Evaluation of the Hewlett Foundations Sub-Strategy to Support Local Family Planning and Reproductive Health Advocacy in Sub-Saharan Africa

In 2016, the Hewlett Foundation launched its international reproductive health strategy to support local advocacy in sub-Saharan Africa. This strategy continued the foundation's focus on ensuring that women can decide whether and when to have children. The strategy had an ambitious goal: A vibrant sector of local civil society organizations (CSOs) in sub-Saharan Africa that can capably and positively influence the family planning and reproductive health (FPRH) policies and funding decisions of their own national governments and of international donors. To contribute towards this goal, the strategy was grounded in five principles that the foundation expected would inform its own practices as well as the practices of grantees and their CSO partners:Support local advocacy priorities while seeking opportunities to connect these to global advocacy efforts,Strengthen and provide more hands-on and sustained technical assistance tailored to each organization,Support longer-term advocacy partnerships that strengthen and support local advocacy capacity,Encourage mutual accountability among all parties: funders, intermediaries, and local partners, andMeasure progress, document, adapt and share what is learned.The foundation commissioned a five-year developmental evaluation to identify and share emergent lessons about this "principles-based approach" throughout the process of strategy implementation. In this report, we summarize key findings, lessons, and recommendations from the final data collection period of this learning and evaluation process (September 2020 - July 2021). Our analysis draws on interviews with the foundation's grantees and their CSO partners, foundation staff, civil society leaders in Africa, and peer funders, as well as a "context review" of trends and developments in the broader philanthropic and international development field in which the strategy was situated

Ideology Meets the Real World: How State Collapse Affects Islamist Movements

When states collapse, so do the most obvious obstacles to violent extremism in their territory. Extremists seem free to recruit and operate from these areas without interference from state security forces. In reality, however, state collapse creates as many constraints as opportunities for extremists. This paper uses theories of sub-state conflict and theories of Islamism to compare Islamist groups in Somalia, Iraq, and Egypt. Groups in collapsed states face a conflict between local political power and extremist ideology; pursuing one often threatens the other. Understanding which one each group will prioritize becomes the key policy imperative for counter-terrorist operations

Is the U.S. Retirement System Contributing to Rising Wealth Inequality?

Data from the Survey of Consumer Finances for 1989 through 2013 reveal five broad findings. First, overall retirement plan participation was stable or rising through 2007, though overall participation fell noticeably in the wake of the Great Recession and has remained lower. Second, cohort-based analysis of life-cycle trajectories shows that participation in retirement plans is strongly correlated with income, and that the recent decline in participation is concentrated among younger and low- to middle-income families. Third, the shift in the type of pension coverage from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) occurred within—not just across—income groups. Fourth, retirement wealth is less concentrated than nonretirement wealth, so the growth of retirement wealth relative to nonretirement wealth helped offset the increasing concentration in nonretirement wealth. Fifth, the shift from DB to DC had only a modest effect in the other direction because DC wealth is more concentrated than DB wealth

Responsibility to Punish: Discouraging Free-Riders in Public Goods Games

Public goods, Punishment, Free-rider, C90,