Making COVID Social Protection Accountable to India’s Vulnerable Citizens

August 26, 2020
Suchi Pande is a scholar in residence at the Accountability Research Center, Washington DC This post discusses two development policies that sound technical, but which are really important. Social protection is the set of services that help protect people against economic shocks or disasters, and from the ups-and-downs all people face in their life-cycle. Social audits are organized by citizens
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The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) merger and the future of adaptive programming

August 12, 2020
Guest post by Ed Laws and Pablo Yanguas The merger of DFID and the FCO into a new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has sent shockwaves through the UK-centred development community, with NGOs and MPs publicly decrying the decision, current and former DFID staff expressing concern and dismay in private and in public, and a generalised sense that, at
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Links I Liked

August 10, 2020
Pickings are a bit thin this week, but that’s probs because so many people are pretending to be on holiday. Including me – Scottish rain and cuisine, what’s not to like? Back in two weeks. Thankyou Darren Dutton for the inspired conflation of Donald Trump’s Axios interview (the one with the charts) and the Monty Python parrot sketch. What’s changed?
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Development Nutshell: mini round-up (10m) of FP2P posts, w/b 3rd August

August 8, 2020
No excerpt
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The evolution of Extinction Rebellion

August 6, 2020
I’m putting together my reading list for next year’s LSE course on activism and this week’s Guardian long read on Extinction Rebellion is going to be on it, even though it’s a bit UK-centric. It brilliantly pulls together a number of features of the rise of new social movements. Here are some extracts, but as ever, better to read the
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Covid has put Governance at the heart of debates on Development, but how has it changed the questions we ask?

August 5, 2020
Guest post from governance guru Graham Teskey. The aim of this blog is to suggest ways in which the ‘governance discourse’ (what a grand term!) is changing – indeed has already changed – as a result of Covid-19. I know that blogs are supposed to be discursive and informal. Recently our office was privileged to have a session with that
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Links I Liked

August 3, 2020
Best selling toy this summer – ht The New Yorker Been having fun browsing on what Matthew Spencer calls ‘the best simple guide to some of the principles of campaign strategy’. Example: ‘Do you really need to campaign? Campaigning can be fun but it’s often hard, dull, frustrating and unsuccessful. Even when it’s exciting, it’s a bit like Charlie Watt’s description of
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Development Nutshell, bumper edition: 22m audio summary of latest posts on FP2P

August 1, 2020
No excerpt
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How to be a Good Ancestor: Book Review

July 31, 2020
I owe Roman Krznaric – his brilliant 2008 paper How Change Happens, written as input to a long-forgotten Oxfam book called ‘From Poverty to Power’, got me thinking about change as a process, a thing in itself. Eight years later (my brain takes its time) I nicked his title for a book. In the intervening years, Roman has become a
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Zooming in with LSE’s thinkers on International Development (and me)

July 30, 2020
One of my more enjoyable projects during lockdown has been finding out what my LSE colleagues do all day. We have recorded a series of 15 minute podcasts called ‘Zooming in With ….’ (catchy, eh?). Each interview is roughly divided up between their lives, an area of their research, and what insights it provides onto the current pandemic and response.
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The Emotional Chemistry of Rebellions

July 29, 2020
Really liked this diagram that came through my twitter feed recently, and the accompanying text, from Ricardo Levins Morales. ‘A moment of rebellion can give rise to sustained movement growth & expanding people power (Stonewall, Ferguson); peak & quickly fade away (2006 immigrant rights marches); or create a burst of growth followed by steady decline (response to assassinations of BPP
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What have we learned from four years’ research into empowerment and accountability in fragile/violent settings?

July 28, 2020
I’m still reeling from my first serious zoomarathon – 12 hours on zoom over 3 days (plus prep), with 50 researchers around the world from the Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) consortium. I can report back that unfortunately, my mood swings are much the same as in conferences (but with added anxiety/grumpiness from struggling to manage combo of four
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