Is aid in crisis? Probably it is, but only in its current form. Because there will always be people who want to care for others in our interconnected world, whether for reasons of solidarity or ‘enlightened self-interest’. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that aid is in crisis. Because that opens up the space for a fresh debate about the future of global development. The Broker would like to invite all readers to contribute new ideas, insights and experiences in the run-up to the UN’s MDG+10 conference to be held in September 2010. We want this debate to be open and daring, critical but constructive.   Read more>>

De publicatie van het lang verwachte WRR-rapport ‘Minder pretentie, meer ambitie: ontwikkelingshulp die verschil maakt’ is een uitstekende start voor een serieus debat over hoe de Nederlandse ontwikkelingssamenwerking (OS) in de jaren ’10 opnieuw vorm gegeven moet worden. Het rapport biedt state-of-the-art overzichten van recente academische en beleidsdebatten over allerlei deelterreinen van OS en doet ook een aantal concrete voorstellen voor een nieuwe inrichting daarvan.   Read more>>

Over the last few months I have attended a number of meetings that focused on the future of development cooperation. Among these were the workshop on the Practice of Civic Driven Change in the Hague, the Netherlands, and the High Level Policy Forum, After 2015: Promoting Pro-poor Policy after the MDGs, held in Brussels, Belgium. Other conferences were aimed at designing a new architecture for ‘international cooperation’, which has been framed as a replacement for ‘development cooperation’. Some of these conferences are reported on briefly in this issue of The Broker, and they are all covered much more extensively in reports, blogs and debates on the magazine’s website.   Read more>>

Violent conflicts in states such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan and the Balkans are at the centre of global politics. Big battles have been fought, enormous sums of money have been spent and troops have been deployed to end these conflicts. But is trying to defeat the supposed enemies – be they ‘freedom fighters’, ‘terrorists’ or state armies – the right approach? Or do these conflicts require other policy solutions?   Read more...>>

International affairs can be examined at many levels, including transnational networks, relations between states, regional dynamics, foreign policy and the many links between local events in different countries. But there is a difference between assessing policies and activities on the ground – focusing on what happens – and analyzing the undercurrents, the unconscious assumptions and the causal relationships that can explain why things happen. It would be nice to be able to cover it all at once, but such multilayered analysis is beyond the scope of a magazine like this.   Read more>>

Crises, conflicts and emergencies are not simply deviations from normality, as is usually believed. Rather, there is much more continuity with normality. Often, crises are manifestations of, or they catalyze, intensified processes of change that were already going on in societies. In addition, we see that conflicts and crises are often prolonged, or have become (semi) permanent. We therefore need a different way of analyzing and theorizing about crises – more long term, more systemic – than usually is done by humanitarian agencies and their consultants.   Read more>>

Policy makers and academics have different time horizons. That is one reason for their often limited dialogue. However, alignment and mutual reinforcement are necessary – especially in times of crisis.   Read more>>

In the late 1990s, the so-called sector-wide approach (SWAp) became a fashionable new method for handling development aid. It was part of an international quest for more efficient and effective aid delivery that would truly contribute to poverty reduction. Donors agreed to start coordinating their funding: for example, the health sector in, say, Zambia would be guided by a single policy and expenditure programme instead of by a myriad of programmes and projects. And the responsibility and leadership would be squarely on the Zambian government.   Read more>>

‘Social justice is a matter of life and death. It affects the way people live, their consequent chance of illness and their risk of premature death’. So begins a recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO) Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH). It, along with other recent international publications, is the subject of the special report on global health in this issue of The Broker.   Read more>>

