Understanding Influence
Understanding Influence

Author: Thomas Waldman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-24

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1317004876

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The overarching objective of this book is to analyse the manner in which statebuilding-oriented research has and can influence policies in fragile, post-conflict environments. Large-scale, externally-assisted statebuilding is a relatively new and distinct foreign policy domain having risen to the forefront of the international agenda as the negative consequences of state weakness have been repeatedly revealed in the form of entrenched poverty, regional instability and serious threats to international security. Despite the increasing volume of research on statebuilding, the use and uptake of findings by those involved in policymaking remains largely under-examined. As such, the main themes running through the book relate to issues of research influence, use and uptake into policy. It grapples with problems associated with decision-making dynamics, knowledge management and the policy process and draws on concepts and analytical models developed within the public policy and research utilisation literature. This book will be of great interest to researchers, knowledge managers and policymakers working in the fields of post-war reconstruction, statebuilding, fragile states, stabilisation, conflict and development.

Department for International Development's Annual Report and Accounts 2011-12
Department for International Development's Annual Report and Accounts 2011-12

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2013-01-31

Total Pages: 86

ISBN-13: 9780215053183

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About two-thirds of DFID's expenditure in 2011-12, including nearly 40% of its bilateral spending, went through multilateral organisations even though they have higher administrative costs. This represents a major change in recent years and has been accompanied by a decline in direct aid to recipient Governments. DFID argues that the change is not a reflection of its need to spend money quickly, but a result of the reduced need for budget support in countries with rising tax bases and improved financial management, as well as its focus on fragile states. The DFID needs to ensure that it has thoroughly examined other options such as greater use of local NGOs and sector budget support. DFID has switched expenditure from low income to middle income countries, in part because several countries with a large number of poor people have recently graduated to middle-income status. Policy towards middle income countries varies and DFID needs establish and make public the criteria it will use to inform decisions of when and how it should cease to provide aid. DFID should also consider establishing a Development Bank - that could offer concessional loans alongside grant aid and would free from the constraint of having to ensure that cash was spent by the end of the financial year. Staffing also may still not be sufficient to oversee the huge expenditure of UK taxpayers' money undertaken by multilaterals. MPs remain concerned that DFID's has ended its bilateral programme in one of the world's poorest countries, Burundi, and is urging the new Secretary of State to re-instate it.

The Delusion of Knowledge Transfer
The Delusion of Knowledge Transfer

Author: Susanne Koch

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2016-12-13

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 1928331408

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With the rise of the knowledge for development paradigm, expert advice has become a prime instrument of foreign aid. At the same time, it has been object of repeated criticism: the chronic failure of technical assistance a notion under which advice is commonly subsumed has been documented in a host of studies. Nonetheless, international organisations continue to send advisors, promising to increase the effectiveness of expert support if their technocratic recommendations are taken up. This book reveals fundamental problems of expert advice in the context of aid that concern issues of power and legitimacy rather than merely flaws of implementation. Based on empirical evidence from South Africa and Tanzania, the authors show that aid-related advisory processes are inevitably obstructed by colliding interests, political pressures and hierarchical relations that impede knowledge transfer and mutual learning. As a result, recipient governments find themselves caught in a perpetual cycle of dependency, continuously advised by experts who convey the shifting paradigms and agendas of their respective donor governments. For young democracies, the persistent presence of external actors is hazardous: ultimately, it poses a threat to the legitimacy of their governments if their policy-making becomes more responsive to foreign demands than to the preferences and needs of their citizens.

Disability and Development - HC 947
Disability and Development - HC 947

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2014-04-10

Total Pages: 78

ISBN-13: 021507078X

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Disabled people in developing countries are the poorest of the poor: if we are serious about tackling extreme poverty, our development work has to target them. So while it's good the UK government has brought disability on to the agenda for global development goals (1) - DfID must now lead by example and make effort to ensure the needs of disabled people become a clear and sustained priority going forward within its own development programmes. Despite enormous global advances in education and health since the turn of the millennium, disabled people continue to be excluded from the most basic of services. The Committee calls for DfID to: produce a disability strategy; appoint a larger team responsible for disability; and strengthen reporting processes; show much more ambition in its work with disabled people by targeting them and their needs explicitly; give disabled people a central role in its work; and promote attention to the needs of disabled people including making it an explicit requirement that funding reaches disabled people, especially in disaster and conflict situations where they are amongst the most at risk

