Abstract This paper examines the generation and uses of expert knowledge around trade matters and the WTO’s Doha Development Agenda (DDA) in particular. It examines the input of such experts into the negotiation process, particularly through what is emerging as the dominant method of trade...

Abstract The conclusion of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) ninth ministerial meeting—held in Bali 3-7 December 2013—is at one and the same time momentous, marginal, and business-as-usual. It is momentous because it marks the first multilateral agreement reached in the WTO since the...

This paper sets out to examine the likely benefits accruing to developing countries from the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) as it currently stands. In pursuit of this aim, the paper draws from the insights of both the economic and the political economy literatures in pursuit of a more fulsome...

Abstract This paper argues that microfinance in South Asia, like mainstream finance in North America and Europe, "has lost its moral compass". Our particular concern is with microloans to vulnerable clients. Microfinance institutions (MFIs) have increasingly focussed on financial performance and...

Through an analysis of Ghana's HIPC Fund, which was established as part of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) process, this paper shows how aid-financed efforts to reduce regional inequality in Ghana have failed. Dominant political elites agreed to policies of regional inequality...

The increasing realisation that governance quality is a fundamental element of long-run development has led to its consideration as a desirable development goal in its own right. To contribute to such a process, this paper provides a framework to set, measure and monitor governance goals in the...

Although politics has become central to international development assistance, the use of political economy analysis (PEA) as a means for greater aid effectiveness remains an aspiring epistemic agenda. Even though virtually all aid donors have some personnel working on the development and...

This paper examines the take up of Political Economic Analysis (PEA) tools and approaches by development agencies. It charts the emergence of PEA, reviews the embryonic literature on this phenomenon and asks whether this approach assists donors and development agencies to comprehend politics and...

Abstract Since the late 1970s, NGOs have played an increasingly prominent role in the development sector, widely praised for their strengths as innovative and grassroots-driven organisations with the desire and capacity to pursue participatory and people-centred forms of development and to fill...

This paper provides a chronological account of the evolution of the concept and policy of reproductive health and its initial entry, and subsequent exclusion, from UN declarations. In the 1990s effective lobbying by sexual and reproductive rights activists established reproductive health for all...