Development Policy Review最新文献

Motivation

Academicians and policy-makers grapple with monitoring the economic impact of crises such as COVID-19 when survey data are scarce.

Purpose

We show how a set of publicly available real-time indicators—nitrogen dioxide emissions, night-time lights, mobile phone mobility tracking, internet searches, and food prices—tracked changes in GDP across multiple countries in 2020.

Approach and methods

We first describe the extent to which real-time indicators captured the COVID-19 crisis. We employ linear models, selected using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), to examine the capacity of these indicators to track GDP growth during the crisis.

Findings

Google Mobility and staple food prices both sharply declined in March and April 2020, followed by a rapid recovery returning to baseline levels by July and August 2020. Mobility and staple food prices experienced a milder decrease in low-income countries.

Nitrogen dioxide and night-time lights showed a similar pattern, with the steepest fall followed by a swift recovery in lower middle-income countries.

In April and May, Google search terms reflecting economic distress and religiosity spiked in some regions but not in others.

Linear models explain about half of the variation in annual GDP growth in 68 countries. In a smaller subset of higher-income countries, real-time indicators explain about 65% of the variation in quarterly GDP growth.

Policy implications

Real-time indicators offer several advantages in crisis monitoring, being readily available, cost-effective, and not requiring face-to-face interactions, which are particularly valuable during a pandemic.

Motivation

Donors allocate huge sums for assistance intended for poverty reduction to countries that arguably do not need it. For example, the United States spends more in Jordan—with no extreme poverty—than it does in the six countries with the highest poverty rates in the world combined, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. Prior studies have suggested that if global aid were allocated according to need, it could roughly double its impact on poverty reduction.

Purpose

Country need can be broken down into the magnitude of the development challenge and the domestic resources available. This study examines these two components of development need to determine which countries have the greatest need for foreign assistance.

Approach and methods

I produce a set of data-driven observations documenting the magnitude of the challenge and the resources available. I first explore which countries have the highest rates of absolute and multidimensional poverty. I then examine which countries have the ability to redistribute by comparing their poverty gaps with the potential domestic resources available. This produces the marginal tax rate (MTR) required for a country to finance its own poverty eradication.

Findings

There is a clear trend in the magnitude of the challenge: low-income countries (LICs) have the highest poverty rates by far; lower middle-income countries (LMICs) are more mixed; and upper middle-income countries (UMICs) have comparatively little extreme poverty, except in a small handful of countries. The implied MTRs required to close a country's extreme poverty gap are excessively high for LICs and most LMICs but easily manageable for most UMICs. This strongly suggests that both the magnitude of the challenge is much greater and the resources available much lower in LICs and LMICs.

Policy implications

The policy implication is that LICs and LMICs should be strongly favoured in terms of aid allocation. The two different components of country need point in the same direction and both suggest a strong focus on allocating assistance towards the poorest countries.

Motivation

A decade has passed since the outbreak of the so-called Arab Spring, which led to regime changes in several Arab countries. However, these public protests demonstrated their ineffectiveness in bringing about political and economic improvements, nor did they facilitate a peaceful transition to democracy in Arab countries.

Purpose

This article attempts to discuss the obstacles to democratic transformation in Arab countries and the methods that should be followed to achieve democratic transformation, along with showing the international community's response to the Arab Spring.

Approach and methods

This article relies on a descriptive, methodological, and analytical approach to the obstacles to democratic transformation in Arab countries by analysing the events and results of the Arab Spring.

Findings

The democratic transformation in Arab countries does not require as much concerted effort to protect the right to peaceful assembly as it does to safeguard other rights from violations resulting from certain practices. This is primarily due to significant differences between ideological, intellectual, and political groups within society. Furthermore, democratic transformation in Arab countries necessitates the collective efforts of the international community, particularly Western nations such as the United States, employing a credible and transparent approach free from political or economic interests. These external factors are crucial when it comes to either facilitating or hindering the democratic transition and the implementation of democratic reforms.

Policy implications

The Arab Spring showed that peaceful democratic transitions and the conditions for the continuation or replacement of authoritarian regimes require the approval and support of some countries that are devoid of political or economic interests, as they are external factors that can influence and hinder the democratic transition or ensure democratic reforms. This is especially true because public protests are no longer simply a sign of resistance to the regime but rather are rather a potential advance warning of rebellion and the overthrow of said regimes.

