Suchergebnisse

In 2015 the Government of Uganda agreed to start rolling out a social pension programme, and increasing its own contribution to it. This was driven by the highly politicized efforts of a transnational policy coalition, led by international donors and national bureaucrats. It was a struggle over ideas as well as resources, with this coalition having to overcome strong resistance from Finance Ministry tendencies until the policy coalition started 'thinking and working politically' to help align the social protection agenda with Uganda's shifting political settlement dynamics. Government's apparent commitment to social protection remains meagre; only a tiny proportion of Uganda's poor will benefit. The evidence presented here raises serious concerns regarding the developmental character of Uganda's contemporary political settlement and the costs of the 'going with the grain' motif of the new 'thinking and working politically' agenda. Aligning policy agendas with dominant interests and ideas may render interventions politically acceptable while further embedding clientelist logics and doing little to address distributional problem.

The disappointing performance of conventional public sector reforms in developing countries has led to the rise of 'new' approaches seeking to overcome traditional bureaucratic barriers to change: leadership-focused interventions like the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI); accountability-focused initiatives like the Open Government Partnership (OGP); and adaptation-focused models like those of Africa Power and Politics (APP). While these approaches are appealing to aid donors in their promise to move beyond the limitations of purely formal institution-building, they fail to provide new answers to the 'old' analytical and practical challenges of public sector reform, in particular administrative patrimonialism, public corruption, and political capture. The evidence is yet inchoate, but all points to the need for these approaches to work in tandem with conventional ones. Beyond novel implementation tactics, however, there is a need for new strategies of sustained political support to embattled reformers who face powerful incentives against institutional change.

This collection brings together internationally-renowned experts to offer a comprehensive review of how politics shapes inclusive development in the global south. Each aspect of development is covered: social, economic, environmental, and cultural with each chapter offering a review of the evidence in the relevant field.