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Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development provides a critical perspective on the use of randomized control trials in development and poverty alleviation policies, warning against their excessive use and proposing improvements and alternatives.
Drawing together international experts on research methods in International Relations (IR), this Handbook answers the complex practical questions for those approaching a new research topic for the first time. Innovative in its approach, it considers the art of IR research as well as the science, offering diverse perspectives on current research methods and emerging developments in the field.
Demystifying the evaluation journey, this is the first evaluation mentoring book that addresses the choices, roles, and challenges that evaluators must navigate in the real world. Experienced evaluator and trainer Donna R. Podems covers both conceptual and technical aspects of practice in a friendly, conversational style. She focuses not just on how to do evaluations but how to think like an evaluator, fostering reflective, ethical, and culturally sensitive practice. Extensive case examples illustrate the process of conceptualizing and implementing an evaluation--clarifying interventions, identifying beneficiaries, gathering data, discussing results, valuing, and developing recommendations. The differences (and connections) between research, evaluation, and monitoring are explored. Handy icons identify instructive features including self-study exercises, group activities, clarifying questions, facilitation and negotiation techniques, insider tips, advice, and resources. Purchasers can access a companion website to download and print reproducible materials for some of the activities and games described in the book.
Microcredit programmes, long considered efficient development tools, now face unprecedented crises in a number of countries. Is this the end of microcredit or rather an essential step in its expansion? Should we stop microcredit altogether or rethink the way it is implemented? Drawing on extensive empirical research conducted in various parts of the world - from Morocco to Senegal to India - this important volume examines the whole chain of microcredit to provide the answers to these questions. In doing so, the authors highlight the diversity of crises, both in intensity and in nature, while also shedding light on a diversity of causes, be it microcredit organizations unprepared for massive growth, saturated local economies or greedy investors and shareholders attracted by profits. Crucially, the authors demonstrate that microcredit is not a monolithic project, and the crises should also be analysed in the light of national histories and policies. An original and necessary intervention in what has become one of the most contentious topics within the development world.
Un nouveau courant de l’économie prospère depuis le début des années 2000. À base d’expérimentations, il se propose de créer des modèles pour transformer la conduite des individus par la connaissance des biais qui régissent leurs comportements. Les tenants de ce « nouveau comportementalisme » occupent une position de plus en plus dominante parmi les économistes, auprès des autorités publiques, de grandes fondations, d’entreprises et même dans les médias. L’apparente simplicité de leur méthode, qui prétend notamment changer le sort des populations les plus démunies, redore le blason terni de l’économie, ainsi présentée comme compréhensible, accessible et util...
Corruption is perversely useful. It helps both those in government, and those opposing it. Consequently, eliminating it is difficult.
Whether understood as a long-run historical process or an intentional political project, international development transforms not only societies and economies but also key ideas about how the world works and how problems should be solved. In this compelling book, Michael Woolcock demonstrates that achieving peace and prosperity for all is supremely contingent and often contentious: the means and ends of development are often perceived as alien, unjust, and disruptive, its benefits and costs unequally borne. Many development challenges are not technical problems amenable to an expert’s solution, but require extensive deliberation to find and fit context-specific responses. Woolcock insists that it is each generation’s challenge to find shared, legitimate, and durable solutions to the moral imperative to reduce human suffering while simultaneously redressing the challenges that development success (let alone failure) inexorably brings. This skillful guide will be essential reading for students and practitioners working in this complex field, and for anyone seeking to help “make the world a better place.”
Based on cutting-edge research by an interdisciplinary team of academics and policy analysts, this insightful and timely book considers the role of great power competition in what has come to be known as gray zone conflict. Taking the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine as a backdrop for some of its critical evaluation, it also examines US and NATO approaches to the management of escalation in asymmetric conflicts, and proposes innovative tools for managing crises in the future.
'The Commons' explores the many forms of development being championed by Africa's residents, users, and citizens. In addition to managing property and shared tangible and intangible resources collectively, communities are experimenting with a concept of 'commoning' founded on values such as community, engagement, reciprocity, and trust. In practice, their approach takes the form of land-based commons, housing cooperatives, hybrid cultural spaces or places for innovation, and collaborative digital platforms. The purpose of this book, where observation of historical and recent practices converges with new theories within commons scholarship, is not to promote commons themselves. Rather, it examines the tensions, drivers of change, and opportunities that surround commons dynamics in Africa. This book highlights the abundance of commons-based entrepreneurial processes in Sub-Saharan Africa and shows that partnerships between African public authorities and communities involved in the commons can be powerful drivers of sustainable development for the continent.
The mission, relevance and intellectual orientation of development studies is increasingly challenged from various fronts such as decoloniality, ‘global development’ and randomized control trials. The essays featured in this collection together argue for the need of the field to reclaim its critical political economy tradition. Building on the contributions of Ashwani Saith, the contributions touch upon many of the central questions of development studies centred around structural change, labour and inequality.