Motivation

Foresight methods are increasingly recognized as essential for decision-making in complex environments, particularly within development and research settings. As foresight methods continue to gain prominence for decision-making, their application in these settings grows. Funders and policy-makers can benefit from the experience of transformative foresight practitioners and researchers who are skilled in designing novel ways to envision alternative and diverse development futures.

Purpose

The Seeds of Good Anthropocenes (SoGA) initiative has experimented with transformative foresight since its inception in 2016.

We position SoGA within the framework of Minkkinen et al. (2019); we present its transformative capacity through participatory visioning; and we explore how foresight methods can shape strategic development options.

Approach and methods

We draw lessons from how SoGA, used extensively in various contexts around the world, has introduced experimental transformative foresight to deal with diversity and complexity. We describe the transformative foresight processes in detail.

Findings

SoGA exemplifies how transformative foresight can support policy and change initiatives by providing participants, planners, and decision-makers with opportunities to reinforce the collaborative and transformative objectives of their policy and convening practices. Such engagement not only deepens the strategic impact of policies, it also encourages a more inclusive and participatory approach to policy development, aligning with broader goals for sustainable and impactful change.

Motivation

Strategic foresight is gaining traction for anticipating changes in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world—one which will require different mindsets and approaches. Yet international development co-operation practitioners have been slow to adopt foresight.

Purpose

What promises and pitfalls should development practitioners consider in order to integrate strategic foresight into their work?

Methods and approach

We review the literature on strategic foresight applied to development. We draw on reflections from the articles included in this special issue. We incorporate the International Development Research Centre's experiences and early insights on the use of foresight for development.

Findings

Strategic foresight provides tools to anticipate long-term and potentially disruptive change. To apply the approach effectively, organizations need to understand the debates about foresight. But no one size fits all: organizations must identify where and how foresight can best be used; be clear on its purpose, use, and end-users; be sensitive to how foresight intersects with broader calls for decolonizing development and the future; and should adapt methods to different sociocultural contexts.

Connecting foresight practitioners and international development actors to explore potential synergies between these two worlds offers opportunities to innovate.

Policy implications

Traditional, short-term strategic planning, and reactive responses to emerging crises, are increasingly ill-suited to a VUCA world. To be fit for the future, international development actors must consider adding proactive longer-term anticipatory planning—that accommodates more systematic understanding and appreciation of plausible futures—to reactive responses.

Motivation

Being able to anticipate (foresight) and thus identify development pathways and make long-term plans is crucial for the transformation of Africa. However, long-term planning was abandoned as many African countries went into crisis, being mostly forced to adopt structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s. Although long-term planning began to make a comeback in the 1990s, the resulting visions have tended to remain that— visions—not fully reflected in policy implementation.

Purpose

The article explores the many cycles of foresight in Africa to gain insight into how foresight can become an opportunity to generate new development options and strategies for Africa. Various examples of foresight in Africa are examined to tease out the imperatives for African policy-makers to embed foresight into development management.

Approach and Methods

We review foresight in Africa, starting by mapping foresight exercises in the continent since independence. We identify three categories of foresight exercises: development partner-led, government-led, and civil society-led. Given the involvement of the authors in some of the exercises, assessments are largely derived from personal communications, recollections, and reflections.

Findings

Four insights emerge. First, foresight exercises have had little impact on leaders and decision-makers, in large part because they have not been intimately engaged in the exercises.

Two, foresight narratives tend to be challenging, raising difficult issues that may require substantial and difficult reforms. Faced with everyday challenges of government, leaders have usually chosen to ignore and disbelieve foresight exercises.

Three, foresight analysts have not been sufficiently empathetic to the highly constrained systems of public governance and the ministers and civil servants that operate them.

Four, futures initiatives can present the factors that may shape the future as overwhelming; and thereby discounting and undervaluing individual and collective agency.

Policy implications

Exploring the future is not new in Africa. In traditional African societies, the need to explore the future has been recognized, as captured in proverbs an