This paper explores what we have learnt about how to instigate, negotiate or otherwise secure pro-poor government in towns and cities of the global South. With competition for scarce resources, the processes of urban development, and specifically the acquisition of land and basic services, are...

This paper offers a political explanation to the problem of spatial inequality in developing countries, paying particular attention to the implications of patronage politics and inter-elite power relations for the spatial distribution of public goods. After showing that existing explanations of...

This paper examines the evidence on the forms of politics likely to promote inclusive social provisioning and enable, as opposed to constrain, improvements in service outcomes. It focuses on eight relatively successful cases of delivery in a range of country contexts and sectors (roads,...

Political settlement (PS) frameworks are gender blind. In this paper, we interrogate the nature of gendered political settlements through analyzing selected country cases studies of the gendered nature of political and policy-making processes and identifying the different contextual and...

We propose and implement a new technique for measuring the total magnitude of a growth episode: the change in output per capita resulting from one structural break in the trend growth of output (acceleration or deceleration) to the next. The magnitude of the gain or loss from a growth episode...

This paper conducts a review of the literature concerning developmental states, in order to identify gaps and suggest research questions which could be fruitful for the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Consortium to explore, within the remit of their proposed research...

A capable state is essential for inclusive development, and throughout the developing world governments and international development agencies are seeking to build it through a multifaceted agenda of Public Sector Reform (PSR). This paper presents an analytical review of the PSR agenda,...

This paper outlines a conceptual framework for analyzing the politics of service provisioning. The approach uses as its point of departure the 'accountability framework' of relations between citizens, clients and service providers, laid out in the World Bank's 2004 World Development Report. That...

The paper examines the significance of politics in the rise of social assistance programmes in developing countries in the last decade. It finds this is a two-way process. Politics is crucial to the adoption, design and implementation of social assistance programmes. They also have a feedback...

Ghana displays a number of features of democratic institutionalization and is considered a success story of democratic transformation in Africa. This paper examines the quality of Ghana's political transformation and the nature of its institutions. It seeks to identify the driving power...