A hundred key questions for the post-2015 development agenda

With a new development framework under way and an increasingly urgent need to address political, socioeconomic and environmental issues on a global scale, this is a critical moment for the international development agenda. Almost 15 years after the Millennium Declaration, a new phase for international development is about to begin and, with it, comes the opportunity to critically assess how new development goals and milestones are likely to be shaped and delivered. This paper assumes that a greater understanding of development needs and practices can better sustain a new agenda for change, and that a key step in this process is to identify priorities based on both new and long-standing knowledge gaps, to help orient decision-making processes and funding allocation in academia and beyond. This paper present the results of a consultative and participatory exercise that addresses the need to articulate and better align the research interests and priorities of academics and practitioners working on international development in a post-2015 international development framework. The exercise was organized around a two-stage consultation and shortlisting process. A four-months open consultation was conducted, offering development stakeholders and individuals the opportunity to submit their questions. People were invited to submit questions related to some of the thematic priorities that guided the "World We Want" campaign-a global stakeholder consultation conducted by the UN between 2010 and 2014 involving governments, civil society and lay citizens. In this first phase, A total of 705 individuals from 109 organizations based in 34 countries were involved in the formulation of 704 questions. The questions were then discussed and shortlisted during a two-day workshop with academic and practitioners representing different world regions and areas of expertise, among whom are also the authors of this paper. After the final shortlisting, questions were regrouped into nine macro-thematic sections: governance, participation and rights; environmental sustainability; food security, land and agriculture; energy and natural resources; conflict, population dynamics and urbanization; economic growth, employment and the private sector; social and economic inequalities; health and education; development policies, practices and institutions. The final 100 questions address a varied combination of long-standing problems that have hindered the development agenda for decades as well as new challenges emerging from broader socioeconomic, political and environmental changes. Well-established concerns about the rights of women, and of vulnerable groups such as poor workers, small-scale farmers, people with disabilities, children and ethnic minorities feature alongside emerging issues, including the role of business in protecting human rights, and information and communication technologies as tools for empowerment and social integration. Similarly, traditional concerns linked to rural livelihoods, land tenure and agricultural production are presented together with environmental sustainability, natural resource extraction, urbanization, food security, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. While civil society and the empowerment of marginalized populations are recognized as key for development, questions on new actors including the private sector, emerging economic powers and new middle-income countries as development donors and partners feature heavily in the shortlist. The questions also reflect the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into a wide range of development areas, helping to cement the view that gender should be considered central to future development initiatives. A large number of the submitted questions (102) specifically addressed broader issues related to development politics, practices and institutions. This outcome, combined with the fact that a number of these were included in the final shortlist, highlights the fact that there is a critical need for a deeper collective reflection on the role and relationships of different actors in international development, and the impact that contemporary economic and political scenarios will have on the development agenda. We envision our list of 100 questions contributing to inform the post-2015 agenda and future development-related research priorities of international, governmental and non-governmental organizations. But, perhaps more centrally, we believe that these questions can act as starting points for debate, research and collaboration between academics, practitioners and policy makers. The value of research exercises such as this one rely on the ability of a variety of stakeholders to reach consensus around a set of research priorities put forward by anyone willing to engage in the process. We believe that the process of co-production we set out here, of debate and discussion between different stakeholders, is essential for successfully and effectively tackling the key challenges ahead for the international development agenda

The power of jurisdiction in promoting social policies in smaller states

Draft working document prepared for the joint Commonwealth Secretariat/UNRISD Project on Social Policies in Small StatesOn the basis of a global review of empirical material, this paper argues that a stronger appreciation of strategic issues, institutional practices, legal features, regulatory capacities and behavioural response mechanisms would help in understanding why some small states succeed while others do not. To do so, this paper departs from a critical presentation of the two sets of “received wisdom” about small states and which, in spite of their determinist, reductionist, structuralist and myth-driven bent, continue to dominate much of the pertinent literature: the “small is beautiful” cluster which considers smallness as an inherent asset; and the “small is vulnerable” camp which treats small size as a chronic liability. In the case of the latter argument, there could be a valid case to be made for the economic consequences of environmental vulnerability (which includes the implications of rising sea levels); yet there is no well-established and compelling empirical basis for claiming the economic vulnerability of small states per se. Paradoxically, vulnerability has a significantly positive impact upon the long-term growth performance of small states. Many small states have been successful because they have transcended their size: their citizens are disproportionately avid travellers, well represented overseas, confident users of international languages, keen transnational brokers and mercantilists, active in regional and international circles, and have high propensities toward migration. Even at the macro political and economic level, small states are potentially well endowed with the ability to influence events that take place beyond their shores, and from which they can reap benefits. Such strategic economic planning often results when small jurisdictions assume the full economic challenges that accompany political independence, or else when they are so driven by the non-viability of a traditional (typically cash crop– or extractive resource–led) economy. Thus, this paper presents a more nuanced yet cautiously optimistic assessment of the predicament of small states, and how their jurisdictional status and powers can be conceived and converted into economic resources.peer-reviewe

Towards a world report on culture and development: Constructing cultural statistics and indicators. Report of the workshop on cultural indicators of development Royaumont foundation, France, 4-7 January 1996

The joint UNRISD-UNESCO series of Occasional Papers on Culture and Development is a first step in facilitating and catalyzing an international debate on culture and development based on high-quality research. The present paper inaugurates the series by presenting a summary of discussions at the Royaumont Workshop (France, 4-7 January 1996). Readers will find a wealth of information on the issues brought by members of the advisory group, including what might be measured by cultural indicators, how cultural indicators might be constructed and data constraints overcome, the desirability of aggregating statistical data, and a preliminary list of indicators. Thus the present paper also provides valuable background for future papers in the series

100 key research questions for the post-2015 development agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post-2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non-governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long-standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development-related research priorities of governmental and non- governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaboration

Neoliberalism and the revival of agricultural cooperatives: The case of the coffee sector in Uganda

Agricultural cooperatives have seen a comeback in sub‐Saharan Africa. After the collapse of many weakly performing monopolist organizations during the 1980s and 1990s, strengthened cooperatives have emerged since the 2000s. Scholarly knowledge about the state–cooperative relations in which this “revival” takes place remains poor. Based on new evidence from Uganda's coffee sector, this paper discusses the political economy of Africa's cooperative revival. The authors argue that donors' and African governments' renewed support is framed in largely apolitical terms, which obscures the contested political and economic nature of the revival. In the context of neoliberal restructuring processes, state and non‐state institutional support to democratic economic organizations with substantial redistributional agendas remains insufficient. The political–economic context in Uganda—and potentially elsewhere in Africa—contributes to poor terms of trade for agricultural cooperatives while maintaining significant state control over some cooperative activities to protect the status quo interests of big capital and state elites. These conditions are unlikely to produce a conflict‐free, substantial, and sustained revival of cooperatives, which the new promoters of cooperatives suggest is under way

Modernising government: The way forward - An analysis

10.1177/0020852306068007International Review of Administrative Sciences723319-32