In Pursuit of Development

In a splendid book titled– Religion and Brazilian Democracy: Mobilizing the People of God –  Amy Erica Smith examines the causes and consequences of Brazil’s culture wars – that as Brazilian democracy faces a crisis of legitimacy, political divisions among Catholic, evangelical, and nonreligious citizens have grown. How then have these culture wars affected Brazil’s democracy? And does religious politics either threaten or help to shore up a democracy now facing grave challenges to its legitimacy? Amy Erica argues that the answers to these questions lie not in political parties, but in clergy, that interacts with and sometimes leads congregants and politicians. Amy Erica Smith is an associate professor of political science, as well as a Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean’s Professor at Iowa State University. Her research examines how ordinary people understand and engage in politics. Although she studies democratic and authoritarian regimes globally, her primary expertise is in Latin America, and particularly Brazil.Brazil’s president is rallying his base — so that he can expand his power (The Washington Post)Covid vs. Democracy: Brazil's Populist Playbook (Journal of Democracy)Water of Life: Religion, Drought and Fire in Brazil (ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America)Twitter:Amy Erica SmithDan Banik and In Pursuit of Development https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/  HostDan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)Apple Spotify YouTube Subscribe:https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.comhttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

Following Brexit, Britain has expressed a desire to play an important new role in world affairs. The idea of "Global Britain" has thus made a comeback with free trade as its core element. Indeed, Global Britain appears to be a catchy label for the UK’s ambition to look beyond Europe for new commercial opportunities and pathways to global influence. But critics argue that “A positive image of Global Britain must be earned, not declared.” And that the narrative of Global Britain will only be meaningful if and when the ambitious vision is backed up with extra investments. Of particular concern to the global development community has been the recent cuts to the UK’s aid budget, which some argue will adversely affect Britain’s power and global influence. There has also been considerable criticism of the government’s decision to merge the Department for International Development (or DFID) with the Foreign Office.Mark Miller is the director of the Overseas Development Institute’s  work on development and public finance. His research interests include how states can build the capabilities to effectively manage their public finances and the future of development cooperation in the UK. A year of G7 British leadership– delivering on Global BritainLessons from the UK spending reviewBringing global development closer to homeUK aid cut seen as unforced error in ‘year of British leadership’Reasons for optimism over the UK's Integrated ReviewTwitter: Mark Miller, Dan Banik, In Pursuit of Development https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/   HostDan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)Apple Spotify YouTube Subscribe:https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.comhttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

There is considerable attention on the pivotal role that digital technology can play in providing better healthcare. The term “digital health” is broad in scope and includes mobile health (mHealth), health information technology, tele-health and telemedicine, virtual care, remote monitoring, and wearable devices. Indeed, for many years, I have been a big fan of wearable devices such as my Fit-bit wristband and am obsessed with monitoring my various stats such as number of steps walked or run every day, the number of stairs climbed and of, course, resting heart rate and the number of calories burned.According to the WHO, there is a growing consensus in the global health community that the strategic and innovative use of digital and cutting-edge information and communications technologies can prove to be crucial enabling factors towards ensuring the fulfilment of the WHO’s so-called triple billion targets: 1 billion more people can benefit from universal health coverage, be better protected from health emergencies, and that more people can enjoy better health and well-being in general.But is technology really helping us to receive better healthcare?One particularly important and ambitious project in this context was launched by India more than a decade ago. The Pan-African E-network (PAN) was the brainchild of India’s former President Dr. Abdul Kalam. It combines India’s competitive advantages and soft power strengths – ICT, education and health expertise – through a public-private partnership (PPP) model. The network offers tele-education and tele-medicine services using fibre-optic and satellite networks – a feature that illustrates India’s preference to showcase “frugal innovation”, where low-cost solutions address major developmental challenges. New Delhi has actively promoted this project as a “shining example” of SSC on health and education. Thus, PAN provides a unique opportunity to understand how India is able to “care for Africa at a distance”.What has been the contribution then of this ambitious global health initiative from the South and how effective have such solutions been in improving healthcare on the African continent? Vincent Duclos is a medical anthropologist and a professor at the Department ofSocial and Public Communication at the University of Quebec in Montreal.Situating mobile health: a qualitative study of mHealth expectations in the rural health district of Nouna, Burkina FasoThe empire of speculation: medicine, markets, and nation in India’s Pan-African e-NetworkAlgorithmic futures: The life and death of Google Flu TrendsDemanding mobile healthClip of Dr. Abdul Kalam's speech from a video ("Connecting Hearts- India's Pan Africa E-Network") produced by Press Information Bureau, Government of India Twitter: Vincent DuclosDan BanikIn Pursuit of Developmenthttps://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/  HostDan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)Apple Spotify YouTube Subscribe:https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.comhttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

