With the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean has been one of the regions of the world with the greatest inequality. This report explores why the region suffers from such persistent inequality, identifies how it hampers development, and suggests ways to achieve...

This paper offers an interpretation of India’s recent political economy in relation to the longer-term history since independence. It argues that an understanding of both ideas and interests is required for this interpretation. While politics and policy are often portrayed in terms of a tussle...

This paper outlines a conceptual framework for analyzing the politics of service provisioning. The approach uses as its point of departure the 'accountability framework' of relations between citizens, clients and service providers, laid out in the World Bank's 2004 World Development Report. That...

In this introduction, the authors do three things. They first introduce the puzzle and relate it to existing interpretations from market reformists and their critics, arguing that both sets of views are inadequate. The authors then offer an alternative interpretation: that entrenched inequities...

This paper examines the potential role of civil society action in increasing state accountability for development in Sub-Saharan Africa. It further develops the analytical framework of the World Development Report 2004 on accountability relationships, to emphasize the underlying political...

Just as equality of opportunity becomes an increasingly prominent concept in normative economics, the authors argue that it is also a relevant concept for positive models of the links between distribution and aggregate efficiency. Persuasive microeconomic evidence suggests that inequalities in...

This paper discusses a research agenda that arises from unanswered questions and unresolved issues considered in the World Bank’s World Development Report 2006: Equity and Development. After formalizing the key concepts of equity; equality of opportunity; and efficiency, and proposing a...