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MotivationA large donor‐funded programme in Bangladesh implemented multiple measures designed to graduate individuals and households out of extreme poverty. The programme was committed to lesson‐learning and advocacy. It monitored change through socio‐economic surveys, qualitative tracking methods, real time assessment and project evaluations. The qualitative tracking in particular shed light on the nature of extreme poverty and resilience.PurposeIs extreme poverty different from moderate poverty, and in what ways? Do the extreme poor experience more idiosyncratic poverty than structural or systemic poverty? Are the extreme poor more female, socially isolated and marginalised, thus impeding their capabilities? What support is needed to enable recovery and transformation from crises?Approach and methodsBetween 2011 and 2015, 72 life histories of households enrolled in a major poverty reduction programme were conducted, entailing repeated ethnographical engagement with informants. This showed how most households experience ups and downs in their poverty and vulnerability through time: an experience at variance with static understandings of hazards and responses. The limitations of resilience literature are thus critiqued to develop new theory around time preference behaviour and discounting.FindingsExperiences of extreme poverty are not solely a function of systemic, class‐based inequality, but of the varied and reinforcing ways they intersect with idiosyncratic conditions of household life cycles, dependency ratios, gender and age balance, morbidity, ethnic discrimination and social isolation. Four key factors stand out as influencing deep poverty: 1) ill‐health, with significant internal opportunity costs; 2) inter‐generational reproduction; 3) high incidence of female‐managed and ‐headed households, resulting from male desertion; and, 4) a lack of income diversity and security.Policy ImplicationsOur findings provide fresh insights into policy responses to extreme poverty. These insights suggest a policy shift away from a narrow concern with graduation to a wider focus on resilience. Resilience as a poverty reduction outcome requires interventions that support individuals (micro level), target the inter‐generational reproduction of poverty (meso level), and engage with wider power structures that exploit and neglect poor people (macro level). Policy makers need to engage more explicitly with the meso and macro levels in particular, recognizing how the three levels converge to reproduce conditions of extreme poverty.

Around 80% of milk in Kenya is marketed informally, providing livelihoods and contributing to the food security and nutrition of low-income consumers. Government policy, however, is focused on formalization-primarily through licensing and pasteurization-with enforcement via fines, confiscation of milk, or closing the premises of informal actors.This article seeks to better understand if, and why, Kenya's informal milk sector and regulatory system are disconnected from one another and how the policy-reality gap might be better bridged.To understand the nature and performance of Kenya's informal milk markets and their governance, we used a mix of research methods and data sources, including surveys with informal market players, and key informant interviews with key sector stakeholders. Fieldwork was carried out in Nairobi in late 2018.Milk safety and quality matters to all actors in informal milk value chains. The trust-based system used is effective in moderating behaviours and assessing and prioritizing quality and safety. Government policy is not accomplishing the stated goal of formalization: licensing levels remain low among informal actors. Pasteurization is not rewarded in the market. There is some evidence of suboptimal pasteurization processes being undertaken to satisfy regulators. There is a gap between the reality of Kenya's informal milk sector and its regulatory system.The regulation-reality gap manifests itself as adversarial relationships between regulators and informal actors, and unnecessary transaction costs, missing opportunities for enhancing livelihoods, food safety, and food security. New approaches should build on and consider existing approaches taken by actors in informal food markets to ensure food safety and quality. Policy-makers should seek to communicate more effectively with informal actors and engage in more constructive dialogue on inclusive ways forward.

Motivation In the last decade, economic and political ties between China and African countries grew fast, fuelling a heated debate about the implications for the latter and for the global system of China's engagement in Africa. Purpose The article reviews the existing evidence on the nature, causes and impact of China's economic engagement in Africa. Approach and methods The review focuses mainly on the economic literature with a quantitative focus. Findings China's reasons to engage with Africa are not so different from those of western countries: securing natural resources and seeking new export markets. However, there is evidence that China is less interested in the quality of governance and institutions of its African partners. The literature tends to agree on the positive growth effects for African countries of Chinese interest, but also suggests that their already thin manufacturing sector could be adversely affected by Chinese competition and that the increasing natural resource specialization of African countries might hamper diversification, structural transformation and future growth prospects. At the same time Chinese investments are building valuable infrastructure and linkages with local firms, which are growing although still very limited. The emergent trend of increasing presence of small and medium Chinese firms in Africa is promising in this respect. Policy implications Increased Chinese interactions with African countries present opportunities as well as threats for African countries. A key aspect will be the capacity of Chinese presence in Africa to spread to the local economy through spillover effects and linkages to the domestic economy. Both sides should introduce policies aimed at strengthening these linkages and spillovers.