Do current “development” structures work? If not, why? And what solutions are out there that place greater agency in low-income countries to shape these development structures and results?Hannah Ryder is the CEO of Development Reimagined, an international development consultancy in China, which provides strategic advice and practical support to African, Chinese, and international stakeholders on issues ranging from the Belt and Road Initiative to Africa’s growth markets to green growth and China’s aid and investments. Hannah is an economist and former diplomat, and Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington DC. She is also a member of the UAE’s International Advisory Council on the New Economy and sits on the Executive Board of the British Chamber of Commerce in China.Development Reimagined’s Decolonising Global Health Report  What COVID19 informs us about on risk perceptions of Africa African Debt narratives and structures Blueprint for decolonising the development sectorChina-Africa in 2021 Twitter: Hannah RyderDevelopment Reimagined Dan BanikIn Pursuit of Development https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/ HostDan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)Apple Spotify YouTube Subscribe:https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.comhttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

In an excellent book on how aid agencies manage foreign aid projects, Dan Honig argues that tight top-down controls and a focus on target-setting and metrics often lead aid projects astray. If one navigates from the top, one may achieve more management control, more oversight, and more standardized behavior. But this may be at the cost of flexibility and adaptability. By contrast, if one empowers those closest to the ground, and focuses on what field agents can see and learn, we may apply so-called “soft information” that will in turn allow for more flexibility. Managing large organizations is not easy. And most politicians and bureaucrats struggle to find the right balance between when to control and when to let go. In the book Navigation by Judgment: Why and When Top-Down Control of Foreign Aid Doesn't Work, Dan Honig argues that a misplaced sense of what it means to “succeed” encourages many aid agencies to get the balance wrong.Dan Honig is an assistant professor of international development at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is currently a visiting fellow at Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science, and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development. He was previously special assistant, then advisor, to successive Ministers of Finance in Liberia and ran a local nonprofit in East Timor focused on helping post-conflict youth realize the power of their own ideas.Dan is busy completing his next book on “Mission-Driven Bureaucrats”, which explores the relationship between motivation, management practice, organizational mission, and performance in the public service.   Actually Navigating byJudgment: Towards aNew Paradigm of DonorAccountability Where theCurrent System Doesn’t Work (policy paper, Centre for Global Development)Managing Better: What All of Us Can Do to Encourage AidSuccess (CGD Brief, Center for Global Development)"Making Good On Donors' Desire to Do Development Differently", Third World Quarterly 39:1, 68-84 (Honig & Gulrajani, 2018)."Information, Power, & Location:  World Bank Staff Decentralization and Aid Project Success”, Governance 33:4, 749-769. (2020)The Limits of Accounting-Based Accountability in Education (and Far Beyond): Why More Accounting Will Rarely Solve Accountability Problems (Honig & Pritchett, working paper, Center for Global Development)Dan Honig on TwitterDan Banik and In Pursuit of Development on Twitterhttps://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/  HostDan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)Apple Spotify YouTube Subscribe:https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.comhttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

India is experiencing a devastating second wave of the pandemic. Indeed, the country appears to be going through one of the darkest moments in its post-independence history with new records broken every day for new cases of Covid-19. There are also growing concerns that even these staggering numbers that have been officially reported are in reality an undercount. And then there is the crippling shortage of life-saving supplies such as medical oxygen.Critics claim that the Indian government has ignored numerous red flags in recent months and disregarded scientific opinion. Thus, some have argued that Indians are now paying the price of government inaction while others have pointed to the historical neglect by successive ruling parties to invest more in health.The image of India as a country experiencing rapid economic growth and lifting millions of people out of poverty has of late been replaced by pictures of funeral pyres.How did it come to this? And how capable is the Indian state at responding to major crises?Patralekha Chatterjee is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and author, who has written extensively on the role of economic, political, social, cultural, and educational factors in public health in India.Patralekha Chatterjee's blog"Lessons not learnt after a year of battling Covid" (The Deccan Herald, 21 April 2021)"Why trust needs to be the key word in 2021" (The Asian Age, 06 January 2021)"Is India missing COVID-19 deaths?" (The Lancet, 05 September 2020)Patralekha Chatterjee on TwitterDan Banik and In Pursuit of Development on Twitter  HostDan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)Apple Spotify YouTube Subscribe:https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.comhttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

