Articles

• Influencing for Senior Leaders : a new course on Analysis, Strategy, and Practice. Want to sign up ?

  8 février 2022, par Duncan Green
  For the past few months, I’ve been toiling away with a great team of thinkers/practitioners at LSE and beyond, developing a new training course on influencing (as close followers of my occasional tweeted requests for extra references may have noticed). Now it’s being launched, as part of the (…)

• Links I Liked

  6 février 2022, par Duncan Green
  The Looting of Africa ht K. Diallo Human rights organising in Africa during a global pandemic. Write up of great lecture by my old friend Irungu Houghton with links to video and podcast. Also check out his book on Kenya: Dialogue and Dissent: A Constitution In Search Of A Country What all (…)

• Development Nutshell : round-up (22m) of FP2P posts, w/b 31st January

  5 février 2022, par Duncan Green

• Is Social Media a New Frontier for Marginalised Communities to Challenge Old Power ? The Flint Water Tragedy, and the Power of Place-Based Digital Activism

  3 février 2022, par Duncan Green
  In the second of their four-part blog series (first published on Global Policy), which seeks to spark new ways of thinking about digitally-mediated activism, Nina Newhouse and Charlie Batchelor (two of my LSE students from last year’s cohort), use Timms and Heimans’ New/Old Power framework to (…)

• New and Old Power : A New Way to Understand and Cultivate Digitally-Mediated Activism, or Just Another Framework ?

  2 février 2022, par Duncan Green
  This is the first of a four-part blog series first published on Global Policy, which seeks to spark new ways of thinking about digitally-mediated activism. Written by two of my LSE students from last year’s cohort, Nina Newhouse and Charlie Batchelor, it uses Timms and Heimans’ New/Old Power (…)

• Thinking and working politically : What have we learned since 2013 ?

  1er février 2022, par Duncan Green
  It’s always a red letter day when a new paper from Graham Teskey drops. His most recent is Thinking and working politically: What have we learned since 2013? For those that don’t know him, Graham is a consummate insider-outsider within the aid sector – long stints at DFID (UK), DFAT (Australia) (…)

• Links I Liked

  31 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  At what date will average UK persons’ 2022 emissions surpass annual emissions of other countries? Powerful number crunch/infographic on climate inequality from Euan Ritchie The Wordle craze is now spawning some (more) interesting mutuations (sorry, Covid language is hard to get away from these (…)

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

  29 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green

• The links between corruption and human rights – top new report from Transparency International

  27 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  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 (…)

• ‘We the Helpers’. White Saviourism or a Smart Defence of Aid ?

  
  26 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  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 (…)

• What Heather Marquette is reading on Corruption, Crime & Conflict

  25 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  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, (...)

• Links I Liked

  
  24 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  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 (...)

• Development Nutshell : round-up (21m) of FP2P posts, w/b 17th January

  22 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  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:

• Deconstructing this year’s Oxfam Davos report – what makes it so good ?

  
  20 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  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, (...)

• Being a feminist academic in Pakistan, and why Open Access is necessary for decolonizing Academia. An interview with Ayesha Khan.

  19 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  I sat down recently with Ayesha Khan, who works with the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi, Pakistan. She is author of The Women’s Movement in Pakistan: Activism, Islam and Democracy (2018). Her FP2P post on that book is here. Here’s the podcast and below, a partial transcript. (...)

• Davos, Inequality and Covid : Oxfam on Beating back the Billionaire Variant

  18 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  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 (...)

• Links I Liked

  17 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  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, (...)

• Who is helping protest movements engage with Policy Makers (and is that a good idea) ?

  13 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  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 (...)

• How to Monitor Political Context – some practical advice

  12 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  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 (...)

• What does Governance look like ‘from below’ ? : great methodology ; snappy format ; fascinating findings ; exemplary writing – please read.

  11 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  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 (...)

• Links I Liked

  10 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  The world’s wealthiest people, whose fortunes already strained comprehension, collectively gained $1 trillion last year, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. It’s the smiles that get you…. ‘For lots of people, the nuts & bolts of practical political action can often be daunting. Which is (...)

