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Britain has funded English language teaching (ELT) initiatives in developing countries for decades, despite changes in government and a series of substantial overhauls in the administration of development aid. This article reveals the relevance of ideational factors in explaining how ELT remained a key part of Britain’s aid policy during a period of significant domestic and international change. It uses constructivist institutionalism to interpret an extensive range of evidence from government archives spanning a twenty-two year period (1964-1986). It sheds light on how and why certain ideas become normalised and institutionally embedded over time, and become the cognitive template through which key actors form policy preferences.

Numerous attempts have been made to remedy the accountability deficits of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs). The ‘first wave’ of accountability reforms was largely driven by powe...

The public sphere is a pivotal concept in democratic theory. Conventionally, it is framed in a local/national context. In the classic Habermasian formulation, the public sphere is predicated on national media, a sovereign state, and participatory citizenry. However, under conditions of globalisation, the nation-state paradigm is subject to increasingly significant challenges. The advent of the network society is also destabilising the institutional foundations of the national public. These developments necessitate a reassessment of the public sphere as a territorially delimited realm. A reconstruction of Habermasian theory reveals how global interconnections may be providing the structural preconditions for the emergence of transnational public spheres. The categories of flows are threefold: communicative networks, governance networks, and activist networks. In certain issue-areas, all three preconditions may coalesce to produce an environment suitable for the emergence of transnational public spheres. Ho...