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SUMMARY The notion that economic development in African states requires minimal levels of security has become widely accepted in the international development community. The question is which types of security provision-professional all-service policing or functionally specialized agencies-will have the greater impact on promoting and sustaining economic development. Using mainly available data and analyses by van Dijk, I argue that functional policing styles and work are more important to address the major obstacle to economic development: grand corruption, organized crime, political violence, fraud and mismanagement by government than professional all-service policing. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY Climate change and escalating degradation of ecosystem services place the need for greening economic growth on the international policy agenda. To make growth greener and more inclusive, it is crucial to change the institutions and incentive structures in national sector reforms and to involve poor and vulnerable groups in decision making. The article analyses the role that strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of sector reforms can play in greening growth in developing countries and discusses implications for public administrations. We suggest that SEA can contribute to greening growth if it draws attention to environmental priorities when the sector reform agenda is set, fosters policy learning processes through repeated and sustained stakeholder interaction and facilitates access to information and empowerment of environmental constituencies. The empirical basis for the article is drawn from a recent World Bank pilot programme involving SEAs of different sector reforms (mining, forestry, urban planning, infrastructure) in Africa (Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia) and Asia (China, Bangladesh and Pakistan). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As decentralisation advances, the question of local economic development acquires more significance. How can local governments and other local actors such as local producers and their associations, community based organisations, as well as NGOs and donors contribute to local economic development and poverty reduction? This article begins by examining how the context for local economic development has drastically changed. It stresses lack of demand and the absence of meso-level institutions, i.e. institutions at the level of sector and area. Their absence deters investment responses by enterprises and households. In terms of local development initiatives, a distinction is made between community economic development and enterprise or business development. The first seeks to facilitate household economic diversification as an essential strategy of rural and urban livelihood; the second, enterprise development, seeks specialisation of the local economic base. These two lines are complemented by a third category, namely locality development, designed to create local public goods and positive externalities. The final section elaborates on the principal actors and their roles, stressing the importance of joint action and collective learning. Local governments have an important facilitating role, creating a favourable business environment and infrastructure conditions, and to contribute to convergence in decision-making. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for an historical synthesis of the 1970s lessons of the effort to achieve sustainable grassroots development with the explorations of the 1980s and 1990s in quest of sustainable political and economic liberalization that have centered primarily on the national level. To do so, the article contends that it is equally necessary to disaggregate, but then integrate, interdependent processes of state reconstruction and democratization. These enterprises require a harvesting of the insights of theory and the lessons of practice for each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between governance and development, and concludes that underlying the litany of Africa's development problems is a crisis of governance. Good governance would result in institutions that are more likely to adopt economic policies that would resolve the constraints that hinder economic development. In addition, it would make a major contribution to the reduction of war and conflict. It would do this by creating an environment for sustainable development to take place and thereby reduce poverty, the root cause of war and conflict. This calls for a critical examination of the question of governance in Africa with a view to identifying the obstacles to its establishment and the possible approaches to the development of systems of governance that give political space to all groups. Since the most important legal instrument in the scheme of good governance is the national constitution, the article seeks to identify some of the key issues that must be considered in the process of developing a national constitution if it is to be durable. It also addresses the conditions under which such constitutions should be developed if they are to be acceptable to the people of the country they are intended to govern. Running through the article is the theme that the establishment of good governance in Africa depends on the development of political systems that give people a sense of ownership of the political process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]