• Development Nutshell : round-up (21m) of FP2P posts, w/b 3rd January

  8 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green

• Why understanding the history of Donor Governments changes the way we think about aid

  7 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  Back in the day, when I was doing advocacy on trade and globalization, I was struck by the extent to which the underlying assumptions of International NGOs resembled those of their governments – the liberal Anglo-Saxons targeted European subsidies, or northern tariffs, both of which they argued (...)

• Feminist Protests and Politics in a World in Crisis

  6 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  The latest issue of Gender and Development just dropped, and it’s on ‘Feminist Protests and Politics in a World in Crisis’ (Open Access). With academic journals, I must confess, I rarely read beyond the overview/introduction, but there’s some excellent and (to me at least) new insights in this one, (...)

• Links I Liked

  5 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  This made me feel ancient Bad news on multiple fronts from the aid and development sector. ‘The Government of India’s decision to refuse renewal of Oxfam India’s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act registration will severely affect the ongoing humanitarian & social work in 16 states across the (...)

• Highlights of 2021 on From Poverty to Power

  4 janvier 2022, par Duncan Green
  Hi everyone, have you stopped putting HNY on your emails yet? Kicking off the year with the usual round up of stats and most-read posts from 2021 – buys me a bit of breathing time to start generating this year’s first batch of posts. 2021 saw a lot of tech hassle – turns out ‘one (...)

• Development Nutshell : round-up (20m) of FP2P posts, w/b 13th December

  18 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  and with that, I’m clocking off for Christmas – see you in 2022

• 9 Great lectures/panels for you to catch up on over Christmas (or any other time) – see you next year

  16 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  We’ve had a cracking series of lectures and discussions on our Friday afternoon LSE ‘Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking and Practice’ series, so I thought I’d post some links to the youtube videos and podcasts for those who are looking for some escape from the family Christmas (or (...)

• World Inequality Report 2022 : a treasure trove of trends and new data

  15 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  The World Inequality Report 2022 came out recently, and it’s a total gold mine, as you’d expect from a summary of the work of over 100 researchers over 4 years from every corner of the globe (OK, I know globes don’t have corners, but cut me some slack here – I’m clinging on til the (...)

• Engaging with evidence and uncertainty : choosing where to start

  14 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  Guest post by Charlotte Maugham and Sandy Oliver There are two powerful trends playing out in the development and humanitarian world: the push to make better use of research evidence to produce viable policy options, and the localisation agenda. The two are sometimes treated as mutually (...)

• Links I Liked

  
  13 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  Calling all geography teachers. Two maps of Mercator v geographical reality ht Sony Kapoor and Richard Spoor. Update: According to Helen Bunting (see comments) the Russia v Africa comparison is one of those ‘killer facts’ that, ermm, isn’t. Apologies to the geography teachers. USAID chief Samantha (...)

• Development Nutshell : round-up (26m) of FP2P posts, w/b 6th December

  11 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green

• Research for Impact : A Conversation (and podcast) with Researchers in the Himalayas

  9 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  Another day, another conversation on research for impact, this time with ICIMOD, a network of thinktanks working to protect people, environment and culture across 8 countries of the Himalayan region. They asked me to record the conversation, thereby producing an accidental podcast. Here’s a (...)

• Queer existence is resistance : Understanding the rising tide of COVID-related LGBTQIA+ discrimination as gender-based violence

  8 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  Guest post from Oxfam’s Helen Wishart What do LGBTQIA+ rights have to do with gender-based violence? Well, a lot actually. Think about it. Patriarchal culture exists on the basis of an assumed gender binary that reinforces a power dynamic. Man/Woman: Man>Woman. Relationships between men and (...)

• INGO Research for Impact : a Conversation with Save the Children

  7 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  I had a lot of fun with Save the Children last week, whose advocacy team asked me to talk to them about ‘Research for Impact’. The fun started even before the talk – I idly tweeted the night before asking people what their ‘commonest moans’ were about NGO research. Obviously hit a nerve – 56 (...)

• Links I Liked

   
  6 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  Can’t help feeling like there’s already a name for this ht @bigdybbukenergy How Bangladesh is beating the odds on climate disaster deaths: excellent and hope-inducing case study in adaptation ‘The Triple Threat to Civil Society in India’ Catch up on Ingrid Srinath’s great lecture (with David Lewis (...)