Motivation How can poorer developing countries escape from the vicious circle in which, because the state is fragile, those countries cannot raise sufficient public revenue to be able to finance development, leading to the persistence of poverty and state fragility? We explore a new approach to this problem, which we call progressive fiscal contracts, in which government earmarks the proceeds of particular taxes to be spent on forms of expenditure which will have widespread benefits for lower income groups, such as health, education and social protection. Taxpayers are thus offered a contractual relationship with government (better‐targeted delivery of public services in return for tax payments) in place of a coercive one (simply being ordered to pay taxes, with nothing being offered in exchange). We seek to examine whether this kind of contractual approach offers a way forward for developing countries. Purpose Across five countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Ghana and Zambia) between 2000 and 2015, we seek to find out whether tax yields have improved following the introduction of progressive fiscal contracts, whether conflict and poverty have declined, and whether there have been countervailing costs in terms of reduced efficiency. We also examine the experience of two countries (Brazil and Chile) where there is no formal ear‐marking but government has encouraged the public to think of particular taxes as being associated with particular forms of expenditure. Approach and methods We assess the impact of changes in tax yields, welfare indicators and conflict indicators by means of panel‐data regressions, tabular comparisons and, in Bolivia, qualitative interviews. Changes in efficiency are assessed through examination of changes in tax structure. Findings Across all of the countries surveyed, the introduction of progressive fiscal contracts has been associated with a reduction in headcount poverty between 2000 and 2015, and in Bolivia our qualitative evidence suggests that the relationship can be seen as a causal one. In three cases out of five (Ghana, Bolivia and Ecuador) tax yields have increased, and in two (Ecuador and Bolivia) there was a significant reduction in political violence. In the Latin American cases examined, but not the African ones, there was a shift from royalty‐based taxation to income‐based taxation of natural resources, suggesting the likelihood of an improvement in efficiency over the period in those countries only. In these cases, the stereotypical view that progressive fiscal contracts improve equity at the expense of efficiency is contradicted. Policy implications (or conclusions) ‘Progressive fiscal contracts’, which originated as a device for making tax payments more palatable by offering social benefits in return, show promise as an innovative strategy for boosting tax ratios, reducing political violence and reducing poverty, which deserves further exploration.

Motivation It is time to reframe fundamentally the research agenda on migration, remittances, payments and development. Many policy‐makers in the developing world, and researchers, tend to view migrant remittances as windfall income, rather than as returns on investment, which is how families with migrants tend see remittances. Migration is thus, among other things, a strategy for financial management in poor households: location is an asset, migration an investment. Purpose We propose that this shift of perspective on remittances—from windfall to return on investment—leads to more fruitful research questions. Methods Reviewing the literature, we summarize the research questions that have dominated the literature on migration and remittances and why, owing largely to unhelpful perspectives, they lead us to less informative answers. Findings We suggest 12 new and alternative research questions that have received relatively little attention in the literature on migration and remittances, to spur new, more productive research. Policy Implications Migrant remittances are now several times larger than foreign aid. The effects of migration regulation and financial regulation on remittances have directly and significantly affect poverty and human security worldwide. But some of the most basic questions about remittances and their effects remain inadequately answered, in part because of a blinded research agenda. Asking better questions is a step toward better policies, programmes and regulations and, above all, to enable people on low incomes to improve their lives.

