Development Nutshell: round-up (20m) of FP2P posts, w/b 24th January

January 29, 2022
No excerpt
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The links between corruption and human rights – top new report from Transparency International

January 27, 2022
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
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‘We the Helpers’. White Saviourism or a Smart Defence of Aid?

January 26, 2022
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
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What Heather Marquette is reading on Corruption, Crime & Conflict

January 25, 2022
Heather Marquette (occasional contributor to this blog) has started a new newsletter drawing on her work for SOC ACE – the Serious Organised Crime & Anti-Corruption Evidence programme (and sister programme to SOAS ACE and Global Integrity ACE) and lots more on corruption, organised crime, conflict, security, foreign policy and development.. The first two editions dropped this week, and here are some highlights (minus
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Links I Liked

January 24, 2022
St George testing the dragon for Covid ht @ArtMemeLord Deaths vs. The Economy: An Unexpected Reversal. ‘assume that you do not know anything about how different countries have handled the pandemic so far and are given the following exam questions: there is a very rich country with a democratic government, and there is a significantly less rich country trying to
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Development Nutshell: round-up (21m) of FP2P posts, w/b 17th January

January 22, 2022
and I’ve just noticed that I forgot to crosspost last week’s round-up from my podcast to here. Sorry about that, and if you have time to catch up, here it is:
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Deconstructing this year’s Oxfam Davos report – what makes it so good?

January 20, 2022
I know this is the week of Blue Monday, when we are all supposed to feel at our most miserable, but I’m not feeling it – this is the time of year when I am proudest of working for Oxfam, because of its annual Davos report. For several years now, this has focussed on inequality, and I honestly think (though
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Davos, Inequality and Covid: Oxfam on Beating back the Billionaire Variant

January 18, 2022
It’s Davos time again, and here’s Oxfam’s Anthony Kamande introducing its latest blockbuster report. In the informal settlement area of Kawangware in Nairobi, my good friend Joe is quarantining in his small room after contracting COVID-19, for the second time now. He is a nurse in one of the private hospitals in the city. The contact-intensive nature of his job
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Links I Liked

January 17, 2022
Academic Publishers, nailed. ht Pierre Lindenbaum Why the military intervene in African democracies. Often not just unrest but the last of ‘four stages of the autocratic regime cycle’. The removal of Al-Bashir, Mugabe etc ‘rather than a direct consequence of mass protests and economic downturns, was the culmination of ripened factionalism’. Interesting pattern-spotting from Andrea Carboni and Clionadh Raleigh ‘42%
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Who is helping protest movements engage with Policy Makers (and is that a good idea)?

January 13, 2022
A researcher got in touch this week to interview me for a scoping study for a funder that wants ‘to explore whether and how philanthropic actors can support movements as they move from political disruption to shaping political processes and outcomes… to identify gaps, and ultimately, to design a programme that complements existing projects.’ Firstly, chapeau to the philanthropist for
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How to Monitor Political Context – some practical advice

January 12, 2022
I’ve been chatting to Johan Eldebo at World Vision about its work on adaptive management/systems thinking. WV is the 1000lb gorilla of INGOs – four times bigger in terms of income than Oxfam, last time I looked, and does some really interesting thinking in this area, especially in humanitarian response, where things are often chaotic and fast moving – discussed
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What does Governance look like ‘from below’?: great methodology; snappy format; fascinating findings; exemplary writing – please read.

January 11, 2022
The Action for Empowerment and Accountability research programme (covered regularly on this blog) is drawing to a close in a welter of research papers summarizing their findings. I was particularly taken with the one from the ‘Governance at the Margins’ team, both because of the format and the content. Here’s the link (sorry, forgot it in first version of this
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