Related Content

The ongoing conflicts in Mali are often taken as one and portrayed in relation to religious extremism, irredentism or plain criminality, overlooking tensions arising from changing socio-political relations at the local level. This is particularly...

While climate change has not created jihadists in Mali, its effects on the livelihoods of already marginalized communities has created fertile grounds for recruitment.

On 10 December, President Juan Manuel Santos received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo after successfully negotiating a Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and FARC rebels. However, implementation of the agreement poses many challenges....

Although in the long-term the Eurozone needs full democratic control of the monetary union, including competence over labour and social policy, this will not happen soon enough. A feasible alternative is that rights bodies such as the ECSR provide...

Western governments are increasingly reframing their rhetoric of engagement in fragile and conflict-affected areas around the development of a vibrant private sector. But how does this ‘new’ approach work in practice? Who are the ‘new’ beneficiari...

Complexity theory sheds light on the essential role of self-organization in sustainable peace consolidation

If one message should be taken from the European Development Days it is that the world will not be able to tackle its many future economic, social and ecological challenges without sustainable development partnerships.

Non-state governance: The legitimacy of non-state and state authorities in (post-) conflict settings should be understood from the perspective of citizens. 

Fragile states are characterized by a variety of institutional arrangements that exist alongside each other. This institutional multiplicity is a complex phenomenon, but not necessarily ‘good’ or ‘bad’. For donors and development organizations, it...

One of the key insights from policy discourses on fragile states is that these states can contain a variety of non-state forms of public authority. It has been convincingly argued that in the absence of functioning states, societies are not 'ungov...

With only a quarter of the world’s population having access to social protection, the case for expanding it is gaining ground in international discussions. The debate focuses on how best to design social protection, whether it should be universal...

The new World Bank strategy must take risk and uncertainty into account.

The High-Level Panel's targets on ensuring good governance and effective institutions need to be further specified.

Income inequality in Canada has increased over the past 20 years, mainly due to market forces and institutional forces.

Income inequality in Canada has increased over the past 20 years. While Canada reduced income inequality in the 1980s, it rose sharply in the 1990s and remained at that relatively high level in the 2000s.

Well-designed transformative social policy in developing countries is particularly needed since it increases individual and social capability to take advantage of initial conditions for catching-up and is one of the most effective measures to stre...

There are two critical issues in this inequality debate: there is no global benchmark for inequality and no global goals in absolute terms; and the instruments for tackling inequality lie outside traditional aid intervention models.

Inequality trends present a paradox. Until we have clarity about the nature of these inequalities and what or who causes them, it is not clear whether inequality could or should become central to a post-2015 agenda.

There is an urgent need to develop new ways of using local knowledge and ideas, and bring them to a higher, politically relevant level.

In this second report on The Broker thesis project we highlight the work of two researchers who examined water management systems in Africa. Their theses have been reviewed by Meine Pieter van Dijk of the UNESCO–IHE Institute for Water Education,...

The 'Innovation Dialogue on Being Strategic in the Face of Complexity', organized by Wageningen University and Research Centre, aims to explore what it means to 'be strategic in complex times'. The event, on November 30 and December 1 2009, brings...

When sitting in seminars, I now count the number of minutes until the speaker first mentions the word ‘institutions’. Usually this doesn’t take long.