Development Policy Review最新文献

Motivation

Industrial policies, as tools for economic advancement, disrupt established systems and practices, leading to disputes. The Nigerian Sugar Master Plan (2013–2024) is just such a case. The Plan proposed to stimulate domestic sugar growing and refining, by restricting imports and providing incentives for investors in sugar estates and refining mills.

Purpose

This study examines the impact of industrial policies on different groups, identifying the origins and impacts of subsequent disputes. Specifically, it explores how the failure to anticipate opposition caused the Nigerian Sugar Master Plan to largely fail.

Methods and approach

Informed by the framework of political settlements, we divide disputes into general (public) and specific (individual), exploring the nuances of each through qualitative analysis. Empirical data from case studies, particularly focusing on disputes over land use and trade in sugar, are used to unravel the layered repercussions of policy-induced disputes.

Findings

Unaddressed disputes, both broader societal and individual, have stymied the objectives of the Nigerian Sugar Master Plan.

Land allocations to investors in large-scale sugar estates have been disputed by dispossessed farmers, preventing establishment of several estates: production targets for sugar growing have been missed.

Importers of refined sugar could not legally continue their trade; instead, some reverted to smuggling in refined sugar, driving down the local prices—and cutting the profits of companies growing and refining sugar.

Opposition to the Sugar Plan, despite media campaigns to convince the public to accept it, has caused the Plan to fail in large part.

Policy implications

Industrial policies need to address the concerns of those potentially losing their businesses, jobs, and land to the policies. If not, opposition by losing parties is likely to cause the policies to fail.

Motivation

Through a Fiji case analysis, this article elaborates on how well-intentioned foreign aid initiatives can result in maladaptation for local communities. When most well-intentioned foreign aid institutions become aware of development problems in the Pacific Island Countries, they start planning development interventions. However, maladaptation can occur where there is insufficient community input, creating conditions that worsen situations and make communities more vulnerable.

Purpose

The study highlights a way to improve the sustainability and effectiveness of development projects with local communities by analysing two case studies. One is a community project driven by a civil society organization (CSO) and the other is community-driven development (CDD) project in Fiji.

Approach and methods

The researcher engaged in community field studies while working as a civil servant in Fiji for 12 years and has continued these studies as a researcher for five years. The data used in this article are both experiential and research-based. Action research took place when the author supported CDD programmes based on traditional farming. This study provides a longitudinal view that includes critical auto-ethnography and talanoa.

Findings

This study finds that the CSO did not appreciate community aspirations and local knowledge, leading to community maladaptation in response to their programme intervention. By contrast, CDD in the same locale saw community members take control of strategizing, carrying out development activities, and monitoring. This directly contributed to community resilience and collective well-being, in addition to making the CDD activities more sustainable than those dependent on donor funding.

Policy implications

This article showcases the value of CDD for Pacific communities and the importance of accounting for local aspirations and worldviews. Thus, policies in Pacific Island Countries should ensure that any community development programmes respect people's culture and understand their notions of well-being and resilience, and so contribute to more self-determined development.

Motivation

Bangladesh's economic growth rate over the past three decades has been one of the highest in the world. This success is difficult to reconcile with a single macroeconomic explanation of development.

Purpose

Previous studies have investigated individual aspects that can explain Bangladesh's successful development. But a consistent account of how individual factors contributed to growth is currently missing. Can factors that correlate with growth in other countries explain the outstanding growth performance of Bangladesh? Or is the country's experience unique?

Methods and approach

We construct a panel data set for 149 countries since 1970 and combine growth regression techniques with a peer group comparison. Different specifications, subsamples, and estimation techniques are considered.

Findings

Factors correlating with growth in other countries can well explain the growth experience of Bangladesh. But two features are specific to the country. First, a combination of “good enough” policies led to considerable growth impulses between 1990 and 2005: the country's improvements in typical correlates of growth during this period were among the global top 5% for any 15-year period investigated. Second, despite the absence of major reforms after 2005, Bangladesh defied the mean reversion in growth rates experienced by most fast-growing economies and peer countries.

Policy implications

Our results support the idea that a combination of “good enough” policies can jump-start high growth in low-income countries. Our findings further demonstrate that a stable macroeconomic and institutional environment helps when it comes to reaping the benefits of structural improvements in the long run.

