International Development

Crowdsourcing has become a mega trend in recent years, fueling innovation and collaboration in research,
business, society, and government alike.

In this paper, we provide an overview of the theoretical contributions of crowdsourcing to improve democratic governance. We then examine the critical factors necessary for successful crowdsourcing in general (Sharma 2010) and discuss the inherent challenges and risks, particularly in fragile states. We then provide numerous examples from important crowdsourcing and interactive mapping phenomena and initiatives in Haiti, Libya, Sudan, and Guinea
among others. Most of these examples were taken from personal experience, and their accuracy was  checked with key actors. We return to analyzing these cases according to Sharma’s framework. Finally, we provide recommendations for donors.

Development is a complicated word. In its most benign form, everyone can agree that babies should not die from malnourishment or preventable disease. In its more contentious form, development can be understood as a discursive taxonomy and hierarchy of states and ways of knowing the world that manifests as neo-imperialism. In this seminar, we consider how the modern notion of " development " as a contested discourse and practice came into existence. In particular, we will seek to better our understanding of how the colonial encounter in different parts of the world created the empirical and conceptual conditions, categories, and relations out of which the idea of modern development has emerged. We will consider the evolving colonial idea of "improvement " as it applied to peoples, places, and cosmologies, reading primary and secondary texts that will offer students of International Development Studies a strong intellectual foundation in the study and practice of "development."

"In recent projects I have used flip cameras with participants from ethnic minority communities who were recording their experience of adult learning as enrichment. In another project we used more expensive cameras in a health setting in order to examine what the priorities were for service users. The footage has had multiple benefits and we continue to develop the use of visual technologies and methodologies:

• to empower and support the participation of service users and clients;
• to provide evidence and documentation of outputs and project delivery;
• to support the creative personalization of service delivery;
• to inform project evaluation;
• to demonstrate accountability;
• to improve the accessibility and awareness of services;
• to influence policy and strategic development options;
• to foster dialogue between groups of people - both vertical (client to manager) and horizontal (client to service user)

The main body of this short paper evaluates eighteen benefits or advantages associated with auto-ethnographic methodology"

During the 1990s and 2000s, a policy known as Education with Community Participation (EDUCO) not only became the cornerstone of education reform in El Salvador but also became a global education policy, one which is known for decentralizing to rural families the responsibility for hiring and firing teachers. As is shown in this paper, its rise to fame was not only a product of the particular political-economic context in which it was borne, but was also a product of the impact evaluations produced by the World Bank, which served as the evidence base through which this and other international institutions could legitimately promote the neoliberal model of community involvement represented by EDUCO. Problematically, however, a reappraisal of these impact evaluations reveals, first, that their findings and conclusions around significant effects were not warranted and, second, that the entire impact evaluation enterprise is fundamentally flawed due to the financial-political-intellectual complex out of which these studies emerged and back into which they fed as they were used to advocate for market-oriented policy solutions around the world. Thus, in addition to explaining the reform dynamics that gave rise to EDUCO, this paper (a) systematically reviews the findings and limitations of each of the six impact studies that constitute the international knowledge base around this policy, (b) reconsiders what we can reasonably claim to know about EDUCO, (c) reflects on the national and international implications of the critical review presented here, and (d) remarks on the shortcomings of—and the alternatives to—impact evaluations as a
means to produce policy-relevant findings.

The notion of green growth has emerged as a dominant policy response to climate change and ecological breakdown. Green growth theory asserts that continued economic expansion is compatible with our planet’s ecology, as technological change and substitution will allow us to absolutely decouple GDP growth from resource use and carbon emissions. This claim is now assumed in national and international policy, including in the Sustainable Development Goals. But empirical evidence on resource use and carbon emissions does not support green growth theory. Examining relevant studies on historical trends and model-based projections, we find that: (1) there is no empirical evidence that absolute decoupling from resource use can be achieved on a global scale against a background of continued economic growth, and (2) absolute decoupling from carbon emissions is highly unlikely to be achieved at a rate rapid enough to prevent global warming over 1.5°C or 2°C, even under optimistic policy conditions. We conclude that green growth is likely to be a misguided objective, and that policymakers need to look toward alternative strategies.

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

The purpose of this special issue is to advance heterodox
reconstructions of agrarian Marxism on the occasion of Marx’s
200th birth anniversary. Scholarship on the origins of agrarian
capitalism and the contrasts between agrarian and industrial
capitalism have been a vital part of debates over and within
Marxism for more than a century and have been central to the
social scientific and historical understandings of the modern world
system. At the same time, since the seminal debates associated
with the ‘classical agrarian question,’ agrarian studies is marked by
durable tensions and polarities in theoretical approach. While
Marxists have long criticized ‘populists’ for ignoring capitalism and
class, populists have charged Marxists with historical determinism.
It is the premise of this special issue that much of this debate has
reached something of an impasse. This is in part because new
empirical work addressing the complex contemporary patterns
and conjunctures of global agrarian capitalism, and because new
and generative theoretical reconstructions of Marxism itself, offer
exciting new horizons. Contributions to this special issue help
point the way beyond this impasse, and illustrate that agrarian
Marxism remains a dynamic theoretical program that offers
powerful insights into agrarian change and politics in the twentyfirst
century.

