In recent years, randomized controlled trials have become increasingly popular in the social sciences. In development economics in particular, their use has attracted considerable debate in relation to the identification of ‘what works’ in development policy. This paper focuses on a core...

The hypothesis that ethnic diversity has a negative impact on public goods provision is widely accepted. Notably, most work on this issue fails to distinguish adequately between national versus subnational governance. We find that subnational empirical ev

Almost all major development institutions today say that promoting good governance is an important part of their agendas. Despite this consensus, .good governance. is an extremely elusive objective: it means different things to different organizations and to different actors within these...

Recent years have seen a proliferation of .composite indicators. or .indexes. of governance. Such measures can be useful tools for analysing governance, making public policy, building scientific knowledge, and even influencing ruling elites, but some are

In recent years, randomized controlled trials have become increasingly popular in the social sciences. In development economics in particular, their use has attracted considerable debate in relation to the identification of .what works. in development pol

This paper examines the interaction between the macro-conomy and inequality in Latin America. It focuses on those macroeconomic policies LA countries have been adopting in a post-reform context of fairly liberalised economies. A main problem identified in the paper is that LA countries have been...

This paper discusses the importance of social security policies in developing economies, using empirical evidence from India. The paper discusses the viability of implementing systems of social protection in developing countries and provides an empirical analysis of the effects of socio-economic...

This article reflects on the importance of linking micro and macro levels of analysis in order to advance our current understanding of civil wars and political violence processes and discusses the contributions of the articles in this special issue. We first identify the main problems in...

This volume presents an innovative new analytical framework for understanding the dynamics of violent conflict and its impact on people and communities living in contexts of violence. Bringing together the findings of MICROCON, an influential five year research programme funded by the European...