After five decades of rapid expansion of microfinance worldwide, little is known about its aggregate effects and whether the “microfinance promise” of poverty reduction holds at the macro level. Challenging questions have arisen. Here we explore the dynamic response of microfinance on economic growth, financial deepening and income inequality. Countries are grouped into three broad clusters (stable, moderate and poor) based on macro‐institutional variables. Our results show that microfinance has a significant long‐term ability to affect the broader economy. However, the impact and dynamics of microfinance differ substantially across macro‐institutional environments. It grows in weaker environments, reaches its peak in developing economies, and then gradually “dies out” in more stable economies. While there is evidence of a positive impact of microfinance at the aggregate level, the response is different depending on whether countries are poor, moderately developed or economically stable. Once countries climb up the macro‐institutional “ladder,” microfinance can take a different shape and its relationship with other macroeconomic fundamentals can change. Our results indicate that microfinance has the strongest effect when the external environment is supportive and proactive; in weak environments, microfinance cannot grow sufficiently. Therefore, more attention should be given to supporting the socioeconomic dimensions of economies.

Early evidence is ambiguous on the effects of cash transfer programmes on children, but until the last few years there has been little focus on Africa. We review the literature on 20 cash transfer schemes, including 12 from sub‐Saharan Africa. Such interventions have shown improvements in household diet and, in some cases, to agriculture, but have not always improved child health. However, a larger perspective focusing on two key time periods for nutrition—adolescence and the first 1,000 days of life reveals more opportunities for impact. In particular, the opportunity to empower young women to access secondary education and the reduction of adolescent pregnancy rates can improve the health of African children. Cash transfer programmes show promise, though there is room for improvement.

Using district-level household data, the study investigates the impact of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) violence on financial inclusion in India. Exploiting the staggered rollout of a major public works program, we find that the program has the potency to improve financial inclusion, notwithstanding the deleterious effects of higher LWE violence. These findings are however, different in the post PMJDY phase and especially in the short-run wherein there is an increase in both the access to and use of finance. The findings are consistent with the citizen support model and suggest that demonstrable government commitment in the form of spending on public works has the capacity to raise financial inclusion, even if these programs occur in LWE affected districts. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Informal urban settlements determine the well-being of a large section of global humanity. Yet there has been little research on their role in facilitating social mobility. In theory such settlements may foster human progress by linking rural-urban migrants to the services, contacts and livelihoods concentrated in cities. The article uses longitudinal data for South Africa to explore the magnitude of social progression among people living within informal settlements compared with rural areas and formal urban areas. It finds that there may be some advantage from living in an informal settlement compared with a rural area, but the effect is not strong. The impact may be larger in the more prosperous Gauteng city-region than in other urban regions. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

This exploratory case study investigated Yemeni civil society actors’ actual and potential contribution to policy‐making, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, in the sectors prioritized in Yemen's national development strategy. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted in Sana'a between January and July 2015 with policy‐makers, researchers from academic institutions and civil society organizations. More specifically, this article discusses the role that YPRIs play in the public policy landscape of Yemen; the challenges they face in their interaction with policy‐makers; the opportunities they represent for policy actors in Yemen; and the factors enabling and limiting their influence, communication, inclusiveness and capacity. The authors conclude by contextualizing their findings within the ongoing conflict and drawing lessons for post‐war policy‐making in Yemen.

The Paris Declaration embodies the consensus that country ownership of donor programmes is vital, and above all the principle that donors should base their programmes on developing country priorities. OECD has assessed the World Bank as performing relatively well against the Paris targets, though not moving towards full compliance. In Sri Lanka and Cote d'Ivoire, however, the Bank pays only lip service to the governments’ priorities. The Paris commitment is swamped by the influence of the Bank's governing Board and its US-nominated President, its lending imperative and the professional preoccupations of its staff. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

This paper examines the role that aid from the European Union (EU) has played in leading to change in non-EU Member States. It particularly explores whether the EU's financial assistance has led to change in Macedonia. Police reforms in Macedonia and the EU's impact on them is particularly complex because of the sensitivity of such reforms in the functioning of the country's multi-ethnic democracy. Using the institutionalism approach, the paper argues that the police reforms have been heavily dependent on EU funding and traces its impact on police reforms in Macedonia. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

While migration has been found to enhance welfare across a range of settings, most of the literature focuses on rural‐to‐urban migrant flows. Using a unique dataset from north‐western Tanzania, this article probes an important, yet overlooked, link between land markets and rural‐to‐rural migration. A mixed‐methods approach is used to discern how these two forces are intertwined in village life. Results indicate that household decisions to migrate are particularly influenced by the ease of market‐based land access in their new communities. This suggests that labour mobility may be facilitated through the development of a well‐functioning land market.

