Publications

If Relationships Matter, How Can They be Improved? Learning about Relationships in Development

Organisational Learning - Background Information Organisational learning, in which leaders and managers give priority to learning as integral to practice, is increasingly recognized as critical to improved performance. ActionAid, DFID and Sida collaborated with the Participation Group at the...

Patta Scott-Villiers

Participatory Learning Groups in an Aid Bureaucracy

Organisational learning, in which leaders and managers give priority to learning as integral to practice, is increasingly recognized as critical to improved performance. ActionAid, DFID and Sida collaborated with the Participation Group at the Institute of Development Studies to explore...

Patta Scott-Villiers

Andrea Cornwall

Ideas in Practice. Enquiring into Participation in Sida

How can a development agency working in a rapidly evolving policy and practice environment develop its responsive capacity? How can development professionals forge effective and influential relationships with key partners? Ability to reflect and learn in action are neglected but critical...

Learning from Poor People’s Lives: Immersions

This paper is about the practice and the potential of immersions. Immersions are occasions when professionals learn directly from encounters with poor and marginalised people by living with them and reflecting on the experience. Those taking part may be the staff of bilateral and multilateral...

Robert Chambers

Rosalind Eyben

Indonesia: the Politics of Inclusion

Much commentary on Indonesian politics since the fall of President Suharto in May 1998 has suggested that Indonesia's political system has remained just as exclusionary as it was prior to his fall, despite the fact that it has become much more democratic and decentralised.

Taxation, Governance and Poverty: Where Do the Middle Income Countries Fit?

Tax reform can contribute to improved governance and poverty reduction both directly and indirectly: by redistributing income, and by helping establish stronger fiscal social contracts in poorer countries. Middle Income Countries can play an especially important role in this process.

Mick Moore

Gender and ICTs

Dramatic changes brought about by information and communication technologies (ICTs) have created new economic and social opportunities the world over. Their use, however, continues to be governed by existing power relations, despite mainstream views that these technologies are gender neutral and...

Why and How to Aid ‘Middle Income Countries’

IDS working papers;231

The amount of aid that flows to 'Middle Income Countries' (MICs) has recently been challenged and some donors are shifting the balance of their aid so that more goes to poorer countries. Is there still a role for aid to MICs and what should that role be?

Rosalind Eyben

Sex for Pleasure, Rights to Participation, and Alternatives to AIDS: Placing Sexual Minorities and/or Dissidents in Development

This paper highlights some of the contradictions in the relationship between rights and participation in the evolution of discourses on sexualities in development in various countries throughout the Third World.

How to Design a Training Course: A Guide to Participatory Curriculum Development

Much time and money is devoted to training - but courses do not always produce the outcomes desired. As a result many training organisations need to rethink the way they plan, design, deliver and evaluate their courses.

Unpacking Policy: Knowledge, Actors and Spaces in Poverty Reduction in Uganda and Nigeria

This book presents the findings form a research project carried out by a team of researchers from Uganda and Nigeria, it sets out to examine the processes by which policies for poverty reduction are made and implemented and assesses the scope policies provide for positive change in the lives of...

Rosemary McGee

John Gaventa

Local Enterprises in the Global Economy: Issues of Governance and Upgrading

This book opens a fresh chapter in the debate on local enterprise clusters and their strategies for upgrading in the global economy. The authors employ a novel conceptual framework in their research on industrial clusters in Europe, Latin America and Asia and provide new perspectives and...

Hubert Schmitz