Department for International Development annual report and resource accounts 2010-11 and business plan 2011-15
Department for International Development annual report and resource accounts 2010-11 and business plan 2011-15

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2012-03-09

Total Pages: 76

ISBN-13: 9780215042910

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While DFID's total budget is increasing, the Department will both restrict operating costs to 2% by 2014-15 and reduce its administrative costs by a third in real terms, from £128 million in 2010-11 to £94 million by 2014-15. This report warns that capping operational costs and staff numbers may not reduce overall costs or improve effective delivery of development assistance. The International Development Committee also raises concerns that cost pressures are driving DFID to use consultants to deliver its programmes, rather than in-house expertise. The Department spends £450 million on technical cooperation per year. Much of this is good work, yet it was unclear exactly what this money was spent on, or how effective it was and the extent to which external providers were used. DFID needs to improve its assessment of which projects and services it should use consultants for; and assess more carefully the use of consultants to manage the Department's own delivery programmes. In its efforts to reduce administrative spending DFID might be 'exporting' these costs to other organisations, including NGOs and multilateral aid organisations, with higher real administration costs. The Department should assess the best and most effective way to deliver development assistance as it may be able to do it more cheaply and effectively than external organisations. The report recommends that the Department improves its tracking of and reporting on the total cost of administering its aid programme with the aim of quantifying how much aid actually ends up reaching recipients.

Handbook on the Least Developed Country Category
Handbook on the Least Developed Country Category

Author: United Nations. Economic and Social Council. Committee for Development Policy

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789211046908

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Contains an updated comprehensive explanation of the criteria, procedures and methodology used in establishing which countries are eligible for inclusion in, or recommended for graduation from, the least developed country (LDC) category. It also provides an overview of the special support measures that can be derived from having least developed country status.

Research in Security Sector Reform Policy
Research in Security Sector Reform Policy

Author: Andrea Edoardo Varisco

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-07-19

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1137586753

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This book investigates the extent to which research has influenced and interacted with SSR policies, programmes and activities implemented by the UK in conflict-affected Sierra Leone. Varisco uses concepts and notions from the literature on the policy process and research utilisation to explore the ways in which research has influenced UK-led SSR policy. Here, the author analyses the evolution of the network of policy-makers, street-level bureaucrats, and researchers working on SSR in Sierra Leone, and argues that two main variables – an increased stability in the country and a progressive evolution of SSR in policy and research – contributed to the expansion of the policy network over time and to a better use of research by street-level bureaucrats on the ground. This title derives from the Sierra Leone case study a series of recommendations to improve the use of research by international organisations and bilateral donors working in fragile states

Toward the Charter
Toward the Charter

Author: Christopher MacLennan

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780773525368

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At the end of the Second World War, a growing concern that Canadians' civil liberties were not adequately protected, coupled with the international revival of the concept of universal human rights, led to a long public campaign to adopt a national bill of rights. While these initial efforts had been only partially successful by the 1960s, they laid the foundation for the radical change in Canadian human rights achieved by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the 1980s. In Toward the Charter Christopher MacLennan explores the origins of this dramatic revolution in Canadian human rights, from its beginnings in the Great Depression to the critical developments of the 1960s. Drawing heavily on the experiences of a diverse range of human rights advocates, the author provides a detailed account of the various efforts to resist the abuse of civil liberties at the hands of the federal government and provincial legislatures and the resulting campaign for a national bill of rights. The important roles played by parliamentarians such as John Diefenbaker and academics such as F.R. Scott are placed alongside those of trade unionists, women, and a long list of individuals representing Canada's multicultural groups to reveal the diversity of the bill of rights movement. At the same time MacLennan weaves Canadian-made arguments for a bill of rights with ideas from the international human rights movement led by the United Nations to show that the Canadian experience can only be understood within a wider, global context.

Model Rules of Professional Conduct
Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates

Publisher: American Bar Association

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9781590318737

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The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.