Review of Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual by Ha-Joon Chang and Ilene Grabel. 

An old yet surprisingly relevant political idea – the social contract — is today making the running in the competitive world of aid and development paradigms. 

Talk of ‘human security’ began to be heard soon after the end of the Cold War, amidst rising violence and social breakdown in Eastern Europe and Africa.  Its emergence coincided with the rise of stabilization as an aim of Western militar…

Norway’s recent international cooperation white paper, Sharing for Prosperity, seems stubbornly non-conformist. For it recommits Norway to some fundamental, if today unfashionable, purposes: for low-income lands, pursuit of growth-with-r…

According to the State Secretary’s letter, the chief reason for introducing his new measures is to improve the quality of policy through better knowledge and its management, including quality control (‘bewaking van de wetenschappelijke kwaliteit’)…

It is about time to start paying systematic attention to the resource transfers that are flowing from the world’s poor to the world’s rich, says David Sogge.  

I wonder if, at a conference dedicated to humanitarianism, there may be any sense of alarm about how the term is being employed these days. In Libya for example, a great many civilians have recently lost their lives or endured terrible suffering b…

The Millennium Development Goals claim our attention as today’s pro-poor aid agenda. Yet going by who gets what and from whom, the world’s real agenda looks distinctly pro-rich.The MDGs have been a singular success as a vehicle for many in the aid…

NGOs have been joining forces to increase their effectiveness. They need to form alliances with social movements as well, however, to avoid working in isolation from broader social currents.

In a closed meeting recently, I heard a senior figure in the Dutch aid/development world (high among ViceVersa’s ‘top tien’) remark, in despairing tone of voice, that there had been no serious critique of Dutch aid since Paul Hoebink’s ‘Geven is N…