The feasibility of microfinance institutions (MFIs) to expand outreach to the poorest while remaining financially sustainable has long been debated. Using data from 206 MFIs in 33 African countries, we adopt the three‐stage least square technique to assess whether a trade‐off exists between sustainability and outreach depth. Our results confirm the existence of a trade‐off. The evidence also supports ongoing subsidies for MFIs with the aim of encouraging outreach. In addition, we examine whether there is an inflection point beyond which higher interest rates reduce profitability for MFIs. We find no evidence of a threshold beyond which profitability is reduced.

From 2002 to 2013, Angola engaged in large-scale state-led reconstruction and development alongside an elite-led appropriation and seizure of national assets. Until the oil price shock, Angola had been succeeding in promoting rapid economic growth and possibly even significant social development alongside a massive grab of wealth and power by local elites. Today, though an economic crisis has taken hold, frequent predictions of the country's immanent collapse have yet to be fulfilled. This paper reviews the state's development planning and expenditure with a focus on public investment and industrial development to determine to what extent Angola during this period might be considered a developmental or petro-developmental state. It is argued that, while more significant than generally thought, petro-developmental outcomes were and are limited by the autocratic and neopatrimonial tendencies of the Angolan elite. Nevertheless, limited success with structural transformation may have lasting effects. Following its long civil war, the conditions existed for Angola to follow a new path of state-led development. However more difficult it may now be, structural transformation and economic diversification remain the only path to economic and social development. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

We describe a public good experiment, a type of economic experiment commonly used to examine feelings of prosociality and community cohesion, carried out in Rwanda. Contributions in different parts of the country are affected by the local intensity of the 1994 genocide, with more generous contributions being made in areas where violence was greater. This supports earlier research indicating that conflict experience leads to greater prosociality. However, we also find that people who have not, themselves, been targets of violence give lower contributions than people who have. The considerable group-related and regional differences in social behaviour may have implications for the country's policies to deal with social cohesion. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

This paper uses the city of Shanghai as a case study to analyze the changing institutional mechanisms for the new urban poverty stratum in China. Specifically, this paper examines urban poverty in relation to economic restructuring and the transformation of the welfare provision system in three stages of market reforms. In each stage, this paper will first examine the overall economic growth strategies at the national level, and then examine local government policy outcomes at the city level. This paper will further identify the impacts of institutional changes on urban poverty and social inequality. Finally, this paper will assess the current poverty reduction policies and propose a “social inclusion” framework to alleviate urban poverty in China. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Studies on China–Africa co†operation have revealed increasing diversification of China's on†the†ground practices in Africa. However, engaged research has yet to examine the situated experiences of Chinese and African individuals whose activities shape and are shaped by Chinese multinationals, especially those in the growing yet underexplored high†tech sectors. To address this gap, this article investigates the workplace regimes of two Chinese companies in Ethiopia. Using a mixed†method approach, it articulates the contradictory nature of Chinese investment and its diverse manifestations in work relations between Chinese expatriates and local Ethiopians. Our findings suggest that Chinese and Ethiopian employees are proactive yet constrained agents in exploiting work opportunities for their own economic interests and professional development.

El Salvador and the Philippines have had relatively successful democratization processes and decades of sustained international support, but continue to see high levels of violence from non-state actors that prevent or delay the consolidation of democracy. How has international support helped or hindered these processes? This paper finds that frequently donors and local stakeholders are vulnerable to the ‘ownership dilemma’. External donors often focus on strengthening state institutions rather than promoting inclusiveness. This is often the result of institutional capture by local elites, which are reluctant to pursue structural reforms. While external support rarely has the influence to decisively shape processes of democratic consolidation, the analysis finds that windows of opportunity may emerge and assist in deepening support for consolidation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Considering institutional and geographic explanations for economic development, the institutional thesis is relevant to explain the historically weak governance structure, even as there have been robust foreign assistance efforts for development in recent years. Taken together, the weak role of the state and low levels of human development are evidence of the challenges. Reviewing the post†colonial legacy of Haiti, and its impact on economic development, this article discusses the lack of an integral state resulting in weak institutions. Especially since the earthquake in early 2010, the international development community has been an essential partner for reform initiatives, which will require accountable and inclusive domestic institutions to be effective.