Over the past two decades capitalism and globalization have gradually changed skin. Both have undergone an acceleration that has radically changed their nature and their rules, resulting in a new scenario of the economic geography at the global and the local scale. The crisis started in 2007, first financial and then economic, has inserted in the context of these changes, even producing the emergence of new actors on the international scene and the relative decline of the traditional areas of development. This scenario is the product of a complex web of ideas, actors, networks, technologies and agreements that the volume attempts to analyze in the most significant components.

This thesis evaluates the post-development concept of “alternatives to development” from the perspectives of critical political economy and Western Marxism. Post-development
theorists have long critiqued how development depoliticizes social life and suppresses alternative political imaginations. In formulating alternatives to this mode of social change, they emphasize place-based politics of cultural difference, premised on notions of coloniality, economic difference and autonomy. As I demonstrate, these theoretical positions are limiting, for they unnecessarily close off post-development theory from potential strategies and allies. Alternatively, I argue that the Marxist concept of reification provides an alternative analytical framework which transcends these limitations. By highlighting the role of capitalist class relations in shaping subjectivity and limiting political imagination, the concept of reification thereby illuminates the conditions which make thinking and acting “otherwise” materially possible, while expanding the scope for social action beyond the margins of the capitalist world system.

This paper discusses the nature and purpose of foreign assistance in the Western Balkans through an examination of donor strategies and practices in civil society assistance. It draws on a series of interviews with donor representatives across the region to challenge the current conceptualisations of foreign assistance as a tool for promoting democracy and building good governance. I argue that donor intervention in the region should be understood as a short-term support to the region’s integration in the EU, rather than a long-term developmental project. As a result, donor practices have contributed to emergence of a project-based, donor-driven NGO scene that is detached from the local communities.

Participate in an international competition for a project in China, design a project for Dubai, build a school in the favellas of Brazil. Those are some of the challenges that firms in the fields of architecture, urban planning and construction must now face in a globalizing construction sector. However, the international context of construction shows different faces, ranging from prestige buildings designed by foreign “star” architects in
world-class cities, to emergency shelters produced by humanitarian international initiatives in rural areas in developing countries. For many, this context offers great commercial opportunities, but also risks and threats.

Participants from different countries working in foreign contexts are confronted with major challenges that range from cultural adaptation to contractual know-how. A careful understanding of organizational design and procurement is crucial in this context. The procurement strategies - that is, the initial decisions made by the client(s) to create the temporary multi-organization in charge of the project – can determine the success or failure of the initiatives.

This 2008 conference-workshop discusses these challenges and seeks to clarify the scope of and opportunities for construction projects in the international context. It focuses on the procurement-related aspects of international construction projects, and it opens the door to a wide range of subjects related to the performance of these initiatives.

The conference-workshop addresses the following issues:
• How to procure a building project abroad?
• How do architects participate in international construction?
• What are the main risks of international procurement? What are the main risks of working
abroad?
• Is there such a thing as a real international supply chain?
• What are the differences between local procurement and international procurement?
• What are the main opportunities for construction companies interested in working abroad?
• How must the relations between foreign organizations and local actors be established?

Sustainable development, as defined by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. While the ever-present challenge of poverty reduction continues to loom large, the world faces new challenges ranging from the food and energy crises to the global recession to climate change. All these factors make the situation today much more complex. The pursuit of sustainable development is a balancing act: it requires the implementation of policies, strategies, programs, and projects that treat environment and development as a single issue; it also demands changes in the mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors of stakeholders. This timeline catalogs major sector and thematic landmarks in the world since 1948.

Insofar as gender is still so often equated with women alone, the move from Women in Development to Gender in Development has changed very little. Men as a human category have always been present, involved, consulted, obeyed and disobeyed in development work. Yet men as a gendered category in a feminist sense-involving unequal power relations between men and women and between men-have rarely been drawn into development programmes in any substantial way. This paper addresses conceptual and ...