Why do aid agencies from wealthy donor countries with diverse domestic political and economic contexts arrive at very similar positions on certain foreign aid policies and priorities?In his book, The Globalization of Foreign Aid: Developing Consensus, Liam Swiss examines how certain ideas and practices influence the work of aid agencies in Canada, the United States and Sweden and how aid agencies end up adopting common policy priorities such as in the fields of gender and security. He argues that the so-called ‘emerging global consensus’ that constitutes the globalization of aid can be explained by both macro-level globalizing influences as well as micro-level social processes that take place within aid agencies.Liam Swiss is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. Liam Swiss on TwitterDan Banik and In Pursuit of Development on Twitter HostDan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)Apple Spotify YouTube Subscribe:https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.comhttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

There is considerable academic literature on the resource curse thesis which aims to explain why resource-rich countries have not benefited from their oil and mineral resources. And this resource curse thesis within economics, political science, and sociology has numerous economic, political, social, and environmental dimensions.But in her work, our guest has often highlighted the inadequacies of the “resource curse” thesis particularly in explaining dissatisfaction with the pace of economic development in her own country – Nigeria.Zainab Usman is a senior fellow and Director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has previously worked as a Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank and is co-author of the book, The Future of Work in Africa: Harnessing the Potential of Digital Technologies for All. She also contributed to World Bank’s flagship report  –  Rethinking Power Sector Reforms in Developing Countries. Her forthcoming book, Economic Diversification in Nigeria: The Politics of Building a Post-Oil Economy, is set to be published later this year.Zainab Usman on TwitterDan Banik and In Pursuit of Development on Twitter HostDan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)Apple Spotify YouTube Subscribe:https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.comhttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

With many path-breaking books, James C. Scott has for long been a key figure in Southeast Asian Studies and in the comparative study of agrarian societies, peasant politics and resistance studies.  His hugely influential scholarship crosses disciplines, shaping political science, anthropology, and history.In this conversation, we focus on a selection of Prof. Scott's books, including Seeing Like a State, which is a magisterial critique of top-down social planning, The Art of Not Being Governed, which highlights the crucial functions of “places of refuge from the state”, and his latest, Against the Grain – which provides a deep history of the earliest states. He is currently writing a new book on the Irrawaddy River – in which he argues that engineering and damming show how humans work, violate Nature’s traffic and how humans shape land.James C. Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science and professor of anthropology at Yale University where he also co-directs the Agrarian Studies Program. His research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations, and anarchism. He is the recipient of the 2020 Albert O. Hirschman Prize, the Social Science Research Council’s highest honour, in recognition of his wide-ranging and influential scholarship.Jim encourages you to support the fight for democracy in Myanmar by donating to www.mutualaidmyanmar.org HostDan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)Apple Spotify YouTube Subscribe:https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.comhttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/

An article in The Economist magazine in September 2018 argued that high birth rates is one of the main culprits for pervasive poverty on the African continent. The article, in particular, cited the example of Tanzania, where the then President John Magufuli did not apparently see the point with birth control, having announced in 2016 that women could throw away their contraceptives as state schools will be free. President Magufuli subsequently claimed that a major consequence of widespread contraception is a shrinking labour force, which in turn is bad for development. But others, including the Gates Foundation, have pointed to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, which are projected to witness massive increases in their populations in the next few decades. And such rapid population growth can potentially pose major challenges for government policies aimed at promoting the well-being of citizens. So, what is the link between population and development and are there some lessons that the world can learn from China’s attempts at controlling population growth in recent decades?Lauren Johnston is a research associate at SOAS China Institute, and currently a World Bank consultant for a population ageing and China research project. She holds a PhD in Economics from Peking University and is widely published on topics relating to China’s economy with respect to demographics and economic ties with Africa. Lauren Johnston on TwitterDan Banik and In Pursuit of Development on Twitter HostDan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)Apple Spotify YouTube Subscribe:https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.comhttps://globaldevpod.substack.com/