In less than a decade, foreign investors have erected more than 3,200 wind turbines across the Isthmus of Techuantepec investing billions of dollars and generating more than 90 per cent of Mexico's wind energy. The isthmus is also home to more than one thousand indigenous communities whose...

The aim of this study is to identify needs for recovery from people's perspectives under a localized context following the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. A qualitative approach was applied to collecting and processing data which consist of 114 semi-structured interviews with earthquake-resettled...

Does secessionism lead to social polarization? Despite much research on independence movements, their relationship to polarization, a key mechanism theorized as increasing the chances of violent conflict, remains less understood. We argue that secessionist conflicts can polarize along both...

Increased intra-regional trade in southern Africa will have a positive impact on economic growth. However, this requires a shifting of loyalties from the national to the regional. Tension between the goals of long-term regional development and shorter-term national imperatives remains...

This working paper is the fourth in a series that forms part of the project 'Southern Africa - Towards Inclusive Economic Development', a three-year partnership between UNU-WIDER and the South African government aimed at generating a better understanding of regional value chains and supporting...

The prevailing aid orthodoxy works well enough in stable environments, but is ill-equipped to navigate contexts of volatility and fragility. The orthodox approach is adept at solving straightforward technical or logistical problems (paving roads, building schools, immunizing children), but often...

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been successfully used as an industrial policy tool in many countries. Efforts to create SEZs in Tanzania began in 2002, and were stepped up through the establishment of the Export Processing Zone Authority (EPZA) in 2006. A number of state-run zones are now in...

In many nations today the state has little capability to carry out even basic functions like security, policing, regulation or core service delivery. Enhancing this capability, especially in fragile states, is a long-term task. Countries like Haiti or Liberia will take many decades to reach even...

The United States' greenhouse gas mitigation strategy decentralizes mitigation responsibility to the states and states have primary regulatory jurisdiction over electrical power utilities. Using the biophysical approach, this paper introduces the notion of hydrocarbon infrastructure. Focusing on...

The article explores the various co-ordination mechanisms between the state and the business community in Ghana, and the implications for economic growth in the country. We focus on three periods in the economic history of state-business relations: the immediate post-independence period and the...