Relying on the example of the Governance and Economic Management
Assistance Programme for Liberia (GEMAP) this article analyses whether
and under which conditions a shared sovereignty arrangement can serve as a veritable tool of international involvement to create a sustainable
(socio)economic development in a state emerging from conflict. The article
outlines milestones and obstacles of the Liberian peace process and economic
transformation after the signing of the Accra Peace Agreement in
2003. Focusing on (socio)economic and fiscal problems as a threat to the
peace process the article analyses the GEMAP Agreement of 2005 which
was negotiated between the National Transitional Government of Liberia
(NTGL) and international donor organisations. The paper argues that GEMAP is an example of a far-reaching shared sovereignty arrangement that could serve as a (role)model for future co-operations between external donors and post-conflict countries. Furthermore, the article concludes that the continued endorsement of the Accra Peace Agreement and GEMAP by the United Nations Security Council can be considered as a supporting legitimisation of the shared sovereignty arrangement. The conclusion and outlook reflect GEMAP’’s potential role as a playbook for future shared sovereignty arrangements and the continuing need to carefully balance national sovereignty and international involvement in post-conflict situations.

The following paper is aimed to explain policy makers how knowledge-driven clusters and organizational innovation initiatives at country level create the environment to leverage competitive advantage of SMEs, through combining skills and competences from different members and beneficing of economies of agglomeration without losing the flexibility and dynamism of SMEs. In order to successfully build a knowledge-driven cluster, competence mapping is a key tool that will allow to diagnostic the strengths and weakness of the regional players, enabling to build joint products based on the core competencies of each member and tackle the shortages by training and multiparty projects.
This approach fits into the Uruguay effort on building an Automation and Mechatronics industry around CAIME center in the frame of “Advanced Technology Foresight in Latin America and Caribbean region” project, supported by several UNIDO services (such as Country Independent Evaluation and Technology Foresight) and potentially by the Collaboration Mechanism for Science and Technology between Brazil and Uruguay.
The recommendation in order to continue the implementation of advanced technologies in the region is to initiate a knowledge-driven cluster to promote innovation in Mechatronics and Automation fields, starting by performing a competence mapping of potential SMEs cluster members, in order to identify strengths and weakness, and in a second step to perform training on those skills detected as necessaries in collaboration with local academia partners and to initiate joint projects to create added value products.

The inclusion of stakeholders in participatory evaluation in highly diverse, culturally complex settings remains a challenge, given issues of inequity, power, voice, capacity and skill. These challenges are well documented, but there is a relative absence of papers devoted to addressing them based on examples and evidence. In this paper, we report our review of 51 empirical studies of participatory evaluations conducted in the international domain, focusing on the methods of inclusion used in the evaluations. Our findings address "the who" (which stakeholders are included and which excluded), "the why" (rationales for participation) and "the how" (by what means and in what manner) of inclusion. We were struck by the scale of some development programs, geographically and in terms of the number of diverse program sponsors and stakeholders, and how this necessitated highly creative, innovative participatory techniques to ensure that anyone (and in some cas...

During independence war and just after independence, development work was mostly done by international organizations using volunteers or skilled staffs (doctors, nurses, agricultural experts, economists etc.). The volunteers, however, often comprised of enthusiastic young foreigners mostly based in Dhaka or philanthropist from abroad. These groups were supported by local wealthy educated elites who had affinity with these expats for different reasons. It will not be completely wrong if these local associates are branded as local foreigners in dark skin. They helped foreigners in organizing relief distribution after devastating natural disaster or helping women who suffered measurably due to war crimes or provided support in rebuilding process. These successful first batch of smart native organizers could sense the picture of development wave that will swipe through Bangladesh. There was tremendous potential in getting engaged with development work fulltime and enjoy the benefit of huge development funding. They grabbed the opportunity with both hands. These are the pioneering generation of development consultants in Bangladesh. Few of those have grown as powerful global figures, amassed tremendous wealth, name and fame as development practitioners.

Rural development is prerequisite for balanced development of any country. Around 80% people live in the rural area of Bangladesh and among them 40% people live below the poverty line. This represents that rural areas of Bangladesh are lagging behind in development process. Lack of public participation is one of the factors responsible for this situation. Most of the government projects fail to achieve their goal due to lack of public participation. The aim of the study is to investigate the exiting scenario and the barriers of public participation in rural development projects at two Upazilas in Chattogram. Direct questionnaire survey and key informant's interview have been done for primary data collection. Through analysis, this study found that illiteracy, communication gap and lack of coordination between different government bodies is responsible for this matter. Finally, this study will identify the gap and problems of public participation which help to minimize the failure of government project.

El devenir de las políticas actuales de cooperación al desarrollo en el futuro cercano; los intereses geopolíticos y geoestratégicos de los grandes aportantes de la ayuda al desarrollo en virtud del caos de la situación mundial hoy y de los índices de pobreza extrema. Una crítica a las ideas que comúnmente se tienen de la ayuda al desarrollo.

