an overall reversal of trend in the context of specific countries. Growing doubts were increased in the autumn of 1981 by the appearance of the World Bank's Accelerated Development Report.
Volume 16 Number 2 May 1995
Edited by: John Holmes and Colin Leys
The articles published in this issue are a selection - in a considerably shortened form - of the papers presented to a workshop held at Queen's University, Kingston, in May 1984, on the theme of 'Development in the 1980s: Canada in the Western Hemisphere'. The workshop was organised by the Queen's Programme of Studies in National and International Development, and it aimed to explore the implications of the current restructuring of the world economy for development in the Americas.