Motivation

Domestic abuse of women, despite being illegal, is common in India: on average, every 4.4 minutes a woman suffers abuse. During the pandemic, owing to curfew and lockdowns, women had additional caring responsibilities, but they lacked social support. A legal system made lethargic by lockdowns, lack of safety protocols for dealing with cases of domestic violence during the pandemic, extended delays in processing cases, and limited protection for victims—all combined to increase domestic violence nationwide.

Purpose

What was the response of the Indian government to domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic? We evaluate policies and interventions through the lens of intersectional feminism and social equity.

Methods and approach

We review publicly available documents and scholarly journals published between 2018 and 2022. We identify the national anti-domestic violence and state-specific programmes offered to women in India. We critically evaluate the country's anti-domestic violence campaign. The policy analysis draws on the cultural knowledge and professional expertise of the authors.

Findings

The government's efforts to address domestic violence during the pandemic were limited. Pre-existing vulnerabilities such as economic hardship, the gender-based digital divide, and strict gender roles were exacerbated by the pandemic. Although the government tried to address domestic violence, through helplines, keeping shelters open and offering virtual court sessions, it also released convicted abusers from prison, increasing women's vulnerability. Government and non-governmental organization interventions were not scaled up to meet demand. Many programmes had little oversight and quality control, resulting in differential results that often further victimized victims of domestic violence among vulnerable populations.

Policy implications

Our findings highlight the importance of services and policies on domestic violence being explicit and sensitive to the culture and context in disaster preparedness and public health emergency planning.

Motivation

The political progress has been slow. The patriarchal clan traditions perpetuate gender discrimination, bestowing absolute priority upon all men for public affairs, while clan women remain voiceless, voteless, and restricted to private (household) affairs.

Purpose

To better understand why, despite the minimal formal constraints on women's participation in political life, informal institutions and customs determine the social, economic, and cultural constraints on women such that they are often poorly equipped and/or reluctant to participate in public political activity.

Methods and approach

Based on secondary literature, the article seeks to explain how the influences of the clan patriarchal system exert a negative impact on the political participation of Somali women. It identifies four structural categories, cultural, social, economic, and political, by which patriarchy has persistently impeded the participation of Somali women in the nation's politics.

Findings

Although women have contested the patriarchal system in Somalia through their participation in public decision-making processes in different sectors and their participation in politics, including an increasingly higher level of education and more participation in the labour force, their numbers are still insufficient compared to men.

Policy implications

Given that patriarchy has been identified throughout the world as one of the main obstacles to women's participation in political and socioeconomic processes, there is a need for official quotas for women's representation in politics to balance severe gender inequalities, achieve full realization of human rights and influence the issues raised and how political policies are shaped. There is also a need for political representation to imprint their competence as decision makers. The article sets out recommendations for tackling the four main structural barriers to achieving this, so that women can fully contribute to the development of Somalia, on a par with men.

Motivation

You need not look far to read stories extolling the virtues, promises, and achievements of aid to the Pacific, but such stories are far from lived experience or empirical reality. There are other often silenced stories, stories that need to be heard. They speak of broken promises and obfuscation, oppressive bureaucratic conditions, and private contractors competing for profit off the back of the Pacific's poor and vulnerable people.

Purpose

This article seeks to uncover something of the true character of aid, how it has changed (over the past decade) and how donors, their intermediaries, and Pacific recipients have responded.

Methods and approach

We use our ethnographic and auto-ethnographic insights to explore repressed stories; insights drawn from seven decades of collective experiences and observations of Australian aid, Australia being the region's largest and most significant donor.

Findings

We see three clear shifts in Australian aid over the last decade: (1) aid has become more politicized, deployed to support Australian interests; (2) aid has been increasingly privatized as much of the aid has been spent through four large Australian and international corporations—with local Pacific companies marginalized; and (3) aid has been increasingly contested by the peoples of the Pacific.

Such changes have encouraged donors to tighten their grip on power. They have encouraged intermediaries to act as their agents, performing high levels of “interpretive labour.” They compete for donor custom and favour.

Recipients of aid have been left with few options: they can comply with donors, thanking them for their generosity. They may resent the way they have been stripped of agency, perhaps looking to China for a different relationship.

Aid of this character is not development. Rather, it is an unchecked donor-driven system, beset by excessive power and control to benefit the system and its agents. Such aid may result in some success, but it systematically fails to empower Pacific agency and to reduce aid dependency.

Policy implications

A magnitude of change is required. We recommend more space for reflection on the lived experience of aid and on those gene