Development (Society for International Development)最新文献

Faced with the convergence of economic, social, political and environmental crises, the importance of the public sector has been rediscovered on a global scale. The article offers a review of the evolution of political and academic debates on public ownership in general and public services provision in particular over the last decades, with emphasis on the energy sector. Taking as a temporal and analytical reference the research and advocacy work developed by the authors and other scholar-activists based at the Transnational Institute from 2006 to the present, the article summarizes the main issues currently in the spotlight and highlights gaps in knowledge and points of contention. It also suggests elements for future research and campaign agendas around public ownership in different regions of the world.

This article focuses on the implications of the IMF's surcharges policies, jointly with its de facto preferred creditor status, on the right to sustainable development of sovereign borrowers. The article argues that, while surcharges are not effective in limiting access to IMF credit, they inequitably distribute the IMF's operating costs, are disproportionate, pro-cyclical, very costly for developing countries, and non-transparent. Furthermore, if surcharges are theoretically a way to protect the IMF from potential risks of default, the article questions the IMF's de facto preferred creditor status, as it precisely denies the possibility of granting debt relief in case of insolvency, ultimately affecting the right to development of -mainly- middle-income borrowing countries.

International climate finance is key to managing overall climate risk with many developing countries' climate plans and actions are conditional on getting the necessary financial support. Unsurprisingly, helping fund poorer countries to address climate change is one of the most contentious subjects in climate politics. This article examines the state of play and offers some suggestions to unblock the impasse.

The world is far off track from achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 target for universal access to clean cooking by 2030 owing to a lack of prioritization. Breaking this impasse requires transformative public- and private-sector solutions and large-scale investments that can improve the overall cooking ecosystem with end users' needs at the centre. Recent trends in designing more effective solutions are gaining momentum. By working together with a 'heart-head-and-hands approach', stakeholders can move the needle forward on clean cooking, and in the process, contribute to the SDGs for health and well-being, women's empowerment, and a cleaner environment.

This article reviews Bretton Woods Institutions' approach to public services, including during the recent COVID-19 crisis. Drawing on the specific case of IMF and World Bank's response to the multiple crisis triggered by the pandemic, it shows that there is a discourse-practice disjuncture in the institutions approach to public services as they continue to favour austerity and market-oriented solutions for the delivery of public services. The article therefore seeks to demystify the Bretton Woods institutions rhetoric and demand the adoption of a different way of understanding public services, and social policy more broadly.

The current era of financial hegemony is characterized by a dense financial actor concentration, an exacerbated reliance of many South countries on private credit and an internalized compliance of South states to financial market interests and priorities. This structural power of finance enacts itself through disciplinary mechanisms, such as credit ratings and economic surveillance, compelling many South states to respond to creditor interests at the expense of peoples' needs. As a human rights paradigm, the Declaration on the Right to Development has the active potential to redress the structural power of finance and the distortion of the role of the state through upholding the creation of an enabling international environment for equitable and rights-based development on two levels of change. First, structural policy reforms in critical areas of debt, fiscal policy, tax, trade, capital flows and credit rating agencies. Second, systemic transformation through delinking as articulated by dependency theorist Samir Amin, which entails a reorientation of national development strategies away from the imperatives of globalization to that of economic, social, and ecological priorities and interests of people.

At a point in history where the worlds social and ecological boundaries are at a true testing point, this article presents some thoughts and questions around the tensions between reformist and revolutionary actions and ends in presenting dreaming as a tool towards emancipation. Through these thoughts, collective action is a central cog towards meaningful progress.

The centrality of building care economies as a necessary step towards gender justice requires a reassessment of global economic governance and state-centred multilateralism. Globalized structures of power can no longer be seen solely as matters of political borders of nation-states, which is the traditional remit of foreign policy. Rather than geography, it is negotiations over the boundaries of power that must be interrogated for the possibility of redrawing borders and boundaries as these are expressed in social relations where care functions are performed. Five spheres of engagement are identified and discussed. A short note on limitarianism raises a question about its value in a care economy and how ethics of care links to it.

This article discusses the failure of global governance to defend and reinforce education as a public good and its public provision and regulation. Challenging the framing of states and the private sector as being equally important for the achievement of the SDGs, it calls for a reimagination of the role of global governance and an accountability structure that places the economic, social and environmental consequences of policy and financing modalities at the centre.

The United Nations' systemic issues agenda concerns the terrain of economic engagement among nations and peoples of the world, the terreain which underpins international cooperation and peace. In the twenty-first century, this agenda must contend with inequities in access to decision-making, policy inconsistencies in the rules among different areas such as trade and finance, and curtailing vulnerabilities arising from the excessive dominance of financial logic in economic decision-making.