TWP CoP Summer (June-August) 2024 Newsletter
Bringing you the latest news and updates on all things TWP!
Dear Friends and fellow travellers on all things TWP,
Welcome to the Summer (June-August) 2024 edition of our Newsletter! Here is a summary of what we have in store:
In our featured interview, Alina speaks with Ashley Jackson, co-founder and co-director of the Centre on Armed Groups, about her research on the dynamics between civilian populations and armed groups, including in particular the Taliban in Afghanistan.
For the “What we are working on” section of the Newsletter, we asked Duncan Green, who has recently retired from Oxfam GB after 20+ years, to share some reflections about how thinking and working politically has mattered both to him personally and to the development field more generally, based on an extensive career that spans everything from research, training and advising to blogging (From Poverty to Power, anyone?) and writing books (the second edition of How Change Happens is now out!) .
In that same section, you will also find an update on the 2023-2024 winners of the USAID TWP Case Study Competition.
If you are curious about “What we are reading”, take a look at the review that TWP CoP’s own Sithandiwe Mujuru has written of The Politics of Development, a new book edited by several colleagues at the International Development Department at the University of Birmingham.
And if you are eager to hear about what others are doing in the TWP space and/or would like to share your own work, please check out our Bulletin and register for the next TWP “What’s up?” session, which is scheduled for September 2024.
Last but not least, as always, we bring you the latest publications, events, resources and other news of interest from a TWP perspective.
If there is anything you would like to share with us, including items for future newsletters, please get in touch by email at: info@twpcommunity.org. And please share with your network, and subscribe if you haven’t already!
Oh and please remember: If you are able to, it is better to open the newsletter directly on your browser (click on the ‘TWP CoP Summer (June-August) 2024 Newsletter’ header, at the top of this page) so that you can get full access to all our content.
With best wishes,
Alina & Graham
Highlight feature
A Conversation with Dr Ashely Jackson from the Centre on Armed Groups
Alina speaks with Ashley Jackson, co-founder and co-director of the Centre on Armed Groups. The Centre supports efforts to reduce violence and armed conflict through innovative research, safe spaces for dialogue, and practical advice.
In this conversation, Ashley shares insights from her research and policy-oriented work, which challenges assumptions about conventional approaches to support humanitarian and stabilisation efforts in challenging environments, and discusses what this implies for more effective engagement.
Click below to watch the interview.
Alternatively, you can listen to the podcast version here: Episode 12-A Conversation with Ashley Jackson from the Centre on Armed Groups.
What we are working on
1) Reflections on thinking and working politically
By Duncan Green
I recently left Oxfam GB after 20 great years, first as head of research, then as strategic adviser. Alina Rocha Menocal from the TWP CoP has now given me the impossible task of summing up those years in the traditional ‘600-1200 words’. Cheers Alina! (Note from Alina: Salud back at you Duncan — and thank you!!)
First, my own trajectory. I spent my first eight years in INGOs on breathless advocacy on trade, globalisation and structural adjustment, first at CAFOD, then at Oxfam. The targets for that advocacy were the WTO, the financial markets and the Bretton Woods Institutions.
My wheels came off in 2005 (anyone remember Make Poverty History?), as events and some great books and papers made me start to question the hubris of a lot of the global advocacy circus. More on that here. That bout of soul-searching about the nature of development culminated in a large, and little read, tome called From Poverty to Power (Practical Action, 2008), whose central argument was that the real drivers of development were not the INGOs, but the complex interactions between ‘active citizens and effective states’. Around publication day, I thought I’d start a little blog of the same name to help with the promo. Sixteen years and four million words later, the blog is still going strong (though we’re still trying to sort my role in it after having left Oxfam, or post Dexit).
The blog kept me engaged in reading, thinking about and tracking developments within the ‘development sector’. The result was How Change Happens (HCH) (OUP, 2016; 2nd edition June 2024), a rather more successful book (at least in terms of readership).
HCH led me into teaching and training on influencing/ advocacy/ campaigns, based at the LSE – the main reason why I brought the years at Oxfam to a close (along with age and spending more time with my lovely granddaughter). A lot of the development sector seem to have concluded that influencing is something they have to engage with: as one of our interviewees from the Global Executive Leadership Initiative (GELI) training programme on influencing for senior leaders said, ‘being promoted on the basis of being good at tents and blankets is not much help if you then have to try and stop the Saudis from bombing Yemen’. As a result, we are having a burgeoning number of fascinating conversations with a range of UN, INGO, Red Cross/Crescent and CSO leaders and activists on how they can maximise their chances of changing ideas, policies or practices through ‘intentional influencing’.