The following article will deal with the
concept of development as a mechanism
of power that has driven us to a
multidimensional crisis and the destruction
of our environment. The general
theoretical framework will deal with the
perspective of the capitalist system. The
article makes a historical account with
the idea of development, highlighting
its nature of a myth. What stands out
is the looting of its natural resources
throughout five centuries, and it addresses
the arrival of governments with
a national-popular orientation to the
Andean Countries. That has resulted
in the progress that has represented
the recognition of Sumak Kawasay or
Good living, the limitations and inconsistencies
of such governments to center
their strategies in the extensive extraction
of their natural resources and its
position within the framework of the
hegemonic concept of development.
El presente artículo abordará el concepto
de desarrollo como mecanismo
de poder, que ha conducido a una crisis
multidimensional y a la devastación
de la naturaleza. El marco teórico general
de análisis será la perspectiva del
sistema capitalista. El artículo hace un
recorrido histórico en torno a la idea
del desarrollo, destacando su carácter
de mito; se destaca el saqueo de sus
recursos naturales a lo largo de más
de cinco siglos; y se aborda el arribo
de gobiernos con una orientación
nacional-popular a los países andinos,
resaltando el avance que ha representado
el reconocimiento del Sumak
Kawsay o buen vivir, las limitaciones e
inconsistencias de dichos gobiernos al
centrar su estrategia en la extracción
intensiva de recursos naturales y en su
ubicación en los marcos del concepto
hegemónico de desarrollo.

Accessible, fair, and efficient justice systems are key to effective governance and the rule of law. Without access to justice, people – especially the poor and disenfranchised – are unable to realize their rights, challenge discrimination, or hold decision-makers accountable. As a necessary precondition for both justice and security, therefore, the rule of law is key to sustainable development. For this reason, access to justice recently assumed its rightful place in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The purpose of many rule-of-law assistance projects is to help make justice systems accessible and worthy of public confidence. This article reviews several donor-funded rule-of-law projects implemented in various parts of the world, offering some empirical insights into how they build trust in the judicial system and facilitate access to courts. Because international donors are in a unique position to shape planned interventions to improve access to justice and the rul...

The metanarrative of global feminism is often constructed as a progressive and emancipatory movement emanating from the West and fostering radical politics elsewhere in the world. Such a view is not only ethnocentric but, critically, it fails to engage with the complex ways in which feminist politics travel and are evinced in specific localities. In this article, I seek to understand how marginalized women in the “Global South” – particularly in Africa – interpret, experience and negotiate feminist ideas to wield political power within the context of their social and moral worlds. I focus on women's organized resistance to violence and armed conflict, known as “women's peace activism.” Using a case study of a women's peace movement in Uganda mediated by an international feminist organization called Isis Women's International Cross-Cultural Exchange, I conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with a wide range of activists in the organization and in its network in postconflict areas in Northern Uganda. I argue that the feminist peace discourse is most meaningful when its universal values of equity and securing the dignity of women are appropriated and re-signified through the cultural institutions and the collective memory of activists in their local settings.

The purpose of the article is to measure the outside potential of the OECD countries with the help of the K-index, an indicator we created after conducting a survey on it. Later on the index will be used to classify Hungary’s performance in a three-dimensional matrix of institutions. After an analysis on the data of OECD economies, we have concluded that the developed countries can be divided into four groups, and these four groups can be distinguished by four main factors: macroeconomic performance, knowledge-based entrepreneurial environment, guarantees of market competition and international attractiveness. These factors summarize the institutional conditions that influence an economy’s ability to make use of the opportunities provided by the global market.

The paper aims to overview the similarities and differences between the People’s Republic of China, the European Union (EU) and the Republic of Serbia (RS) regarding their membership in the international environmental agreements. At the beginning of the paper, the authors point out to the growing importance of international agreements in the field of environmental protection, as instruments of contemporary politics and environmental law. The focus is on global environmental issues and on international agreements in this area (climate change and ozone layer protection, water resources management, soil protection, biodiversity protection, hazardous chemicals and hazardous waste management, etc.). In the central part of the paper, the authors address the status of China, the EU and the Republic of Serbia in the most important international multilateral environmental agreements. The bases of the analysis are international multilateral agreements with the global character. The length of time required to become a party to certain international agreements of a global character is examined. The general framework of the discussion is determined; on the one hand, by the estimates that China is a country with serious environmental problems and, on the other hand, by the fact that the EU is one of the leaders in global environmental policy. The position of the RS, as a country candidate for the EU membership, is largely determined by the obligations regarding the harmonization of national regulations with the EU regulations, including ratification of a relevant international agreement in the field of environment. In conclusion, it is noted that there are no significant differences between China and the EU in terms of the length of time needed to become a party to the most important global international environmental agreements, but there are differences in terms of the several protocols and the speed of acceptance of amendments to several international agreements. Due to various circumstances, there are some differences in terms of the RS membership in international environmental treaties.