Local trade in non-timber forest products (NTFPs) is increasing globally, yet the causes have been little studied. We examine household shock as a driver of NTFP trade in five southern African countries, with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS related illness and death. Over the past two years 95% of trader households had experienced at least one shock, with family illness and death recorded for 68% and 42% of households, respectively. Almost 40% had entered the trade because of HIV/AIDS related shocks. Additional shocks included natural disasters, crop pests or failure and livestock loss. The sale of NTFPs was the third-most common coping strategy, after kinship and agricultural adjustments. Coping strategies differed between sites and type of shock. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the validity of trickle down effect by using unbalanced panel data analysis for 65 countries in the period of 1995-2011. The estimation results point out that an increase in the incomes of the rich raises the incomes of the poor and vice versa. Nevertheless it can be clearly said that the contribution of the income transfer of the poor to the rich is more dominant than vice versa. Therefore, the invalidity of trickle down effect can be stated in 65 countries. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Recent research into migration in Bangladesh has highlighted that people migrate for better livelihoods, not necessarily in response to climatic stresses and shocks. If facilitated appropriately, internal and international migration can help build adaptive capacity to future environmental and climatic hazards. In this framing, migration happens in the context of a growing city-centred economy that promotes remittances to villages. However, a textual analysis of current and recent policies concerning climate change, development and poverty alleviation, and disaster management shows that the economic and adaptive roles of internal migration are often not included in policy framing. We argue that if migration works as a positive step towards adaptation, then the key challenge is to align the policies with this new understanding.

This article investigates current socioeconomic disparities within rural and urban areas. The empirical analysis is grounded in an examination of urban and rural bias theories, which have often underpinned poverty analysis. This article suggests that poverty analysis can be improved by moving beyond the rural–urban binary and investigating differences across all geographical types (when data are available). Using 2012 household survey data on South Africa, the article sheds lights on substantial differences—in household composition and access to services and assets—that are likely to make households located in particular geotypes far more vulnerable to poverty. Finally, the article discusses how development policy can better address the specific income-generating constraints that disadvantaged areas face.

This article sheds light on the new sites of contestation of global capitalism and international geopolitics created by transnational ties between Brazilian and Mozambican social movements. With a special focus on the rural sector and land issues, the article examines how the internationalization of Brazil's public policies and companies set the context and opened opportunity to the rise of South‐South advocacy networks and the setting up of renewed spaces of political dialogue. Building on the politics of mobilization, it identifies two major coalitions reflecting Brazil's domestic struggles and analyzes their different mobilization strategies and objectives influencing political outcomes.

An outspoken commitment in international development assistance is to promote donor coordination. Yet, how this ambition plays out in practice, or how feasible and realistic it is, has rarely been evaluated. Using the fisheries sector as a critical case, this article explores whether two major international actors, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank, meet the demands on policy harmonization as spelled out in the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness. Through a systematic qualitative analysis, the article investigates if the policies of these actors are complementary or contradictory. It also discusses how the potential challenges to harmonization can be understood and what the broader implications for aid and development policies in general might be. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

This analysis concerns the use of punitive actions to curb corruption. Propositions from the literature on corruption state that by prosecuting offenders for corruption-related crimes and thus ending impunity, particularly among high-level political figures (‘big fish’), a political culture of less corruption will evolve. This, however, hinges on there being no impunity and politicization of prosecutions. This study empirically assesses whether this condition holds in the sub-Saharan African political context. A unique database on corruption-related prosecutions at the level of ministers across Africa was compiled and patterns were found that suggest that prosecutions are indeed politicized and serve as a way to eliminate political rivals. These findings are a warning in the face of the international community's overly technical and apolitical approach to anti-corruption in sub-Saharan Africa.