Over the last four months, two events have changed global prospects profoundly. The financial crisis has done more than just shake the seemingly most powerful and inviolable countries, companies and institutions in the world. It has definitely KO’d the present phase of capitalism, commonly known as neoliberalism. This event helped precipitate the other turning point: a seemingly progressive, young, energetic, black man with a Muslim middle name was elected president of the world’s hegemon, KO’ing another branch of neo’s: the neoconservatives. Both developments point to a global sea change. The financial turmoil means that change is necessary; the euphoria over Barack Obama’s election suggests that change is possible. But exactly what kind of change are we – and they, the politicians, the analysts, the activists – talking about? Can we, for example, speak of a prelude to systemic change? In other words, are we currently witnessing a systems crisis? Answers to these questions, up to this point, have been merely ideological or products of wishful thinking.   Read more>>

For many decades, the main driver of progress in developing countries was considered to be either the state or the market. Civil society existed only in relation to, and by the grace of, these forces. But people-centred development requires that individuals take control and address the problems in their communities. People and organizations should acquire a stronger position in relation to both the state and the market. Real change can only be achieved through challenging dominant political...   Read more...>>

Burkinabé writer and politician Joseph Ki-Zerbo said,‘On ne développe pas, on se développe’ (‘People aren’t developed; people develop themselves’). He argued for a development strategy ‘that gets its force from local realities and our own values, and which is open for all positive influences from outside’. There is a long tradition in development thinking that stresses the need for this kind of bottom-up approach.   Read more>>

In this series of articles, practitioners in the field of international cooperation describe the dilemmas and research issues they and their organizations face, the ways in which researchers can help resolve them and the questions they would like to see answered. First, Jan Gruiters explains how research could contribute to his work in conflict resolution and peace building.   Read more>>

A conference that brings together development academics from all areas of the social sciences is especially interesting for the trends and general tenor it brings to the surface. In June, 450 development researchers from dozens of countries, including a fair share from the South, met in Geneva at the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) conference entitled ‘Global governance for sustainable development: the need for policy coherence and new partnerships’.   Read more>>

He brought us back to earth with a bump. At the General Conference of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) in June, reported on in this issue of The Broker, Oswaldo de Rivero boldly stated that ‘economic growth is not compatible with sustainable development’. The Peruvian diplomat and author was on a panel discussing the compatibility of economic growth and sustainable development. He was there representing the ‘realist’ side of global politics. ‘(Neo)realists’ believe that every country acts for its own interests and that it is wrong, even dangerous, to consider the global common good or the interests of other countries in international politics. De Rivero knows well what is going on in the realm of global power. Notwithstanding G8 rhetoric and the like, those present at the global leaders’ tête-à-tête are hardly concerned with the same issues as the 450 academics at the EADI conference, or those who actually work for the poor or the environment in other corners of the world.   Read more>>

In Brussels, economist Françoise Moreau heads the DG Development’s unit on ‘forward looking studies and policy coherence’. She is playing a central role in the initiative for the ERD.   Read more>>

‘The economics profession underwent a revolution in December last year, as economic understanding of the world suddenly shifted’, wrote Branko Milanovic, an economist with the World Bank, last February. 1 This may have seemed like a bit of an exaggeration – particularly because these groundbreaking changes seemed to have gone unnoticed by the rest of the development community and others involved in poverty reduction. But, according to Milanovic, spending power in China and India had fallen by 40%, by 17% in Indonesia, 41% in the Philippines, 32% in South Africa and 24% in Argentina.   Read more>>

It was the god Zeus who seduced the beautiful girl Europa. He turned into a virile white bull and took her on his back to Crete. In a similar way, some people are trying to seduce Europe into playing a more positive and proactive role in addressing worldwide problems such as climate change, growing inequity and violent conflicts. But although Europe may be a shining example of a group of states that used to fight each other to the death and now cooperate internally, as an alternative on the world scene to the US and emerging superpowers like China, it still looks like a little calf on wobbly legs.   Read more>>

The traditional focus of development research on local and national processes has been rendered obsolete by the new global power relations. Researchers must be more concerned about relevance than academic excellence. And open knowledge networks are needed to allow access to knowledge.   Read more>>