Which brings us to Thinking and Working Politically. Looking at that timeline, I realise just how closely my own work has tracked some of the broader evolution of the sector, in particular ‘discovering’ the central role of power and politics in bringing about social and economic change and looking for practical ways to incorporate that into daily practice. That shift was turbocharged by broader intellectual currents such as the need to shift the power within the sector via localisation.
The path of those years is littered with ‘lightbulb moments’, prompted by books, conversations, my own research and case studies, field trips and yes, even meetings (looking at you Doing Development Differently, Harvard 2014). I’ll pick out a few.
Shoulders of Giants: pioneering work by thinkers such as Adrian Leftwich, Sue Unsworth, David Booth, Matt Andrews, Mushtaq Khan and some path-breaking pioneering practitioners, such as Jaime Faustino, or the folk in Pyoe Pin (Myanmar) and SAVI (Nigeria). The list is a bit too male and northern, but once you go beyond what looks like the increasingly parochial concerns of the aid sector, you have any number of brilliant thinkers from the Global South, such as Yuen Yuen Ang (on China and Corruption), Naomi Hossein (on Bangladesh and violent protest), Srilatha Batliwala (on feminist leadership) and many, many more (hit the book reviews tab in FP2P for a much more comprehensive list).
Research and Case Studies: for me, writing a series of ‘adaptive management’ case studies on Coalitions for Change in the Philippines, Pyoe Pin in Myanmar, or the Institutions for Inclusive Development (I4ID) Programme in Tanzania fleshed out the ideas with epic examples of local staff ‘navigating by judgement’ (in the title of Dan Honig’s book).
We need a lot more of these, along with clearer thoughts on how you design and measure the impact of politically-informed approaches, before we have anything approaching a body of evidence that might persuade the sceptics. But it’s starting to build and I hope to add to the body of research at the LSE over the next few years.
If I had to characterise the theory of change of the TWP crew, I would probably use Matt Andrew’s characterisation of paradigm shifts in the aid sector:
Deinstitutionalisation: encourage the growing discussion on the problems of the current model
Pre-institutionalisation: groups begin innovating in search of alternative logics, involving ‘distributive agents’ (e.g. low ranking civil servants) to demonstrate feasibility
Theorisation: proposed new institutions are explained to the broader community, needing a ‘compelling message about change’
Diffusion: as more ‘distributive agents’ pick it up, a new consensus emerges
Re-institutionalisation: legitimacy (hegemony) is achieved. We all go off to the pub.
Alas, what then usually follows is the dumbing down of the new orthodoxy into the latest exercise in mindless box-ticking (think of how log frames evolved). We’ll need to be on our guard on that one.
One last point on the importance and slipperiness of language. Calling this stuff ‘Thinking and Working Politically’ has been an important and quite brave decision in a sector that often prefers to pretend it is neutral/impartial. But I fear that is partly why TWP approaches have been slow to spread outside their original test bed of governance and institutional reform.
The contrast with the much less threatening ‘adaptive management’ (AM) is striking. Lots of donors now say they want the projects they fund to be adaptive, and good AM covers much of the same ground as TWP. The risk there is an outbreak of ‘adaptive washing’, where proposals and projects say they are going to be adaptive, but in practice merely change the language, not the substance, of old fashioned and ineffective models of aid. As ever, be careful what you wish for.
Standing back, this quick reflection suggests a couple of challenges for the sector (whatever that is) over the next few years:
Escaping from aid: I just do not believe that power can be separated from money for more than a short period. Only if we can cut/greatly reduce the ties with funding can we decentralise power and have a respectful conversation among equals about how to bring about progressive change in all our countries.
Get serious about the evidence base: TWP/Adaptive Management are in vogue, but remember the hype cycle (see below). If we want them to become a permanent and significant part of the intellectual landscape, we need to seize the moment to generate evidence that persuades sceptics and agnostics, not just the converted.
That’s my wordcount all used up – over to you.
