Quantifying the impact of social mobilisation in rural Bangladesh : donors, civil society and 'the road not taken'

As part of a general trend toward a reduced role for the state, international donors have increasingly encouraged development NGOs to take up a service delivery function. In Bangladesh, this has induced NGOs to shift their core activities away from social mobilisation to a focus on providing microfinance services, although many organisations also promote education, health and other social services. NGOs are credited with some of Bangladesh’s remarkable progress on poverty reduction, human development indicators and the Millennium Development Goals. However, social inequalities persist, and the quality of governance is extremely low. This paper reports on the impact of an NGO, Nijera Kori (NK), in rural Bangladesh on its members’ democratic knowledge, practice and engagement. Unique among its peers, NK’s work with the landless poor prioritises rights, social mobilisation and solidarity over more individualistic forms of democratic participation. The study carried out a survey of randomly selected members of NK, along with a randomly selected ‘control group’ from the same socioeconomic background of the NK membership. Statistical analysis of the data confirms much higher levels of political awareness and participation among NK members. More surprisingly, given that NK does not distribute microfinance, NK membership was also associated with a number of material impacts, including more diverse household diets, a higher likelihood of asset ownership and higher levels of economic activity relative to non-members. Levels of ‘trust’ in local power structures and public institutions were significantly lower amongst NK members compared to nonmembers, challenging some of the dominant assumptions about the positive correlation between social trust and political participation. We propose that NK’s intensive focus on education, information-sharing and social mobilisation instils a level of political consciousness in members that qualifies trust in public institutions, with implications for enhanced democratic accountability and an alternative civil society approach to improving democratic citizenship. Keywords: citizenship; working poor; economic rights; civil society

Civil society leadership in the struggle for AIDS treatment in South Africa and Uganda

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis is an attempt to theorise and operationalise empirically the notion of ‘civil society leadership’ in Sub-Saharan Africa. ‘AIDS leadership,’ which is associated with the intergovernmental institutions charged with coordinating the global response to HIV/AIDS, is both under-theorised and highly context-specific. In this study I therefore opt for an inclusive framework that draws on a range of approaches, including the literature on ‘leadership’, institutions, social movements and the ‘network’ perspective on civil society mobilisation. This framework is employed in rich and detailed empirical descriptions (‘thick description’) of civil society mobilisation around AIDS, including contentious AIDS activism, in the key case studies of South Africa and Uganda. South Africa and Uganda are widely considered key examples of poor and good leadership (from national political leaders) respectively, while the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and The AIDS Support Organisation (TASO) are both seen as highly effective civil society movements. These descriptions emphasise ‘transnational networks of influence’ in which civil society leaders participated (and at times actively constructed) in order to mobilise both symbolic and material resources aimed at exerting influence at the transnational, national and local levels

Latin America and the "High Performing Asian Economies": Growth and Debt

Prior to the Asian financial crisis, it was accepted wisdom to compare the growth of Latin America unfavourably to that of a selection of East and Southeast Asian countries (the so‐called high performing Asian economies). This paper presents statistics that indicate that the differences in performance may have been less than as commonly presented. A modified Harrod–Domar model is applied to the Latin American countries, and the results suggest that a major determinant of slower growth in Latin America was the debt service burden

The life and times of the information society

The assessment of scholarly literature on the Information Society provided in this paper sets out and distinguishes between the analytical foundations of mainstream and critical contributions from a selection of disciplines and fields with a view to considering why there is so little reciprocal engagement among them, and whether there are new opportunities to promote a dialogue with those who hold the power to establish policies and investment practices with regard to information and communication technologies. Based on a review of hundreds of works, it is argued that a broader range of analytical frameworks needs to be considered if today's policies and strategies in this area are not to perpetuate inequality and injustice. In particular, we need to acknowledge that a plurality of visions of future information societies exists, embracing potentially conflicting values and priorities. More emphasis needs to be given to analytical approaches that privilege human well-being and inclusivity

Land and the transition from a dual to a modern economy

Tenurial contracts in agriculture can be an initial source of wealth accumulation for dynasties of poor, credit-constrained individuals. The income from such contracts can be invested in education of offspring, who then can find work in the formal manufacturing sector. This process allows the economy to develop into a modem economy with a large manufacturing sector. An excessive number of poor individuals competing for scarce land, however, drives up the rental price of land, which then slows the process of accumulation and forces the economy to converge to a less efficient dual equilibrium. In such cases, a policy of land redistribution coupled with a temporary education subsidy may be needed to push the economy to a modem equilibrium. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved