The latest issue of Development Policy Review features an article by Merilee Grindle: ‘Good enough governance revisited: Poverty reduction and reform in developing countries’. Grindle, professor of international development and director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, reconsiders her own concept of ‘good enough governance’, which she introduced in 2004.

‘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?

Poverty and politics are inextricably linked. The new Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation, Bert Koenders, sees it as one of his main challenges to ‘bring back politics’ into international development cooperation. At a meeting with ministry staff in June 2007, Koenders stated that ‘If we want to make a real difference on the ground in terms of poverty alleviation…

With a new Global Peace Index countries can be ranked according to their ‘state of peace’.