Volume 40 Number 5 October 2009 Edited by: Neil McCulloch and Andy Sumner
How is the global financial crisis affecting developing countries and what should policy responses be? This is the subject of this IDS Bulletin. In this introduction, we summarise the key findings of a set of research projects on the financial crisis undertaken at IDS between February and April 2009 and propose policy responses.
Volume 40 Number 6 January 2009 Edited by: Peter K. Spink, Naomi Hossain and Nina J. Best
Two previously independent debates in international circles are now coming closer together: development (poverty reduction, economic progress, etc) and human rights (violations of rights and refugee protection). Totally separate during the 1950s-1980s, moving in parallel in different issue networks and communities with different publications, conferences, organisations or departments, they are increasingly found together for both substantive and tactical reasons.
The same can be said for the themes that stimulated the research programme whose results are being presented in this IDS Bulletin: decentralisation, local government, participation and governance on the one hand, and poverty and inequality on the other. It has been assumed that as societies get better at being broader and open so services improve and things will get better for those in poverty. However, the two themes have followed their own routes and it is only now, with concerns about accountability and transparency, that the two have bumped into each other.
The current study is a continuation of previous work by LogoLink, that advances understanding of the changing roles of social actors and their strategies in promoting local democratic environments that contribute to reducing poverty and exclusion. It draws on specially commissioned studies that look at two central dimensions: key actors, processes/strategies and the relationship between them. At a global level, the rationale for this research draws on discussions with donors and international actors about the impacts of participation on poverty reduction and social inclusion and where there is a general consensus that top-down development policymaking and implementation has fallen short of addressing the needs of the poor.
Volume 41 Number 1 November 2010 Edited by: Andy Sumner and Claire Melamed
Do the MDGs still reflect what is important about how development happens and how policy influences that process? The MDGs were an approach born of a benign era of relative stability, stronger economic growth and fairly buoyant aid budgets.
We now face a very different world. Changes sparked by uncertainty, and a sense of multiple insecurities, could impact adversely on poverty levels. The economic crisis has led to significant changes in the context for international development and the crisis/post-crisis context is central to many MDG questions in terms of impacts on poverty and on development commitments over the next ten years.
Articles in this IDS Bulletin inform the debate in 2010, leading up to and beyond the UN MDG review summit, and reflect on the MDG experience so far. They ask what that experience means for the next five years and beyond. What have the MDGs actually achieved, and for whom? What can we learn from the MDGs about how the international community can best play a role in national processes of development and poverty reduction? Will the MDGs prove to reflect an international commitment to poverty reduction that goes beyond 2015, or are they the product of a specific moment, unlikely to be repeated?
The debate around what should succeed the MDGs after 2015 is still in its early stages and many fear talking about this will derail the momentum around them. As the articles here, and the conversations over this year and next will demonstrate, it is sure to go to the heart of what international development is all about.
Volume 41 Number 2 January 2010 Edited by: Andrea Cornwall and Jenny Edwards
This IDS Bulletin draws out some of the dilemmas around women's empowerment: choices, negotiations, narratives and contexts of women's lived experience. It shows that empowerment is a complex process that requires more than the quick and easy solutions offered by development agencies (who need to have a deeper understanding of what makes change happen in women's lives). The issue draws on the work of an international network of researchers - the Research Programme Consortium Pathways of Women's Empowerment (‘Pathways') - and brings fresh empirical and conceptual insights to development academics and policy actors. The focus is not just on what women are doing to change their own personal circumstances, it also extends to collective action and institutionalised mechanisms aimed at changing structural relations.
Important issues such as education and legal reforms are highlighted, as well as previously neglected concepts such as relationships, leisure, pleasure, love and care. Women's own voices continue to be disregarded and it is time that more attention was paid to them.
Most of all, this Bulletin emphasises that empowerment is a complex process of negotiation, not a linear sequence of inputs and outcomes. Policies that view women as instrumental to other objectives cannot promote women's empowerment, because they fail to address the structures by which gender inequality is perpetuated over time: governments and development agencies should invest in creating an enabling environment and tackle deep-rooted issues of power that impede transformative change.
Volume 41 Number 3 April 2010 Edited by: Peter Clarke and Katy Oswald
'Capacity development' implies a promise of growing self-reliance, national ownership and sustainability, yet practice seems consistently to fall short of this emancipatory promise.
This introduction argues for a reframing of capacity development for emancipatory social change. Articles in this bulletin show how understanding and practice must engage with complexity, appreciate the importance of specific culture and context, and continually address the role of power in shaping relationships, understandings and practices. Values and leadership are fundamental drivers of capacity development processes. This bulletin argues against a deficit approach based on linear causal logic and replicable 'best practice'. Instead practitioners are encouraged to develop a detailed understanding of the culture and dynamics of specific contexts, to detect energies for positive change and work to connect and facilitate them. Learning is at the centre of the approach. Capacity development is understood as a collective process of learning in action for social change. Support for capacity development processes demands a critical development practice that implies mutual learning, with an emphasis on reflective and experiential approaches. However, this reframing implies enormous challenges for development practice, and therefore considerable personal and organisational commitment.