2) And the winners are … Update on the USAID TWP Case Study Competition
The USAID Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) held its first Thinking and Working Politically (TWP) Case Competition this year. The Case Competition had the objective of capturing real-life case studies of USAID staff and implementing partners using a TWP approach for organisational learning and improved development outcomes.
There were 36 submissions in total, across countries and regions spanning Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The case studies also covered a variety of sectors including Democracy, Human Rights and Governance, Economic Growth and Trade, Health and Nutrition, Anti-Corruption, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, and Youth & Gender and Social Inclusion.
A Judging Panel, which included seasoned TWPers from both the USAID DRG Bureau and the TWP CoP, had the task of reviewing the case studies. After a series of in-depth discussions of all the different entries, the Panel agreed on a set of three outstanding cases as the Competition winners. These winning cases were announced at a celebratory webinar hosted by the USAID DRG Bureau on 25 June 2024.
They are:
An initiative to enhance fiscal transparency and public participation in Senegal
An intervention to promote reform in the criminal justice system in Honduras
Click on the links provided to learn more about each case and how they have used TWP principles to understand context in greater depth, identify entry points and priorities for engagement, including key partners, and learn and adapt in real time.
What we are reading
Mcloughlin, C., Ali. S., Xie, K., Cheeseman, C., and Hudson, D. E., (2024). The Politics of Development. Sage.
By Sithandiwe Mujuru
The notion that politics matters for development is not new. The Politics of Development takes this critical line of thought, illustrating how and why development is inherently political, and what this implies for policy and practice.
The editors define the politics of development as the ‘unavoidable process of contestation over alternative desired futures’ that is shaped among other things by the interaction of a diversity of interests, goals and identities, the struggle over limited resources, deeply entrenched inequalities, uneven power relations, and colonial legacies (p.7). One of the key messages of the book, which strongly resonates with the essence of TWP, is that there is a need to apply a political mindset to development processes and that, if we explicitly recognise that everything about development is political, we can better understand how development happens and why, and in whose interests.
At a time when development practitioners continue to struggle with how to tackle pressing challenges like the energy transition, conflict, and inequality, more effectively, the book offers a useful way to analyse the political dynamics that underlie them.
The three ‘I’s of Development - Institutions, Interests and Ideas constitute the framework that lies at the heart of the book. This framework will resonate with those who are familiar with political economy analysis and the thinking component of TWP, with its emphasis on institutions, actors, and the incentives, interests and ideas that shape their dynamic interaction.
Using examples from different parts of the world, the book shows how:
- Institutions, both formal and informal, can be interpreted differently within societies and can influence people’s behaviour, with important implications for development outcomes.
- The pursuit of narrow and segmented interests undermines the achievement of the collective public good and desired collective futures.
- Ideas shape interests and institutions, influence how people think the rules should work or look like, and/or can be used to frame contestation processes over who gets what, when and how.
The Politics of Development is written in clear and accessible language, in textbook form. Using the three ‘I’s framework, it provides great analytical depth and practical insights that help to illustrate the ways in which development is messy, contested and inherently political. All the chapters — ranging from the conceptual foundations underlying the book’s framework to the role of government, the market and social actors in promoting change, to issues related to identity, inequality and exclusion, violent conflict, sustainability, legitimacy, and corruption — provide a series of reflective questions which enable the reader to connect with the topic, reflect on their own positionality and analyse their assumptions about how change can happen. The different contributions also use examples from diverse contexts around the world, exploring contemporary settings as well as historical ones.
One of the topics that stood out for me in the book is the importance of decolonising development. Chapter 2 on ‘Whose knowledge Counts? Global inequalities, knowledge production and the need for decolonisation’, by Zenobia Ismail, emphasises the need to recognise the voices of the most marginalised, pay attention to new ideas and change the way we think on the basis of that. Ismail highlights why it is so essential to unpack how colonial and hegemonic structures of power continue to facilitate contemporary inequalities and to reflect on how these highly unequal structures can be tackled more effectively.
The Politics of Development encourages its audience to adopt a more people-centred focus to development by understanding that people have different lived experiences that are shaped, among other things, by colonial legacies, scarcity of resources, power structures, and a diversity of ideas, values, interests and incentives.
From students of development studies to development practitioners, this book can help us make sense of some of the critical questions in our world today.
You can also hear more about the book from the editors themselves in this episode of the People, Power and Politics Podcast with Claire Mcloughlin, Nic Cheeseman and David Hudson.
