Political violence is a worldwide problem that has been on the rise over the past decade. The international dimension of domestic repression and dissent is a particularly relevant factor yet surprisingly understudied. In particular, governments that heavily depend on foreign aid may crack down...

Development assistance funding by international donors is rarely channelled to/through local actors. While there are strong normative and practical arguments for localizing funding, progress has been piecemeal as donors are largely left to their own devices to decide how, when, where, and how...

African countries have sought to replicate the success of East Asia by implementing special economic zones. Despite decades of international experience, there remains no blueprint for successful special economic zone policies, and the majority of special economic zones fall well below...

How does aid impact democracy in sub-Saharan Africa? Drawing on existing literature, this study elaborates on the various channels, direct and indirect, through which development and democracy aid has influenced transitions to multi-party regimes and democratic consolidation within the region....

The current climate change crisis has repeatedly alerted mankind to the urgency of tackling this pressing global challenge before it is too late. Developing countries, which have contributed negligibly to the present climate change problem are, nevertheless, hit the hardest by, and are most...

The paper considers the experience of the European Investment Bank and addresses policy lessons for developing countries as they seek finance for development. The paper argues that the key lesson for developing countries is that the traditional role of a development bank in closing market gaps...

This paper discusses and seeks to quantify the effects of improved donor coordination on aid effectiveness. Empirical estimates are first provided of the reductions in transaction costs that can be achieved by better donor coordination via concentration to fewer partner countries and a shift...

Almost all major development institutions today say that promoting good governance is an important part of their agendas. Despite this consensus, 'good governance' is an extremely elusive objective: it means different things to different organizations and to different actors within these...

This paper provides an historical overview of aid flows to North Africa. It assesses the aid allocation process and argues that past aid flows to the region have been heavily influenced by donor political interests. This has reduced the effectiveness of aid which, with the exception of Tunisia,...

This paper describes the gaps and limitations in the data available on urban populations for many low- and middle-income nations and how this limits the accuracy of international comparisons - for instance of levels of urbanization and of the size of city populations. It also discusses how the...