Blog
From the Editor's Desk (March 2012)Tony Addison With the ice floes now gone from the harbour outside the UNU-WIDER building, and with the snow replaced by an icy hail, there is a...
Tony Addison With the ice floes now gone from the harbour outside the UNU-WIDER building, and with the snow replaced by an icy hail, there is a...
Danielle Resnick During the last month, three democracies in Africa witnessed incumbent presidents exit office in very different ways. The most...
Danielle Resnick The victory of the opposition party, the Patriotic Front (PF), in Zambia’s presidential elections this month heralds a new era in...
The youth have long represented an important constituency for electoral mobilization in Africa. Yet, despite their numerical importance and the historical relevance of generational identities within the region, very little is really known about the...
This study presents an analysis of the electoral impacts of one of the most prominent conditional cash transfers in the world: Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP) programme. Using population censuses, and POP’s administrative records and...
Voter coercion is a recurrent threat to pro-poor redistribution in young democracies. In this study we focus on Mexico’s paradigmatic Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP) programme. We investigate whether local mayors exploited POP to coerce voters...
Despite impressive economic growth rates over the last decade, foreign aid still plays a significant role in Africa's political economies.This book asks when, why, and how foreign aid has facilitated, or hindered, democratization in sub-Saharan...
Part of Book Democratic Trajectories in Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue The Political Economy of Africa's Emergent Middle Class
Part of Journal Special Issue The Political Economy of Africa's Emergent Middle Class
The Mexican land reform, one of the most sweeping in the world, proceeded in two steps: it granted peasants highly incomplete property rights on more than half of the Mexican territory starting in 1914, creating strong economic and political...
The political consequences of economic inequality have been debated in academic and policy circles for centuries. The nature of this relationship seems highly dependent on specific contexts, with empirical studies showing mixed evidence on how...
Electoral coalitions are becoming increasingly popular among opposition parties in Africa because they offer many advantages with respect to reducing party fragmentation and increasing incumbent turnovers. At the same time, however, they are often...
The youth have long represented an important constituency for electoral mobilization in Africa. Today, as the region faces a growing ‘youth bulge’ that is disproportionately burdened by un- and underemployment, capturing the votes of this demographic...
Danielle Resnick In just a little over a month, policy makers will converge in Busan, South Korea for the fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness...
Senegal's 2012 presidential and legislative elections reaffirmed the country's longstanding reputation as one of Africa's most stable democracies. The elections also represented a critical juncture for the country's party system, demonstrated by the...
In a region where democratization has led to a proliferation of opposition parties, pre-electoral coalitions represent an obvious means by which to reduce excessive party fragmentation in Africa. However, this article examines whether such coalitions...
Does economic standing cross-cut ethnicity in African electoral politics? In many countries in the region, ethnicity appears to be a major consideration in individuals’ political decision-making. However, there is significant variation in the extent...
Part of Journal Special Issue Poverty, Development, and Behavioral Economics
This paper examines the nature and evolution of horizontal and vertical human-capital inequality in South Africa since the end of apartheid. Using census data from 1996, 2001, and 2011, we use different measures of years of schooling to examine the...
Part of Journal Special Issue Land and Property Rights
Based on the standard axiom of individual utility maximization, rational choice has postulated that higher income inequality translates into greater redistribution by shaping the median voter’s preferences. While numerous papers have tested this...
Jamie Bleck and Kristin Michelitch [1] Mali has continued to be in the news since its military coup in March 2012. Much of the news coverage on Mali...
Omar Shahabudin McDoom What should donors do when confronted with regimes that violate important normative standards of state behavior and commit...
Drawing on insights from Latin America, this paper examines the factors that contributed to the use of populist strategies by political parties during recent presidential elections in Kenya, South Africa, and Zambia. Specifically, the paper argues...
Foreign Aid and Democratic Development in Africa The past twenty years have seen donors increasingly linking foreign aid to democracy objectives in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the same period many countries in the region have adopted multi-party political...
President Yayi Boni of Benin was one of the eight African leaders invited to attended the May 2012 G8 summit at Camp David to discuss the issue of food security. This is perhaps an indication that the country is doing something right, at least from...
Development aid was effective in promoting democratic transitions during the 1990s in African countries beset by economic crisis domestic discontent, and a high dependency on aid. Development aid also influenced democratic transition indirectly...
10 December 2013 Tony Addison Our November-December Angle comes amid intense activity on our ReCom—Research and Communication on Foreign Aid—programme...