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1. Beyond the Targets: An ambitious agenda to put aid back on track

Author:
Salvatore Nocerino
Publication Date:
03-2025
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Aid can make a huge contribution to significantly reducing inequality. Given the widespread agreement that bringing down inequality is necessary to underpin efforts to end poverty, achieve gender justice and successfully fight climate change, there is an urgent need for donors to make this a priority in their aid policies. For this virtuous cycle to be effective, there is also an imperative to rebalance decision-making on aid, ensuring it is done in an inclusive way that centres Global South governments and civil society. Building on the findings of the 2019 Oxfam report 'Hitting the Target: An agenda for aid in times of extreme inequality', this paper presents a new and updated agenda to put aid back on track given recent changes in the development landscape and the multiple crises facing our world. It makes 10 concrete recommendations on how to ensure development finance effectively contributes to building a more equal and sustainable world.
Topic:
Development, International Cooperation, Poverty, and Inequality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Contractual Origins of Anti-Americanism: Pew 2013 Results

Author:
Cem Birol
Publication Date:
07-2024
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:
Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:
Economic Norms Theory (ENT) implies that anti-modernist and anti-market values flourish in countries where the central authority poorly monitors contracts that bind economic transactions. Decades of research show that ENT astutely predicts civil war and interstate war incidents, as well as people’s support for war, and suicide bombing in defense of Islam. This paper investigates the association between contract enforcement and anti-Americanism, which is the ENT’s core, yet is a statistically under-evaluated implication. Accordingly, in countries with poor economic contract monitoring, power-contending elites can attribute the resultant loss of prosperity to the USA and relatedly spread anti-American values among citizens. It is the urban poor who are cognitively most available to adopt such elite-driven anti-Americanism since they tend to be hurt most socially and economically by unfulfilled market contracts. To investigate this argument, I statistically estimate random intercept models on a sample of Pew Global Attitudes Project’s 2013 survey results. I observe that a three-way interaction among individuals’ urbanity, poverty, and their nations’ poor contract enforcement indicators increase anti-Americanism.
Topic:
Economics, Poverty, Urban, Survey, Economic Norms Theory (ENT), Hierarchical Modelling, and Anti-Americanism
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

3. An Integrative Framework to Assess Trade-Offs and Implications of Choosing Measurements

Author:
Laura García Montoya
Publication Date:
08-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Deciding how to measure critical social science concepts like inequality and democracy is one of the most consequential decisions researchers and policymakers make. Yet we lack concrete guidelines to recognize and weigh the tradeoffs that make going from concept to measurement such a challenging task. This paper builds on existing work on measurement validity and develops a framework that allows scholars to identify the trade-offs between three desirable properties of measurement: completeness, interpretability, and normative alignment. The first challenge results from the inherent trade-off between completeness and interpretability. The second challenge results from the lack of empirical tools to assess the normative implications of choosing one indicator over another one. To exemplify how to navigate these challenges, the paper engages with debates on how to measure democracy and inequality. The paper aims to guide scholars in the consequential task of choosing one indicator that matches their research goals as well as their normative orientations.
Topic:
Poverty, Democracy, and Inequality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Rights and Responsibilities: Understanding the impact of the tech industry on economic inequality

Author:
Meg Roggensack, Gawain Kripke, Michael Borum, and Hana Ivanhoe
Publication Date:
10-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Digital technologies have the potential to either ameliorate or worsen the dynamics underlying poverty and inequality, depending on how those technologies are designed, developed, deployed, and used, as well as on the degree to which the businesses, and business models behind them, respect the rights of users and workers. This paper recommends changes in corporate and government policies and practices to ensure that the information and communication technology (ICT) industry respects human rights and does not exacerbate poverty and economic inequality across five pillars: access and equity, digital civic space, data use and privacy, automation and the future of work, and governance.
Topic:
Human Rights, Poverty, Science and Technology, Governance, and Economic Inequality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Gender and poverty as a feminist foreign policy priority