• Development Nutshell : round-up (18m) of FP2P posts, w/b 29th November

  4 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green

• How Getting Organized has helped Mitigate the Impact of COVID-19 on People with Disabilities

  2 décembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  Ahead of tomorrow’s International Day of People With Disabilities, Jessie Meaney-Davis summarizes new research on the impact of the pandemic. People with disabilities have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and not only because of the risks associated with underlying (...)

• When Two Pandemics Collide. How the HIV community has shown resilience, innovation and agency in the time of COVID-19

  1er décembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  On World AIDS day, Ian Hodgson and Marina Schkot introduce a new study by Frontline AIDS. For the estimated 38 million people living with HIV, COVID-19 has meant one pandemic overlaid on another. The interaction between the two pandemics, and how the HIV community has responded, provide (...)

• Can the COVID victims of child marriage get accountability ?

  30 novembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  With schools closed and families feeling the pinch of inflation and lost income, UNICEF estimates that the pandemic has put an additional 10 million girls at risk of early marriage. Shaheen Anam of the Manusher Jonno Foundation, a Bangladeshi organization that has supported over 200 human (...)

• Links I Liked

  29 novembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  When you die unexpectedly. Early example of texting from a British churchyard ht No Context Brits WHO to assess new highly mutated Covid-19 variant as countries ramp up health checks. More evidence, as if it were needed, that turning poor countries into a giant Covid petri dish by ignoring (...)

• Development Nutshell : round-up (20m) of FP2P posts, w/b 15th and 22nd November

  27 novembre 2021, par Duncan Green

• 30 years and counting : 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence in our COVID-19 world

  26 novembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  Amina Hersi, Charlotte Becker and Florence Ogola introduce Oxfam’s new paper on the ‘dual crises’ of Covid and GBV. First published on the Oxfam International blog. Women, girls, trans and non-binary people have always faced the horrific and sometimes lethal consequences of gender-based violence (...)

• How do you Measure the Impact of Influencing (and ask some v useful questions en route) ?

  25 novembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  MEL (monitoring, evaluation and learning) is a lot more interesting than it sounds. Done badly, it can amount to little more than bean-counting to satisfy the donor, of little value to the actual programme or people who are supposed to benefit. But done well, it raises all sorts of really (...)

• The Changing Face of Aid

  24 novembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  The World Bank just released a monster number crunch on the changing face of aid. ‘A Changing Landscape: Trends in official financial flows and the aid architecture’ covers ‘all private and public sector financing to developing countries’ up to the end of 2019 (aka the eve of the pandemic). Here (...)

• Making Change : What Works ? Lessons from four successful movements

  23 novembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  Making Change: What Works? is a smart new report from IPPR and the Runnymede Trust, drawing lessons from some of the most effective campaigns of recent years. Although it is UK focussed, there’s lots to chew on for activists everywhere. Here’s the exec sum, which mercifully, didn’t even need an (...)

• Links I Liked

  22 novembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  COPping out. Not going to get into the ‘cup one fifth full/four fifth empty’ debate on Glasgow (oops, too late), but here are some other takes. My favourite placard was this quote from Chico Mendes, although ‘keep Glasgow cold’ came a close second (ht Nicholas Colloff) Alex Evans and George Monbiot (...)

• Getting into the Politics of why (some) Governance Programmes work

  19 novembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  Laure-Hélène Piron and Sam Waldock reflect on some of the unexpected lessons of 20 years of UK-funded (total £276.5m) governance programmes in Nigeria. See the summary report and Duncan’s summary of the summary. ODI/Learning, Evidence and Advocacy Partnership research found sustainable improvements (...)

• The climate movement we need right now

  18 novembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  Alex Evans is one of the most thoughtful campaigners in the UK (see this FP2P review of his book, The Myth Gap). Here he is reflecting on the aftermath of the Glasgow climate summit on his Larger Us blog (I’ve made a few cuts to the original to get it a bit closer to blog (...)

• Links I Liked

  
  8 novembre 2021, par Duncan Green
  First the unavoidable COP-out: Must be a metaphor for something, just can’t quite put my finger on it…. Superb backgrounder on the last (first?) 30 years of climate negotiations from Geoffrey Lean (whose twitter bio says he’s the ‘World’s longest-serving (50 yrs) environment journo’). Carbon (...)