Bulletin Board
1) TWP ‘What’s up?’ informal session
Tell us what’s up! Join as for our TWP ‘What’s up?’ session on Thursday 19 September 2024 at 12:00 - 13:00 pm BST. This is an informal drop-in session over Zoom offering an opportunity for members of our community to meet up with fellow TWPers and find out what people are up to. If you would like to join, please register through the link below.
2) Courses and training opportunities
3 - 6 September 2024: CEPR 23rd Summer School in International and Development Economics.
The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)’s summer school provides an intensive training course in development and international economics aimed at graduate students and young researchers. This year the focus will be on “Political Economy and Development”, exploring how governance and accountability work and how that impacts socio-economic growth, corruption, migration and conflict in different developing settings.
02 September - 12 December 2024: TPP-ODI Political Economy Analysis in Action online training course. This flagship course, run by The Policy Practice and ODI, seeks to equip participants with the tools and the confidence to undertake political economy analysis, and to apply it to policy and programmes in a wide range of contexts. The course consists of eight sessions over a 14-week period, and it involves a mix of self-study, webinars, and online Study Group discussions tasks, supported by an interactive platform. To enrol, register here.
14 October - 12 November 2024: TPP Political Economy Analysis for Climate Action course. Based on the flagship PEA course above, this course focuses on how action on climate change can be harnessed more effectively through a politically informed lens. The course is made up of eight interactive two-hour sessions spread over five weeks. Register here by the 20 September, 2024.
Capacity Africa Training Institute: Based in Nairobi, the Capacity Africa Training Institute has the objective of making development and humanitarian work more effective by developing and implementing high quality consultancy projects and providing innovative capacity building solutions for United Nations agencies, government and non-governmental organisations and individuals in Africa. They provide over 200 courses to help with capacity building.
3) Call for Submissions
2024 CLA Case Competition
The USAID 2024 Collaborating, Learning and Adaptation (CLA) Case Competition is now open. This Case Competition is a celebration of ten years of continuous learning for improved development outcomes. Participation is open to all individuals and organisations working with USAID and aims to capture real-world examples from USAID staff and partners of strategic collaboration, continuous learning, and adaptive management in action. Closing date: Friday, July 26, 2024 at 5pm EDT.
Submit your cases now!
Recent Publications
1) Books, Journals and Articles
Arif, S., Nihayah, R. W., Usman, S., & Rarasati, N. (2024) Does decentralisation promote learning? Local political settlements and education policies in Indonesia. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1–19.
This article examines the effect of local political settlements on education policies in a decentralised political system. Comparing three districts in Indonesia, the study finds that constraints on the discretionary power of the district head over employment decisions in the bureaucracy matter for the development of learning-enhancing policies.
Berdal, M. and Sherman, J. (2023) The Political Economy of Civil War and UN Peace Operations. Routledge.
This book looks at the operational and political challenges facing United Nations peace operations in settings fractured by civil war and protracted violence since the early 1990s. It explores how individual UN missions have had to operate within distinctive political economies of conflict. These contexts are characterised by distinct informal systems of power, influence and governance that are shaped by the interaction of local, national and region-wide war economies with the political agendas of conflict actors, as well as by longer-term historical factors, cultural specifications and unique developmental trajectories.
Cunningham, J. A., (2024) Authoritarian Practices and Humanitarian Negotiations. Routledge.
Utilising a wide variety of perspectives and looking at a range of contexts, this book examines how humanitarian actors assess and navigate authoritarian practices to negotiate access to populations in danger. The book provides insights at the macro, meso, and micro levels through case studies on the international and domestic legal and political framing of humanitarian contexts which include: Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Russia, Syria, Xinjiang, and Venezuela.
De Campos Melo, C., Bandeira de Mello Schettini, A., and De Sousa Soares, M. C., (2024) Truth Commissions and Tribunals in the Global South. In Goldstein, R. and Nachmias, N. (eds.) Human Rights Interdependence in National and International Politics. Routledge.
The experiences of truth commissions in the Global South challenge some paradigms of transitional justice but also represent alternatives to the field. The decades that separate the commissions in Argentina after dictatorship, and in South Africa after apartheid, followed by various commissions sponsored by the UN, and more recently the National Truth Commissions in Brazil and Colombia, revisit the central idea of transition, and reinforce the complementarity between truth and justice. The relationship between these two elements – truth (commissions) and justice (tribunals) – remains one of the most complex issues in the field of transitional justice, involving the balance between the different powers of a democratic rule of law and checks and balances mechanism. This chapter argues that the balance, harmony, and complementarity between truth commissions and courts are never assured.
