Civil Society, Aid and Development: a Cross-Country Analysis

International cooperation for development relies on several aid modalities and - in addition to bilateral and multilateral programs - non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play an important role in channeling development aid towards their Southern partners. The support of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs to developmental NGOs perceives several objectives, ranging from direct poverty alleviation to capacity building and lobby and advocacy activities. Rigorous evaluations of programs and projects executed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are generally scarce and tend to be limited to the analysis of perceived effects at local level. Far less attention is usually devoted to the aggregate effect of development aid on global civil society strength and performance. This is, however, considered of utmost importance given the overarching aim of strengthening the role of civil society in the development process. The recently developed database Indices of Social Development (ISD) hosted by the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of the Erasmus University Rotterdam offers a unique opportunity to further analyze the relationships between civil society development and development aid (ODA) over a 20-years period, making use of cross-country data of multidimensional indicators related to civic activism, intergroup cohesion and club membership. The current paper ‘Civil Society, Aid and Development’ has been commissioned by the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs to enable the professional discussions regarding the different pathways for strengthening civil society in developing countries. Such analysis requires a careful appraisal of the direction of causality and needs to give due attention to endogeneity issues, including several control variables to account for other relevant factors. The study provides an overview of the literature regarding the influence of foreign aid on civil society, drawing extensively on theories of social capital, social inclusion and social norms

Household and context determinants of child labor in 221 districts of 18 developing countries

Abstract We develop a new theoretical framework that explains the engagement in child labor of children in developing countries. This framework distinguishes three levels (household, district and nation) and three groups of explanatory variables: Resources, Structure and Culture. Each of the three groups refers to another strand of the literature; economics, sociology and anthropology. The framework is tested by applying multilevel analysis on data for 239,120 children living in 221 districts of 18 developing countries. This approach allows us to simultaneously investigate effects of household and context factors. At the household level, we find that resources and structural characteristics influence child labor, whereas cultural characteristics have no effect. With regard to context factors, we find that children work more in rural areas, especially if there are more unskilled manual jobs, and in more traditional urban areas. In more developed regions, girls tend to work significantly less

The last mile in analysing well-being and poverty: Indices of Social Development

Development practitioners worldwide increasingly recognize the importance of informal institutions -- such as norms of cooperation, non-discrimination, or the role of community oversight in the management of investment activities -- in affecting well-being, poverty, and even economic growth. While there have been many country- or region-specific studies that explore relationships between such social development indicators and other development outcomes, there has been less empirical analysis that tests these relationships at the international level. This is largely due to data limitations: few reliable, globally- representative data sources exist that can provide a basis for cross-country comparison of social norms and practice, social trust and community engagement. The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) now hosts a large database of social development indicators compiled from a wide range of sources in a first attempt to overcome such data constraints, at a low cost (www.IndSocDev.org). It will continuously expand the power of the database by including new data and variables and by developing new techniques to integrate, enrich and analyze the data to make the best possible use of this rich dataset. The Indices of Social Development (ISD) are based on over 200 measures from 25 reputable data sources for the years 1990 to 2010. These measures are aggregated into five composite indices: civic activism, interpersonal safety and trust, inter-group cohesion, clubs and associations, and gender equity/equality and non-discrimination against women. Not all data sources provide observations for indicators in each country, but together these data sources allow for comprehensive estimates of social behavior and norms of interaction across a broad range of societies, and increasingly with possibilities to track changes over time. The indices allow the estimation of the effects of social development for a large range of countries, broadening the scope for cross-country statistical and analytical work on social development and the relationship with economic development. This paper presents this database, highlight the differences, similarities and complementarities with other measures of well-being, including around income poverty, multi-dimensional poverty, and human development

The Last Mile in Analyzing Wellbeing and Poverty : Indices of Social Development

__Abstract__ Development practitioners worldwide increasingly recognize the importance of informal institutions - such as norms of cooperation, non-discrimination, or the role of community oversight in the management of investment activities – in affecting well-being, poverty, and even economic growth. There has been little empirical analysis that tests these relationships at the international level. This is largely due to data limitations: few reliable, globally-representative data sources exist that can provide a basis for cross-country comparison of social norms and practice, social trust and community engagement

Household and Context Determinants of Child Labor in 221 Districts of 18 Developing Countries - www-publicatie

Contains fulltext : 112083.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)18 november 201118 p