Author:
Joanne Crawford
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Women's Development Agency (IWDA)
Abstract:
This issues paper is dedicated to the late Sylvia Chant, who named household-level measurement as a barrier to evidence related to the ‘feminization of poverty.’ Her work underpinned the commitment of the author and International Women‘s Development Agency (IWDA) to change the way that poverty is measured so that its gendered dimensions are visible. As IWDA worked with othersi to create an alternative quantitative measure of poverty, Chant’s focus on the “feminization of responsibility and obligation – women’s increasing liability for dealing with poverty (responsibility), and their progressively less choice other than to do so (obligation)” ii informed the inclusion of voice, unpaid work and time use as dimensions of gendersensitive measurement of multidimensional poverty.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Poverty, Feminism, and Gender
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Will economic growth be sufficient to end global poverty? New projections of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Author:
Arief Anshory Yusuf, Zuzy Anna, Ahmad Komarulzaman, and Andy Sumner
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
In this paper, we present new projections for a range of global poverty-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically, extreme monetary poverty, undernutrition, stunting, child mortality, maternal mortality, and access to clean water and basic sanitation. Our projections, based on economic growth forecasts, take into account recent global shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the inflation shock. Our findings indicate that economic growth alone will not be sufficient to end global poverty, and the global poverty-related SDGs will not be met by a considerable distance. The implication of this, we argue, is that a stronger focus is needed on inclusive growth (SDG-8), and specifically redistribution with growth at global and national levels. This would mean more emphasis on policies to build productive capacities, and the introduction or expansion of income transfers as well as ensuring public investments are sufficient to meet the SDGs. To this end new international financing needs to be made available through debt relief or other forms of finance to expand developing countries’ fiscal space.
Topic:
Poverty, Sustainable Development Goals, Economic Growth, and Inclusion
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Will the poverty-related SDGs be met? Global projections for 2030

Author:
Arief Anshory Yusuf, Zuzy Anna, Ahmad Komarulzaman, and Andy Sumner
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The 1980s are sometimes referred to as the ‘lost decade’ for development. Many countries in the Global South experienced weak or no improvement in poverty indicators. Our projections are equally dire for the current decade and prospects for the SDGs unless action is taken.
Topic:
Poverty, Sustainable Development Goals, and Economic Development
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. The rise of social protection in the Global South – the role of foreign aid

Author:
Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, Ana Horigoshi, and Alma Santillán Hernández
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Despite the rapid expansion of social protection across the Global South in recent decades, the ILO (2021: 19) estimates that more than half of the global population still have no access to any form of protection against poverty vulnerability and social exclusion.
Topic:
Poverty, Foreign Aid, and Protection
Political Geography:
Global Focus and Global South

9. The Post-COVID Consensus

Author:
Shahid Yusuf
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
Development economics is turning a full circle with a difference. This paper addresses the circling back to the policies in vogue during the 1980s and earlier, including industrial policies, coupled with protectionism; accounts for the regression to earlier certitudes after an extended spell of globalization underpinned by market fundamentalism; and indicates how a transforming global environment has enlarged the policy agenda. There is a new policy consensus in the making, which borrows some elements of the Washington Consensus but goes beyond to encompass a broader policy agenda.
Topic:
Development, Markets, Poverty, Inequality, Economic Development, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

10. Policy Options for an Equitable Re-globalization

Author:
Constantine Michalopoulos
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP)
Abstract:
Developing countries made impressive gains in reducing poverty and global income inequality in the past half century, many riding the wave of globalization. But the dozen years that followed the 2008 financial crisis witnessed a deterioration of global commitments to a more equitable economic order made in the early years of the 21st century. The pandemic undermined development prospects, intensified pre-existing anti-globalization sentiments, and raised questions about the effectiveness of the international institutions within which developing countries achieved great progress. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine created a major geopolitical split and contributed to large increases in energy and food prices with disastrous results for developing countries, many of which were just recovering from the increased poverty created by the pandemic. This paper sets out an agenda for what I call a more equitable re-globalization. This has several parts: addressing climate change, providing economic assistance to help reduce poverty in low income countries, strengthening the social safety net, limiting the power of MNCs, and reestablishing an effective multilateral trading system. The potential calamities of future pandemics and the threats posed by climate change require countries to submerge narrow national political objectives and develop a collaborative global multilateral approach. The last part of the paper discusses the steps the international community must take to revitalize multilateralism to enable it to cope with global challenges effectively and equitably.
Topic:
Globalization, Poverty, Income Inequality, and Multilateralism
Political Geography:
Global Focus