Desai, D. (2024) Expert Ignorance: The Law and Politics of Rule of Law Reform. Cambridge University Press.
Today, a transnational constellation of ‘rule of law’ experts advise countries in the Global South on ‘good’ legal systems. Yet these experts often claim that the ‘rule of law’ is nearly impossible to define, and they frequently point to the limits of their own expertise. In this innovative book, Deval Desai defines this form of expertise as ‘expert ignorance’. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, Desai draws on insights from legal theory, sociology, development studies, and performance studies to explore how this paradoxical form of expertise works in practice.
Green, D. (2024, 2nd ed.) How Change Happens. Oxford University Press.
Drawing on 15 years of daily blogs and conversations on the From Poverty to Power blog, this book combines Duncan Green’s on-the-ground experience with a wide reading of academic literature. Duncan outlines the book’s new contributions in a blog post on his From Poverty to Power platform.
Issahaku, H., Isshaq, Z., Amidu, M. (2024) How Does Taxation of Natural Resources Promote Inclusive Development in Africa? In Amidu, M., Ali-Nakyea, A., Abor, J.Y. (eds.) Taxation and Management of Natural Resources in Africa. Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development. Springer.
Analysing existing literature, this chapter discusses how the taxation of natural resources can foster broad-based development in African countries.
Kapur, R., (2024) Transitional Justice interventions in Sri Lanka: why do they keep failing? Conflict, Security and Development Journal 24(3).
This article argues that the top-down and ‘one-size-fits-all’ transitional justice model does not work in certain societies, including Sri Lanka. It posits that a shift to a contextualised approach is essential not only for longer-term sustainability but also to allow voices from the ground to be heard and included. The paper critiques the dominant transitional justice process and examines the challenges of achieving transitional justice in deeply divided societies where majoritarianism strengthens after the end of a violent conflict, while acknowledging the risks of romanticising bottom-up and local approaches.
Kyle, J. and Resnick, D. (2024) Securing the peace or renegotiating the political settlement? Understanding popular support for post-conflict constitutions. Journal of Democratisation.
How do ordinary citizens view elite-driven, post-conflict constitutional reforms? Established theories emphasise the role of constitutional reform in both post-war democratization and conflict prevention. This article contends that emphasis on fostering political inclusion and settling conflicts resonates differently across different groups in post-conflict societies. The authors identify new pathways that can influence the democratic legitimacy of post-conflict constitutions across groups that may have very different perspectives and expectations about what may constitute the end of conflict and the compromises that need to be made to secure peace, and they provide useful insights for internal and external stakeholders involved in constitutional reform processes and their aftermath.
Whitty, S. B. (2024) Dismantling the anti-politics machine in aid: political mētis and its limits. New Political Economy.
In a recent article in NPE, Rajesh Venugopal (2022, Can the anti-politics machine be dismantled? New political economy, 1–15) concluded that the anti-politics machine was still in operation. He argued that development planners held a cognitive divide between the realm of political dynamics – an unknowable terrain – and the realm of operational technical knowledge. This article revisits and expands that argument. Drawing on interviews with policy advocates, the article suggests that the anti-politics machine does not simply work through the cognition of the planner; it also acts through bureaucratic practices during project implementation, including operational, accountability and financing processes that undermine political metis or knowhow.
2) Reports, Briefs and Working Papers
Bickersteth, S., McCulloch, N., and Tesfamichael, M., (2024) The Political Economy of Energy Transitions in Ghana, Zambia and Vietnam. Policy Brief 17, The Policy Practice.
This policy brief explores context-specific challenges and opportunities for the clean energy and transport transitions in Ghana, Vietnam, and Zambia through a political economy lens. The brief draws out common constraints hindering the energy transition in these countries, with lessons that are relevant across the Global South. The brief also highlights how political economy analysis can help to identify politically feasible pathways of change in different settings.
Byiers, B., Jaïdi, L and El Yamani, S. (2024) Fostering investment and inclusivity in the African Continental Free Trade Area. ECDPM.
