June, 2017 | From Poverty to Power

Shouting or cooperating? What’s the best way to use indexes to get better local government?

Duncan Green - June 30, 2017

Went to an enjoyable panel at ODI last week, with the wonderful subtitle ‘Shouting at the system won’t make it work!’. It presented new research on how to improve the accountability of local government in Tanzania. Here’s the paper presented by two of the authors, Anna Mdee and Patricia Tshomba, the first of a series. The research is about how you construct a local government …

Digested read: 3 new papers on measuring women’s empowerment; gender and ISIS; women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa

Duncan Green - June 29, 2017

Just sampled a couple of hundred pages of Oxfam’s prodigious output on gender issues. 3 new papers, to be precise, all of them ground-breaking in different ways. A ‘How To’ Guide to Measuring Women’s Empowerment; a Gender and Conflict Analysis in ISIS-affected communities in Iraq, and Gender Justice, Conflict and Fragility in the Middle East and North Africa. All of them ground-breaking, but none of …

What is really going on within ‘shrinking civil society space’ and how should international actors respond?

Duncan Green - June 28, 2017

Good conversation (Chatham House Rule) last week on the global crackdown on civil society organizations (CSOs) and what to do about it. I was expecting a fairly standard ‘it’s all terrible; international NGOs must take action, speak truth to power etc’ discussion, but it was actually much more interesting and nuanced than that. While it is undoubtedly true, and horrible, that governments around the world …

On hype, Impact Investing and the Valley of Death

Duncan Green - June 27, 2017

How do we build bridges across the Valley of Death? That’s the arresting image in a recent Oxfam paper on ‘impact investing’. The valley of death (see diagram) is the gap that firms face as they move from small start ups to Big Biz. In the start-up stage they raise cash wherever they can find it – family, friends, microfinance. Once they are big enough, …

General

Links I Liked

Duncan Green - June 26, 2017

Best T shirts ever When people talk about ‘systems change‘ they mean 3 different things. Useful unpacking from Dan Vexler She teaches karate to boys and can extract the DNA from bananas. How to be a 5-Year-Old Feminist, aka Eva rocks (but why won’t Channel 4 let us embed it from youtube?) Being in power causes a particular kind of brain damage. Makes sense. Girls …

Ditching the Masterplan. How can Urban Development become ‘Politically smart, locally led’?

Duncan Green - June 23, 2017

Guest post from Harry Jones and Bishnu Adhikari, both of Palladium on what urban aid and development can learn from the Doing Development Differently movement The international development community has come some way in grappling with complex problems, but urban development has lagged behind. Urban programmes systematically underperform according to their own results frameworks and internal evaluations. The failures are probably already familiar to those …

Loneliness, Love, Anger and Activism

Duncan Green - June 22, 2017

Spent a morning at the Ashridge Business School Masters in Sustainability and Responsibility last week. The School is extraordinary – a Hogwarts-esque stately home full of statues and vaulted ceilings, formerly Henry VIII’s crib, set in a country park dotted with croquet lawns and mighty oaks. The conversation was also pretty good – 15 Masters students from every continent/walk of life. Only a couple of …

Can Oxfam do the Doughnut? A conversation with Kate Raworth

Duncan Green - June 21, 2017

Kate Raworth came in last week to present her new book, Doughnut Economics (see my earlier review here or Simon Maxwell’s thoughtful summary/critique) and discuss its implications for Oxfam. After writing the initial DE paper while still at Oxfam back in 2012, Kate left to turn it into a book, so there was a definite air of the prodigal daughter returns. Given that I’ve already reviewed …

Grenfell Tower is a Hurricane Katrina moment, revealing the shameful state of Britain

Duncan Green - June 20, 2017

My colleague Max Lawson sends out a weekly round-up of things he’s read, and adds some views. Here he is on the meaning and horror of the Grenfell Tower fire. At times an event can act like a flash of lightning, illuminating simmering issues that can otherwise feel abstract. The recent horrific fire in the Grenfell Tower Block in West London has done this in the UK, not …

General

Links I Liked

Duncan Green - June 19, 2017

We’ve resurrected FP2P on Facebook! Please like the page, circulate, comment etc and tell us if it’s not working Did the world just hit peak booze? By volume, but not by alcohol content (people going off beer), so maybe just peak bladder Reasons to be Cheerful. Percentage of women in national parliaments 1990 vs 2016 ‘With a flipchart, pens & cheap ribbon from the pound …

June 2017