Nicola Nixon, Kim McQuay, Peter Yates, Sumaya Saluja and Su Lae Yi, all of The Asia Foundation, continue our posts questioning the impact of the whole Adaptive Management/ Thinking and Working Politically Thing (I did my bit yesterday). Throughout 2021, we spent many hours talking with civil society organizations about adaptive management. We engaged with over 100 civil society organizations

Going into self-doubt mode for the rest of this week, on the feasibility and impact of the ‘second orthodoxy’. Students can be great at pointing out the contradictions in your thinking and this year’s LSE cohort seem particularly good at it. A recent set of student-led seminars focussed on Adaptive Management and Thinking and Working Politically (AM/TWP) and connected a

Guest post by Roba Aldaour, an Oxfam Public Health and WASH practitioner in Gaza We recently tried to find out how aid practitioners and affected populations think about Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and how they differ in their views. The results of our survey hold important lessons for WASH programmes and their funders around the world. Unsurprisingly, the top

Arbie Baguios, Maia King, Alex Martins and Rosie Pinnington introduce their new paper Localisation and locally-led practice are the latest buzzwords for something that the aid sector, and the local communities and organisations who work with it, has long tried to do. That is, to ensure that local people and communities have the power and agency to drive their own

What are your favourite, well-documented examples of a) public campaigning and b) influencing developing country and donor governments? I’m asking because, as part of the LSE’s impending training programme for senior aid peeps, part of the ‘Global Executive Leadership Initiative’. I have to put together brief annotated ‘further reading/listening/watching’ lists on those two issues. I want more examples of donors

Guest post by Jonathan Fox, introducing his new paper Accountability is often treated as a magic bullet, an all-purpose solution to a very wide range of problems—from corrupt politicians and the quality of public services to systemic injustice and impunity.  Yet accountability reforms struggle to deliver. Has the idea been stretched so far that the buzzword gets watered down into

Guest post from Anna Landre, one of my amazing students, who has bunked off class (with permission) to do some amazing work on Ukraine. And she’s pretty angry about what she’s seen. As a 23-year-old wheelchair user halfway through a Master’s degree at the London School of Economics, I didn’t expect to spend my past week working 16 hours a

Had an interesting exchange with a friend active in UK grassroots politics this week, who asked ‘What’s the best reading around how to build effective networks? I’m basically a little suspicious atm as it all seems a bit stakeholder mappy / retrospective analysis of change, rather than practical, pro-active strategy. It’s not that I don’t understand the importance of systems,

This blog was first published on the EADI/ISS Development Research Blog Series, written by Oxfam’s Nicole Walshe and Anne Mai Baan. In our work to strengthen and support civic space worldwide (i.e. the space for freedoms of association, assembly and free expression) we often see that certain narratives are used to undermine the work of activists. Narratives – the collection

One of the briefings I’ve been developing for our new influencing course (see yesterday’s intro) is a guide to help people navigate the plethora of toolkits on influencing. Here’s my list – with a request for comments and additions. My overall impression (although this may just reflect my Oxfam background) is that there are loads of online guides to ‘outsider’

It appears to have turned into anti-corruption week on the blog (see Tuesday’s post on Heather Marquette’s work). Transparency International’s annual ‘Corruption Perceptions Index’ dropped the same day and makes an important link between corruption and human rights: ‘The 2021 CPI results show that countries with well-protected civil and political liberties generally control corruption better.’ Here’s the relevant section, which argues that

Got a very thought-provoking email from Romilly Greenhill at ONE Campaign over the weekend.  She was drawing my attention to the Aid Alliance, a group of NGOs (including Oxfam) working together to build public support for UK aid. This week it launched something called ‘We the Helpers’. Some thoughts: First the message: Aid is helping. ‘From aid workers to donors