To what extent does participation in one particular domain of public life lead to wider participation in other areas? Through the use of an unprecedented survey supported by case studies this book explores how participatory governance in community-managed schools can alter the civic and political behaviour of participants.

THE BEST-SELLING MODERN CLASSIC: The world’s leading urbanist offers a “profound . . . brilliant” account of the rise of the world’s slums and the failures of modern urbanization (Arundhati Roy, activist and Booker Prize–winning author).According to the United Nations, more than one billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South. In this brilliant and ambitious book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically unequal and explosively unstable urb...

As the income gap between developed and developing nations grows, so grows the cacophony of voices claiming that the quest to find a simple recipe for economic growth has failed. Getting Better, in sharp contrast, reports the good news about global progress. Economist Charles Kenny argues against development naysayers by pointing to the evidence of widespread improvements in health, education, peace, liberty -- and even happiness.Kenny shows how the spread of cheap technol...

Philanthro-capitalism: How charity became big businessThe charitable sector is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy. Nearly half of the more than 85,000 private foundations in the United States have come into being since the year 2000. Just under 5,000 more were established in 2011 alone. This deluge of philanthropy has helped create a world where billionaires wield more power over education policy, global agriculture, and global health than ...

Two and a half billion people worldwide, most of them desperately poor villagers, need a better way to save and to borrow. Even the most innovative banking institutions can’t reach them; savings groups can.In savings groups, members save what they can in a communal pot and loan their growing fund to each other for their short-term needs. Jeffrey Ashe and Kyla Neilan illustrate how these savings groups form and function and how little “outside” support is actually required for their ...

The aims of and motives for development cooperation have changed significantly in recent times. Besides pursuing short- and longer-term objectives in their own economic, foreign policy and other interests, donors usually have a recognisable and genuine interest in assisting countries in their processes of development.

As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) pass their 2015 deadline and the international community begins to discuss the future of UN development policy, Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals brings together leading economists from both the global North and South to provide a much needed critique of the prevailing development agenda. By examining current development efforts, goals and policies, it exposes the structurally flawed and misleading measurements of poverty and h...

What did the global food, fuel, and financial crises of 2008-11 mean to people living in the developing world? How did people cope with the crisis and how effective were they at averting major impacts? These are the questions addressed by this book, which emerged out of qualitative crisis monitoring initiatives carried out by IDS and the World Bank. As such, this is not a book about the causes of the crisis or how to prevent future crises. Instead, this book is about how people lived through ...

Foreign aid and overseas military intervention have been important and controversial political topics for over a decade. The government’s controversial target to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid has been widely welcomed by some, but strongly criticised by others. Furthermore, the controversy of the Iraq war rumbles on, even today. This is all happening amongst much instability in many parts of the world. In this short book, a number of authors challenge the assumption t...

Economic Development Strategies and the Evolution of Violence in Latin America explores the links between Latin American governments' economic policies and the nature and dynamics of inter-group violence. Based on the patterns of ten countries, the contributions to this volume trace the remarkable transformation from open ideological conflict to the explosion of social (seemingly apolitical) violence, the upsurge of urban crime, and the confrontations over natural resources and drugs acros...

This book provides a comprehensive overview of key aspects of food insecurity, including definitional and conceptual issues, information systems and data sources, indicators, and policies. The aim is to equip readers with a sound understanding of the subject that will assist in the recognition of food insecurity and the design of suitable responses. The early chapters discuss the evolution and limitations of the concept and provide a set of conceptual frameworks for the analysis of food se...

This book analyzes the changes in and development of China’s Foreign Aid Policy and Mechanisms over the past 60 years. It offers readers a thorough introduction to China’s Aid to Africa; its Aid to Southeast Asian Countries; its Aid Policy Toward Central Asian Countries; and its Aid to Latin America and the Caribbean Region, as well as their respective influence.Combining field research and surveys at the grass-roots level, the book argues that China’s foreign aid policy is intende...