The earthquake that struck Haiti at the start of 2010 led to impressive international solidarity in the recovery effort. Despite the tons of aid sent to Haiti, relatively little is known about the effectiveness of the aid or about the continuing needs of the Haitians. Using data collected from in-person surveys with over 1,000 Haitians in two major cities, we sought to quantify some of the impacts of the earthquake while determining people's relative preferences for food and other basic needs in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. The results indicate that almost two thirds of Haitians lost a friend to the earthquake, and nearly half lost a family member. People reported spending more on food in the aftermath of the earthquake, and the level of food aid received does not appear to have any impact on food expenditures. Among different types of aid, Haitians stated being most in need of a job—something difficult for international aid agencies to supply over the long run. They also indicated that quality of life would be most improved by education. The lessons learned in Haiti may prove useful in addressing future natural disasters.

This paper examines the nature and origins of state–society relations in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It traces the region's predatory state–society relations to slavery and colonialism and the concomitant extractive institutions, which are not conducive to sustainable economic development. Consequently, attempts to achieve sustainable development have been largely futile. The paper proposes a strategy for transforming the region's economic and governance institutions for inclusive and enduring growth and development. This strategy includes the promulgation and enforcement of coherent international codes and guidelines for state–society relations.

The impact of international donor arrival on local civil society organizations (CSOs) is well researched. Less well understood is how local CSOs react and adapt to donor withdrawal. This article explores this phenomenon in the context of the HIV/AIDS sector in Vietnam. Using data from government, donor and CSO sources in Vietnam, it examines how current and planned cuts in donor funding, including donor exit, impact local CSO agency and effectiveness. It finds that while donor withdrawal may reduce CSO capacity and independence, it can also prompt local innovations that—if successful—may improve CSOs’ responsiveness to local stakeholders.

The concept of country ownership is central to international efforts to improve aid effectiveness. At the same time, policy reform in recipient countries continues to be a donor priority, given its potential to both reduce poverty and improve aid effectiveness. How effectively can donors promote reform while not undermining ownership? What role can be played by conditionality, discredited in recent decades but still widely used in altered form and linked to the provision of budget support? This article draws on over 50 in-depth interviews with recipient country policy-makers, political leaders and donor officials to explore these questions in three aid-dependent Small Island Developing States (SIDS) where donors have used budget support to leverage policy reform.

In recent years a series of non-traditional donors have gained relevance as providers of Official Development Assistance (ODA). In the present study we analyze the case of Chile, one of these emerging donors. Our estimates indicate that Chile's ODA was roughly 0.01% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the period from 2006 to 2012. Even though this magnitude was far below that of other emerging donors, Chile has become one of the main regional donors within Latin America. We show that the Chilean approach to international co-operation has been a mix of emergency aid and technical assistance for social policies, often in response to diplomatic affairs. As such, Chilean ODA has been mainly an instrument of soft power diplomacy.

Cash transfers are a development intervention aimed at alleviating shocks from chronic poverty and inequality by reducing the risks and vulnerabilities associated with them. Implementation of cash transfer programmes is growing rapidly around the world, providing a body of evidence demonstrating the impact of cash transfers in many development sectors, including livelihoods, education and health. Cash transfers have also been effective in influencing positive outcomes for HIV prevention synergistically with other development sectors. Yet, programme effectiveness is greatly influenced by context, including issues such as conditionality, durability and political will. Nevertheless, the evidence strongly supports the effectiveness of cash transfers in leading to positive and multi-sectoral development outcomes, warranting greater use of such programmes.

Childhood malnutrition remains a significant global problem, with an estimated 162 million children under the age of five suffering from stunted growth. This article examines the extent to which cash transfer programmes can improve child nutrition. It adopts a framework that captures and explains the pathways and determinants of child nutrition. The framework is then used to organize and discuss relevant evidence from the impact evaluation literature, focusing on impact pathways and new and emerging findings from sub-Saharan Africa to identify critical elements that determine child nutrition outcomes as well as knowledge gaps requiring further research, such as children’s dietary diversity, caregiver behaviours and stress.

