Design for Policy


Book Description

Design for Policy is the first publication to chart the emergence of collaborative design approaches to innovation in public policy. Drawing on contributions from a range of the world’s leading academics, design practitioners and public managers, it provides a rich, detailed analysis of design as a tool for addressing public problems and capturing opportunities for achieving better and more efficient societal outcomes. In his introduction, Christian Bason suggests that design may offer a fundamental reinvention of the art and craft of policy making for the twenty-first century. From challenging current problem spaces to driving the creative quest for new solutions and shaping the physical and virtual artefacts of policy implementation, design holds a significant yet largely unexplored potential. The book is structured in three main sections, covering the global context of the rise of design for policy, in-depth case studies of the application of design to policy making, and a guide to concrete design tools for policy intent, insight, ideation and implementation. The summary chapter lays out a future agenda for design in government, suggesting how to position design more firmly on the public policy stage. Design for Policy is intended as a resource for leaders and scholars in government departments, public service organizations and institutions, schools of design and public management, think tanks and consultancies that wish to understand and use design as a tool for public sector reform and innovation.




UK Aid Policy and Practice 1974-90


Book Description

This thesis provides a detailed analysis of UK Aid policy over the period 1974-90. Its focus is primarily upon the extent to which official aid was concerned with poverty alleviation. This theme permitted a comparison to be made between the records of the Labour administration of 1974-79 and the Conservative administration of 1979-90. A quantitative comparison is made of the two aid programmes. The philosophical, moral and ideological aspects of the British aid programme are explored. Two themes in particular are studied in depth: aid and gender and aid and the environment.




The Securitization of Foreign Aid


Book Description

Security concerns increasingly influence foreign aid: how Western countries give aid, to whom and why. With contributions from experts in the field, this book examines the impact of security issues on six of the world's largest aid donors, as well as on key crosscutting issues such as gender equality and climate change.




A Cause for Our Times


Book Description

Maggie Black gives a wide-ranging, sometimes critical, account of Oxfam's first 50 years. In doing so, she projects Oxfam's own development against a backcloth of changing ideas in international affairs and charitable giving, of which its growth is both an inspiration and an expression.




Beyond Access


Book Description

This book combines analysis of policy and empirically based studies on gender, education, and development.




How Change Happens


Book Description

"DLP, Developmental Leadership Program; Australian Aid; Oxfam."




The Development of Aid


Book Description

Aid to developing countries started well before World War II, but was undertaken as an ad hoc activity or was delivered by private organizations. This changed after the War. In his Inaugural Address in 1949, the American President, Harry Truman, announced a “bold new programme for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped nations” (the so-called “Point IV” Plan). At that time it was thought that this support would be needed only for a limited number of years, comparable to the Marshall Plan assistance to Europe. But reality proved to be different: providing aid was a very long-term affair. Since the Fifties, the aid provided has changed at different occasions. In the beginning, aid concentrated on constructing infrastructure, such as roads, railways, dams, and harbours, in order to promote industrial development. In the Sixties, aid to agriculture was added, and in the Seventies aid to social sectors (Basic Needs) was also provided. The Eighties brought worldwide debt problems. Major donors applied structural adjustment policies; some called this the lost decade (década perdida). The Nineties saw the arrival of the first environmental considerations, and asked for attention for the role of women and good governance. The form of aid changed from projects to programmes and budget support. Describing the different aid forms of the last 65 years and analysing why aid changed from time to time are the subjects of this book. Professionals and students in the area of international cooperation will benefit from studying this history, as, at this moment, old concepts are reappearing or applied by new donors like China. Is the pendulum really swinging back, as Louis Emmerij at one point suggested?




Adventures in Aidland


Book Description

Anthropological interest in new subjects of research and contemporary knowledge practices has turned ethnographic attention to a wide ranging variety of professional fields. Among these the encounter with international development has perhaps been longer and more intimate than any of the others. Anthropologists have drawn critical attention to the interfaces and social effects of development’s discursive regimes but, oddly enough, have paid scant attention to knowledge producers themselves, despite anthropologists being among them. This is the focus of this volume. It concerns the construction and transmission of knowledge about global poverty and its reduction but is equally interested in the social life of development professionals, in the capacity of ideas to mediate relationships, in networks of experts and communities of aid workers, and in the dilemmas of maintaining professional identities. Going well beyond obsolete debates about ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ anthropology, the book examines the transformations that occur as social scientific concepts and practices cross and re-cross the boundary between anthropological and policy making knowledge.




Capacity-building


Book Description

This book considers specific and practical ways in which NGO's can contribute to enabling people to build on the capacities they already possess. It reviews the types of social organisation with which NGO's might consider working and the provision of training in a variety of relevant skills and activities.




Disability, Liberation, and Development


Book Description

Disabled people are marginalized in every country of the world both North and South. By probing these prejudices and studying cases where they have been overcome this book provides an insight into the processes of liberation and empowerment.