We’ve heard a lot about ‘Web 2.0’ lately, and now we’re starting to hear about ‘Science 2.0’. But what does ‘2.0’ actually mean? To me, ‘2.0’ refers to any process that enables the transparent sharing of insights, ideas and arguments in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding. I think Science 2.0 can have an equally exciting impact on the scientific community.   Read more>>

Is Africa sick? Some Africans may suffer from diseases, but to refer an entire continent to the sickbay makes no sense. There are problems, to be sure. Corruption, a bad business climate and the disadvantages of being landlocked can all be easily diagnosed. As can some harmful conditions imposed from the outside, such as market access restrictions or, at the other extreme, too much liberalization. But just as with the infamous ‘Dutch disease’, no diagnosis can ever fully capture the complexity of an organism such as human society. The Netherlands continued to function quite comfortably during the years it suffered from this serious illness.   Read more>>

One of the hot books in international development circles at the moment is Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, by Paul Collier, formerly of the World Bank and currently director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford.   Read more>>

I am one of those terrible people who never have enough time, always busy, with too many urgent things to do or meetings to attend. I am constantly zapping and scanning and sniffing around, to get an idea of what is going on in the many fields of science, policy and politics. I am probably like many readers of The Broker who need not only to keep up to date in their specific area of expertise, but also to be aware of issues emerging in a broad range of fields related to global development. Yet there is never enough time to read the hundreds of journals, magazines, websites and other media that are now available.   Read more>>

‘Science makes you learn about deep complexities’, claims Richard Dawkins, writer and evolutionary biologist at Oxford University. That poses a daunting task for a magazine that aims to provide brief summaries of scientific developments. Is it possible to keep it short and simple without losing nuance and complexity?   Read more>>

In issue 2, The Broker described the knowledge policy of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We invited Rob de Vos of the ministry and Louk Box of the Institute of Social Studies, to discuss the ministry’s efforts to adapt its knowledge policy to the changing global environment.   Read more>>

On 20 June 2007 Bart Tromp died, at the age of 62. Just two weeks earlier, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I had been sitting with him under a luminous sky at a terrace at the Nieuwmarkt, in the oldest part of Amsterdam. We spoke for two hours. We had had been in contact before, by email and telephone, about the article he wrote for the first issue of The Broker, but this was the first time I had met him in person.   Read more>>

The lessons of a recent evaluation of demand-driven research programmes in developing countries have not been incorporated into the ministry’s new research policy.   Read more>>

The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs is working to create a more knowledge-oriented organizational culture. But at the same time it is losing its internal capacity for strategic thinking, a crucial attribute in an era of globalization, integrated policy and the politicization of development cooperation.   Read more>>

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the large NGOs have to deal with enormous quantities of information. But the important thing is how they deal with it: knowledge means giving information meaning. At the moment, far too little attention is devoted to translating information systematically into a broad and coherent strategic vision.   Read more>>

Several EU member states have launched an initiative to set up a European Development Report. Such a report could strengthen Europe’s position as a global player. The theme is promising: a globally inclusive society based on fair multilateralism. But the Netherlands government has pulled out: no added value.   Read more>>

There are increasing calls for greater cooperation between scientists from different disciplines. Under certain circumstances such interdisciplinary research can add value. A new publication, Building bridges, offers some advice for sceptics and enthusiasts.   Read more>>

Is circular migration the ‘silver bullet’ for achieving a ‘triple win’ – for the host countries, the migrants’ countries of origin, and the migrants themselves? Reaching a real win–win–win situation will require more than just positive thinking.   Read more>>

Development professionals, policy makers and scientists in the field of global issues have for a long time been separated by institutional boundaries, cultural barriers and poor communication. But for some time now the trend has been towards integration, cooperation, forging linkages and bridging gaps. In academia this is called interdisciplinary research, while within (foreign) ministries and development NGOs it fits under the umbrella of ‘policy coherence’ – all policies should be ‘for development’, and screened for their impacts on global poverty and justice.   Read more>>