Links I Liked

October 31, 2016
Closed, repressed, obstructed, narrowed or open? Tracking civil society space. New interactive tool from CIVICUS, including country ratings and a searchable database Michael Spence argues that by rebalancing power relationships in the world’s democracies, digital technology is partly responsible for the increased focus on inequality Seven useful tips for new development masters students, especially on not obsessing about your grades
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Big new research programme on empowerment and accountability in fragile settings gets under way – can you help choose its name?

October 28, 2016
Whatever happened to resting on your laurels?  The book’s just published, and I’m onto the next thing – a five year research consortium on empowerment and accountability in fragile and conflict settings (FCS). Spent 3 days recently with some sharp minds from an alphabet soup of project partners – IDS, ITAD, IDEAS, CSSR, PASGR and ARC, wading through a stack
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Can Publishers survive Open Access? We’ll find out when How Change Happens is published today

October 27, 2016
It’s Open Access Week and How Change Happens is officially published in the UK today, as both a book and an open access pdf. The process has been pretty exciting. The traditional author descends from the mountain of scholarship clutching a rather expensive tablet of stone, in which his/her wisdom is set out to a suitably grateful but largely passive
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What’s happening on Global Inequality? Putting the ‘elephant graph’ to sleep with a ‘hockey stick’

October 26, 2016
For our second post on how to measure inequality (here’s the first), Muheed Jamaldeen, Senior Economist at Oxfam Australia, discusses absolute v relative Back in December 2013, two economists at the World Bank – Christopher Lakner and Branko Milanovic; produced a paper on ‘Global Income Distribution’, which presented a newly compiled and improved database of national household surveys between 1988
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The Politics of Measuring Inequality: What gets left out and why?

October 25, 2016
Two posts on the measurement of inequality this week, so you’ll need to activate the brain cells. First up Oxfam researcher Franziska Mager summarizes a paper co-authored with Deborah Hardoon for a panel at the recent Development Studies Association conference on the power and politics behind the statistics. A version of this post appeared on Oxfam’s shiny new real geek
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Links I Liked

October 24, 2016
The value of history (h/t Luciano Floridi) Does China’s rise really reframe how the rest of the world sees Western ideas (and ideals)? Brilliant Branko Milanovic piece What makes young people more excited about politics? Deciding how to spend municipal budgets. So participatory budgeting = best way to reengage disenchanted millennials. Migrants from developing countries sent home $439bn in 2015
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Sen, Fukuyama, Chambers, Byanyima, Agarwal, Rodrik, Kumar and Robinson on How Change Happens

October 21, 2016
A week to go til the official How Change Happens publication day (a pretty artificial date, but apparently it helps with chasing up reviews), so time for another book-related post. One of the most heart-warming experiences for any author is when you send off your manuscript to a sprinkling of the great and good, and to your delight and astonishment, some
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The Sidekick Manifesto – count me in

October 20, 2016
This is just great. Read, reflect and if so moved, take the pledge. Anyone know who wrote it?
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Why/how should corporates defend civil society space? Good new paper + case studies

October 19, 2016
I saw some effective academic-NGO cooperation last week, and even better, it involved some of my LSE students. The occasion was the launch of Beyond Integrity: Exploring the role of business in preserving civil society space, commissioned and published by the Charities Aid Foundation and written by Silky Agrawal, Brooks Reed and Riya Saxena, three of last year’s LSE Masters
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Ha-Joon Chang on How Change Happens

October 18, 2016
October is upon us, and with it the publication of How Change Happens on the 27th. I am already suffering about my levels of authorial self-obsession: I entered the personal shorthand of ‘Narcissistic Peak’ for launch day, unaware that my diary synchs with my wife’s Ipad. Cathy hasn’t let me forget it. But given the surprising results of my precautionary
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Links I Liked

October 17, 2016
‘and don’t criticise what you can’t understand’. Miche Doherty got there first….. The UN’s new, top secret, irony working group splashed big last week. After rejecting all seven of the qualified female candidates for Secretary General, the UN has chosen Wonder Woman as an honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls. [h/t Kate Cronin-Furman] My How Change Happens launch tour (aka
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On World Food Day, 5 reasons why cash transfers aren’t always the best option

October 14, 2016
Since the Asian Tsunami of 2004, providing cash to people in an emergency has become increasingly mainstream. But (babies, bath water) there is more to food response than ‘just give them the money.’ On World Food Day, Oxfam Social Protection Adviser Larissa Pelham sets out the case: The King asked The Queen, and The Queen asked The Dairymaid: “Could we
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