Is ‘ownership’ still relevant to the post-2015 era? Since 2000, global efforts have concentrated on reforming prescriptive aid relationships by promoting ownership by recipient countries. However, there have been many challenges operationalizing ownership at the country and sectoral levels, and the post-2015 era will present more challenges. This is because traditional donors, the private sector and philanthropic actors will now need to partner to finance the post-2015 Global Goals, and it is unclear how recipients will retain meaningful ownership. This article discusses how ownership is not monolithic, as different understandings have always been simultaneously reflected and challenged over time. In so doing it proposes analytical clarity around the concept, and raises questions and implications for post-2015 development practice.

We analyze poultry‐related policy documents from Ghana and ask how the problems identified and the actions proposed have changed over time. The analysis highlights the fact of limited and poor quality data, and associated uncertainty, ambiguity and poor specification of both problems and interventions. It also points to a long‐term commitment to intensive commercial production as the preferred pathway to deliver more animal protein. However, in the face of persistent feed constraints and economic liberalization, imports of frozen chicken have sky‐rocketed since the early 2000s, and a new pathway has come to dominate. We discuss this outcome and what it says more generally about policy around minor crops and livestock species.

Poverty is a human construct, yet the Euro-American development assistance programmes that aim to reduce poverty remain a function of systemic problems, profit and politics. Critics argue that widened global income inequality and neoliberalism's ineffectiveness in the Global South can be reflected in recent geopolitical and epistemic tensions. China's rise as an economic and military power and its authority in setting up the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank directly threaten Euro-American dominance in development discourse. These changes can bring multiple perspectives in the aid effectiveness debate. While these views introduce alternatives to the business approach of poverty reduction, they also make the Sustainable Development Goals appear more significant than ever.

During the past decade, the EU has introduced several reforms to make collective development policy more coherent and effective. At the same time, development exists alongside (and sometimes competes with) other policy fields, particularly in settings where the EU has strong economic interests. Reforms to EU external relations take place against a backdrop of rapidly intensifying economic and political relations between China and African countries, a debate often framed as increasing competition with the EU. This article argues that Chinese engagement in Africa poses challenges for the EU's development policy, but these differ considerably across African countries. We look at three country cases to show that China's increasing engagement with individual African countries does not cause EU collective action failures.

Acknowledging that aid proliferation and a lack of coordination impair aid effectiveness, donors have repeatedly promised to specialize and better coordinate their aid activities, notably in the Paris Declaration of 2005. We exploit data on the exact location of aid projects in Malawi to assess whether the country's bilateral and multilateral donors have acted accordingly at the district and sector level. We do not find compelling evidence for increased aid specialization after the Paris Declaration, and the regional division of labour among donors may even have deteriorated. Our within-country evidence thus broadly corroborates what previous studies have found at the national level of recipient countries.

From development perspective, this article defines Global Governance (GG) as a set of three global‐level systems, institutions, and processes that interact and manifest at the country level and influence policies relating to development as well as the outcomes. The three key GG components that influence development are: (i) the International Trade and Investment (ITI) systems that provide foreign investment capital and thus promote economic growth; (ii) the internationally agreed United Nations Development Agenda (UNDA), the 2015‐2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that include, inter alia, inclusion, equity, and sustainability as key parameters of development; and (iii) advocacy by international non‐government organizations (INGOs) for human rights and social justice. Depending on government priorities and their state of governance, countries respond to GG components in varied ways. By focusing on the Ready Made Garment (RMG) sector of Bangladesh the paper examines the relationships between the dynamics of GG/country‐level interface and government responses to GG components in policy and the outcomes, in the contexts of the country's overall political, social, and governance arrangements. It shows how over‐reliance on foreign capital for development financing and deregulated investment regime – a hallmark of neoliberal economic arrangements – undermines incorporation of SDGs’ and INGO equity principles, contributing to biased policy responses yielding unequal outcomes. The paper concludes that while GG/Country level interface offers both opportunities and risks, the way to minimize risks and maximize gains would include among other things, giving voices to citizens in policies through strengthening of democracy, introduction of compliance provisions for the implementation of the SDGs and UN Codes of Conduct for Businesses. The article, however, cautions that so long countries prioritize economic growth as the dominant goal of ‘development’ over social and environmental nourishment and adopt neoliberal economic policies to promote economic growth, inequity is unavoidable, if not inevitable and therefore, the way forward is to shift the focus of development from the economy to society to build ‘good society’ – one that nurtures and sustains itself through values of equity, empathy, social justice, environmental sustainability and economic prosperity – in which institutions and strategies including those that contribute to economic growth are organized such that these complement and do not compromise evolution of such societies.

