Next up in my series of interviews on the real-world influence of researchers at the LSE Centre for Public Authority and International Development, I explore the impact of Holly Porter’s research in northern Uganda, which has had a significant impact on a landmark trial and conviction of LRA commander Dominic Ongwen at the International Criminal Court, […]

Last week I posted a bit of a rant about UK aid cuts. The next day, Ranil Dissanayake had a piece on CGD’s blog looking at what kind of post-cuts aid programme is emerging under the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). It’s brilliant, so I asked to post an abridged version (the original is […]

Despite almost 30 years of the global anti-corruption agenda, something is clearly not working. Preparing for this week’s special session of the General Assembly against corruption, the UN has recognized that ‘it has become increasingly clear that measures taken to prevent corruption have been insufficient’. In a new paper for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, […]

How to track the national mood? Welcome to the ‘fxckometer’ – ‘number of posts containing the word (or FFS) on Mumsnet’. Turns out it’s highly correlated to school closures. Brilliant and funny from The Economist. Tobacco killed almost 8 million people in 2019 (about the same as the global Covid death toll so far) according […]

Guest post by Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Multiple studies of the effects of the pandemic on civil society, including a major IDS report released last week, paint a discouraging picture. Civil society has come under assault from many directions at once, including executive overreach, securitisation of public life, the constriction of online […]

Civicus publishes its annual ‘State of Civil Society Report’ today. It’s great, with a v cool website and the report is beautifully written too (thanks for that – I have to read a lot of plodding devspeak, so it makes a real difference!). I recommend the overview if you’re looking for a succinct, accessible summary […]

What is going on with the cuts to the UK’s aid budget? Judging from first impressions, the axe is being arbitrarily taken to a lot of really good aid programmes, with no overall plan or rationale. Surely that must be wrong – this is a £10 billion budget we’re talking about, even after the cuts. […]

Snouts in the pharma trough. Covid has created 9 new pharma billionaires, yet we’re failing to vaccinate billions of people. Covid vaccines, funded by public cash, should be first and foremost a global public good. Oxfam. Relative support of left and right leaning parties by education and income in the 1970s and 2010s. Short version […]

Got a very exciting email yesterday (yes, it does happen). One of the most-read posts on this blog over the years has been the table ‘What Brits say v What they mean’, which I first published in 2011. A colleague had pinged it over, and I was frustratingly unable to locate the original source. I […]

Next up in my series of interviews on the real-world influence of researchers at the LSE Centre for Public Authority and International Development, I explore the impact of Claire Elder’s work on Somalia, which raises a whole host of issues around how research can influence policy and practice: How the act of researching for a PhD […]