In Conversation on How Change Happens, Activism and Politics

January 15, 2021
On Wednesday I was subjected to a gruelling cross-examination on Life, the Universe and Everything (actually ‘How Change Happens’) for the entertainment of some Cambridge Accountancy students. Here’s some of the less embarrassing bits. Q: How do you stop yourself feeling overwhelmed by complexity? A: It’s only overwhelming if you think you’re ever going to understand it all. Once you
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Oxfam’s top 5 climate justice wins since 2008

January 14, 2021
Tim Gore, a fellow Oxfamer who for years has contributed great pieces on climate change to FP2P, is heading off to become (deep breath) Head of the Low Carbon and Circular Economy Programme at the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP). (Twitter: @tim_e_gore). Here are his outgoing reflections. Last month I ended an epic 12-year journey leading Oxfam’s policy and
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Gender, Power and Progress: How Norms Change

December 16, 2020
A very good paper on a fascinating and important topic, by Caroline Harper, Rachel Marcus, Rachel George, Sophia M. D’Angelo, Emma Samman, published by ODI and ALIGN. The research questions are ambitious: how gender norms have changed over the past quarter-century, what has supported and blocked changes to gender norms in a number of sectors, and how to ensure change is faster, and robust
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Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights. Book Review

November 19, 2020
How many friends and relatives can you buy the same book for as a Christmas present, without getting into trouble for your lack of imagination? Difficult Women has everything – a great and funny writer in Helen Lewis, and a fascinating and page-turning introduction to the history of northern, mainly UK, feminism. Here’s the pitch: ‘Women’s history should not be
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Which developing countries have managed to reduce income inequality and why?

October 27, 2020
The wheels of academia grind slowly, but eventually grind out some fascinating stuff. Five years ago, I was involved in a series of conversations about the need for research on the history of redistribution in developing countries. What can we learn from low/middle income countries that have actually managed to reduce inequality (a bit like Ha-Joon Chang’s work on trade
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Covid-19 as a watershed in how we run the world. Important reflection from Rutger Bregman

October 15, 2020
I’ve been catching up with my reading this week, and really enjoyed this essay (from May – sorry for the delay!). Bregman (a Dutch historian who became an overnight global sensation with this fine outburston taxes at Davos) is brilliant on the role of ideas in driving paradigm shifts. He uses my favourite quote from Milton Friedman ‘“Only a crisis
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Possible Fragments of the Post-Covid World Order, according to The Economist

October 13, 2020
This week’s Economist Special Report on the World Economy is a thought-provoking and beautifully written helicopter overview of the current meltdown. Some extracts: ‘Conditions before the pandemic were forged by the three biggest economic shocks of the 21st century: the integration of China into the world trading system, the financial crisis and the rise of the digital economy. As Chinese
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How Covid and Inequality Feed Off Each Other: Launching the 2020 Commitment to Reduce Inequality Index

October 8, 2020
Max Lawson and Matthew Martin launch the new index, published by Oxfam and Development Finance International. Are more equal countries better able to cope with crises like Covid-19? When we look at humanitarian crises like famines or droughts, there is a fair amount of evidence that more equal countries are more resilient, that the impacts are more evenly spread, and
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‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development’ Heads up for an amazing series of online lectures, starting next week

October 2, 2020
Organizing (along with James Putzel) the LSE’s guest lecture series on ‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking and Practice’ has turned out to be one of the few genuine silver linings in the Covid cloud. Because we’ve had to move to fully online, we’ve been able to get some of the world’s most interesting thinkers to speak to us from
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Taking Doughnut Economics from idea to action – welcome to the Action Lab

September 30, 2020
Kate Raworth launches a brilliant, potentially world-shaping, new initiative This week is the online launch of Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL). At the heart of it is a community platform, open to everyone who wants to turn Doughnut Economics from a radical idea into transformative action. We’ll be co-creating tools and sharing stories of how to build regenerative and distributive
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What have 5 years of tax campaigns achieved?

September 1, 2020
Guest post by Oliver Pearce In early 2016, I joined Oxfam GB to lead its tax work. As I now prepare to leave Oxfam, a lot has changed in the world of tax (and the wider world too!). Early 2016 was before the Brexit referendum, the Trump presidency, England’s men joining the women’s team by winning the cricket world cup,
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Cracks in the knowledge system: whose knowledge is valued in a pandemic and beyond?

August 28, 2020
Guest post by Jon Harle Many of the inequities which COVID-19 has exposed – and exacerbated – have been with us for a long time.  Setting aside very stark disparities in access to health services, and the ability to maintain decent livelihoods, COVID has shown us once again the processes of exclusion that are baked into the ways in which
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