2023 was the African Union (AU) year of ‘Accelerating Implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFA)’. While some progress was made, this paper discusses the challenges of how the full AfCFTA framework can be put into practice to include the private sector, especially SMEs, and offers recommendations for policymakers and international partners on that front.
Cummings, C., (2024) Outlawing metal mining in El Salvador. Policy Brief 18, The Policy Practice.
This brief describes how a community-led campaign for ‘water over gold’ succeeded in banning metal mining, which can cause considerable damage livelihoods and pollute water sources, in El Salvador in 2017. This case study, which is part of a series of TPP publications on the politics of climate action, shows how coalitions can be fostered across identity groups, how a problem can be framed to fit with popular political movements, and how cultural identities can help mobilise people around environmental protection.
Enbaye, G., Hensing, J., and Rotmann, P., (2024) Gaming the Political Economy of Conflict. A Practical Guide. Global Public Policy Institute.
Policymakers face significant challenges as they consider how to engage in a crisis setting. From implementing sanctions regimes to fostering peace-positive investments, they have a range of interventions at their disposal. This guide discusses how simulation games can become a valuable tool for conducting forward-looking analysis in such contexts. At its core, this guide offers a practical toolbox for developing simulation games tailored to analyse political economy interventions in stabilisation settings, including a step-by-step process and a menu of potential design choices.
Gerberon, D., Safarini, D., Wild, L., Peiro Mir, M., and Ali, S., (2024) The Impact of conflict on modern slavery and human trafficking in Sudan and the region. Global Partners Governance.
One year on from the outbreak of the war in Sudan, this report examines the impact of the conflict on modern slavery and human trafficking trends in the region, as well as its repercussions for service delivery to victims and people vulnerable to trafficking.
Hogan, E., and Patrick, S. (2024) A Closer Look at the Global South. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
This article argues that, while acknowledging the importance of the Global South as an idea, actors in the Global North must still recognise that anything done in the name of the Global South may not reflect the desires and interests of all countries that constitute that grouping.
Kelsall, T., Colenbrander, S., and Simpson, N. (2024) One size won’t fit all: Designing country platforms for different political contexts. ODI Working Paper.
This paper explores how to deliver a climate-related country platform that aligns with the needs of multiple stakeholders and facilitates action across diverse political contexts. Through the lens of political settlements and underlying rules of the game shaping political and economic power- the paper delves into the internal politics and characteristics shaping the credibility of existing climate-related country platforms. While only very few political settlements provide optimal conditions for country platforms, the authors argue that applying this theory can help navigate the challenges that can arise across various power configurations and social foundations.
Kenny, C. and Gehan, Z., (2024) Two Futures for Global Development. Centre for Global Development.
This note presents two scenarios for the world economy and development prospects to 2050 based on the forecasting exercises and analysis presented in a series of papers by the CDG on global development forecasting over the past two years. This paper was discussed in an event by the CDG which featured presentations of the two scenarios and included a panel discussion on the politics, economics, and prospects for long term global development.
Miller, J., Scharbatke-Church, C., and Chigas, D., (2024) The Role of Social Norms in Bureaucratic Corruption. A CJL Research-to-Practice Report, Calgary: The Corruption, Justice and Legitimacy Program at BESA Global.
This report takes research on how social norms drive corrupt practices among civil servants and translates it into actionable implications for practice. It explains why efforts focused on anti-corruption, public sector reform, and civil service professionalisation may have a limited impact on civil service corruption when they do not take social norms into account.
Olson, L. and Chigas, D., (2024) How Anti-Corruption Efforts Can Inadvertently Fuel Conflict. CJL Working Paper.
This working paper gathers evidence and practitioner experience about how anti-corruption (AC) efforts can unintentionally exacerbate conflict. It identifies seven possible ways that AC efforts can make conflict worse in societies experiencing intergroup tensions, political and social violence, or war. The paper aims to stimulate discussion and new ideas on the potential unintended negative impacts of AC on conflict, how to assess them, and how international, national, and local actors can design and implement their programmes to avoid or mitigate them.
Papworth. E., (2024) Advancing Feminist Foreign Policy in the Multilateral System: Key Debates and Challenges, International Peace Institute.