This article explores how strategies of thinking and working politically are used by agencies within developing country governments to influence wider government agendas. It uses research on climate change mitigation in China and India to explore how government agencies seek to overcome challenges of limited capacity and competing priorities by bundling climate change together with more immediate priorities and thereby developing a coalition with an interest in achieving these objectives. The article is based on interviews conducted in China and India, as well as analysis of themes covered in the growing body of literature on the domestic politics of climate change mitigation. In both countries we found that pragmatic approaches leveraging what already exists made significant progress in putting energy efficiency on the agenda, strengthening institutional presence (in India) and delivering improvements in energy efficiency (in China). Yet, we also found that the use of these tactics had significant limitations. While there was probably no other way that the policy space given to climate change mitigation could have increased so rapidly, there are significant side effects that arise as a result of the traction gained by these initial policy approaches. While bundling raised the profile of energy efficiency, it also created perverse incentives that highlight the need to consider the long‐term effect on the interests, capacity and sustainability of informal coalitions. We highlight the need to take account of both the short‐ and long‐term effects of thinking and working politically, and the challenges of doing so when the outcomes are unpredictable and inherently difficult to assess.

The New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States marks an important ideological shift in development co-operation. Despite this progress, no practical response has been found to the problem of aid co-ordination. This article traces the issue of aid allocation and highlights lessons from the ‘aid orphan’ and ‘aid darling’ debate. It examines the significant, yet under-reported, policy process of the New Deal. It argues that deeper engagement with the concept of trust, and renewed focus on the political elements of the agreement, should be key priorities for the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding.

Clientelism may lead to the underprovision of services which are deemed suitable for decentralisation. Water distribution and drainage services, managed from a lower level of municipal authority, are liable to be affected by clientelism and consequent underprovision. Water quality, maintained from a higher municipal layer, is not likely to be affected by clientelism. Capture by politically influential and dominant social and religious groups is likely to take place for important services like water supply. The article suggests that awareness, measurability, importance and resource intensiveness of service are additional factors to be considered for assessing the suitability of a sector for decentralisation.

Employment in Household Enterprises (HEs) has been an integral part of the recent economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Yet employment and development strategies tend to exclude the sector, despite the fact that households with HEs tend to be richer. A good example is Mozambique, where 34% of households rely on income from this source. Analysis of household livelihoods using panel data shows that starting HEs is associated with upward wealth mobility and poverty reduction, particularly for rural and poorly-educated households. Targeted programmes directed towards the constraints to HE creation, survival and income growth would be likely to enhance the effectiveness of employment and poverty reduction strategies in Mozambique as well as in other low income countries in SSA.

type="main" xml:id="dpr12135-abs-0001"> This article explores public attitudes towards aid to developing countries in ‘traditional’ donors and ‘emerging’ donors, taking Japan as an example of the former and Korea as one of the latter. Analyses of comparative social survey data show differences and similarities between the attitudes harboured by the respondents in the two countries. Although previous cross-national studies included only traditional donors in their analyses, the results of this study reveal the need to focus on the attitude towards aid in emerging donors, especially given their increasing presence in the international aid community.

The increased access of African countries to international capital markets has put public debt sustainability once again high on the continent's policy agenda. Utilizing the 'stabilizing primary balance' approach, we find that the primary balances exceeded those required to keep public debt at the 2007 level in about half of the countries studied. In several cases with high debt burdens, the balances were above those needed to reduce public debt-to-GDP to sustainable thresholds. In most countries the main driver of sustainability has been the interest rate – growth differential (IRGD), underscoring the importance of supporting growth and utilizing the borrowing space for growth-enhancing outlays. Fiscal policies will need to play a greater role in maintaining debt sustainability in the future, especially since the IRGDs are likely to narrow over the longer term. The recent developments such as the fall of the commodity prices and uneven global growth underscore the need for sound macroeconomic and risk management.