To explore the future of Feminist Foreign Policies (FFP), the International Peace Institute, in partnership with the Open Society Foundations and in collaboration with the co-chairs of the Feminist Foreign Policy Plus (FFP+) Group, Chile and Germany, convened a retreat on Feminist Foreign Policy and Multilateralism in July 2023. Drawing on insights from the retreat, this paper discusses the ongoing debates that FFP-interested states should engage with in order to realise the full potential of FFPs.
Piron, L-H., (2024) Mapping and analysis of ODA to media and the information environment. OECD Development Assistance Committee’s Network on Governance (GovNet).
This report provides an analysis of official development assistance to media and the information environment for the Governance Network of the OECD Development Assistance Committee. It shows that the rhetoric of governments which support freedom of expression and condemn disinformation is not matched by sufficient resources — despite the growth of threats facing media, such as the rise of censorship and the dominance of technology platforms. While ODA for media and the information environment has over the past two decades, as of 2022 it only represented 0.5% of total ODA. When infrastructure support is excluded, ODA for media falls to 0.19% of total ODA The report also notes that not enough aid reaches local organisations directly, and it lays out recommendations for more effective ODA in this space.
Saab, B., (2024) Manufacturing Deceit. How Generative AI Superchargers Information Manipulation. National Endowment for Democracy and the International Forum for Democratic Studies.
This report highlights that the threat generative (gen) AI poses to the integrity of the information space extends beyond elections, potentially undermining societal trust and with it democratic norms and standards. It assesses how authoritarians are using gen AI to advance malign narratives and break down the concept of a shared truth that lies at the heart of social trust and democratic institutions. The report also describes the ways in which civil society organisations have begun to use some of the same tools to push back against authoritarian distortions in the information space to empower and promote allies, enhancing responses by civil society experts, fact checkers, independent journalists, and other democratic partners.
3. Blogs, Podcasts and other opinion pieces
Can the West Help Revive Global Democracy? Europe Inside Out Podcast (15 May 2024).
The elections in the European Union and the United States this year are crucial tests for democracy on both sides of the Atlantic. Richard Youngs, senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, and Thomas Carothers, director of Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, discuss what is in store for the global democratic agenda and the current state of EU-U.S. cooperation on democracy support.
Benequista, N., Piron, L.H., and Ordóñez, C (2024) Artificial intelligence will turbocharge the spread of disinformation – and development organisations need to respond. From Poverty to Power Blog (10 June).
This blog discusses the growth in the spread of misleading information on the internet and other digital communication tools and the need to focus development aid to tackle this challenge. Based on three recent studies that show how little development assistance is going to media and the information environment, and how local actors are still missing out (including the study highlighted above that Laure-Hélène Piron did for the OECD DAC), the authors emphasise that the new ODA principles to preserve, protect, and promote public interest media and information integrity that the OECD has recently adopted may provide a turning point in the fight against manipulation and suppression.
A webinar where findings and implications of the three studies were discussed was held on 11 June 2024, and the recording is available here in case you missed it.
Events
1) Upcoming Events
01 July 2024: What if Global Violence was Halved by 2030? Hybrid event organised by the Halving Global Violence Task Force, the Centre on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and the Small Arms Survey.
02 July 2024: Mainstreaming Participation: How to Turn One-Off Innovations into Systematic Change. Webinar organised by the Trust Accountability and Inclusion Collaborative (TAI).
10 July 2024: SDG 16: Accelerating Progress to Achieve Justice for Children-Leveraging Innovations to Close the Justice Gap. Side event at the 2024 UN High-Level Political Forum.
12-13 September 2024: Inaugural Conference of the UK Association for Public Administration.
Recent events:
27 June 2024: Elections and Narratives: Ways of Containing Polarisation. Webinar organised by the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT).
27 June 2024: The 2024 Carnegie Africa Forum.
13 June 2024: What Strategies Work to Advance Women’s Political Power? Event organised by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
13 June 2024: Leveraging women’s skills in the energy sector: FES Expert Discussion. Event organised by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
10 May 2024: Climate Resilience and Adaptation in Latin America: Lessons for a Global Audience. A webinar organised by USAID and USEA.
09 May 2024: AI Governance for the Global Majority: Understanding Opportunities and Challenges. Event organised by Carnegie’s AI and the Global Majority project.
Tell us what you think…we want to hear from you!
Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us for your suggestions and ideas for sections of our newsletter. You can do this via:
- Email: info@twpcommunity.org
- Twitter/X: @TWP_Community
- Or by leaving a comment down below