February 2012
6 posts
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Boko Haram e a violência na Nigéria
Mesmo para um país acostumado a diversos tipos de turbulências, os conflitos recentes na Nigéria vêm tomando proporções alarmantes. De acordo com o Human Rights Watch, desde as eleições de abril de 2010 uma série de ataques terroristas no país fez cerca de 900 mortos e milhares de feridos, levando o presidente Goodluck Jonathan a dizer que “a situação está pior do que a guerra civil”....
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WatchProduced by the Refugee Law Project (RLP), University of Makerere, Kampala, Uganda, Gender against Men explores “the hidden world of sexual and gender-based violence against men in the conflicts of the Great Lakes region.” According to the producers, it is a film about men, violence, and the inability of society to recognise or address male vulnerability in times of conflict. The film...
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The Age of Big Data has arrived →
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January 2012
13 posts
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In defense of industrial policy
A couple of days ago, Shanta Devarajan, World Bank chief economist for Africa, posted this interesting piece on industrial policy in Africa:
Like others, I have been skeptical about industrial policy in Africa, where the government selects certain industries for support in order to trigger a process of structural transformation. It’s been tried before—with disastrous results.
The selected...
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French Inquiry Clears Rwanda’s Kagame Of the... →
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Scientists call for global neglected disease...
Creating a new, open-access database is always a good idea. A few days ago, SciDev.Net published an article about an interesting project:
A global database for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) ”is feasible and should be expanded without delay”, the developers of a first ‘proof of concept’ for such a tool have said.
While efforts to eliminate NTDs have improved over...
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“They probably don’t understand this, but it’s important for me to show them that...”
– Tim Winton, from Breath (thanks, brendansphotoblog)
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Paul Collier: "Africa Must Liberalize Internally"
In a recent interview, Paul Collier discusses the pros and cons of trade liberalization in Africa, the efficacy of economic sanctions and the importance of solid democratic institutions to conflict-stricken countries. Since he is one of the most important authors in civil war studies, it is always good to know what he is thinking about.
You can read the interview on The European Magazine website.
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A list of annual conferences related to conflict... →
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Best Foreign Affairs Print Stories of 2011
From the Arab Spring to the occupation of Wall Street (not to mention Oakland, Tel Aviv, and Homs), 2011 has been a historic year, and Foreign Affairs expert contributors have been providing indispensable context and insight every step of the way. A handful of gems from the past year.
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New data allows for unique conflict research
Which factors increase the risk for armed conflict and war? What circumstances make conflict resolution more likely to be successful? If work for peace is to bear fruit; these questions needs to be answered. Today, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) releases a new dataset which opens up new possibilities for the study of armed conflict. Using these data, useful findings relating to...
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The Best Data Visualization Projects of 2011
Nathan Yau from FlowingData has made a list of some of the most interesting infographics of 2011. Apart from effectively conveying their message, the images selected are also very visually appealing. You can see the full list here.
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December 2011
15 posts
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How Luther went viral: Five centuries before... →
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Uninformed 'vital for democracy'
Uninformed individuals are vital for achieving a democratic consensus, according to a study in the journal Science.
The researchers say that they dilute the influence of minority factions who would otherwise dominate everyone else.
This is because they tend to side with and embolden the numerical majority.
The findings challenge the commonly held idea that an outspoken minority can manipulate...
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The 25 Most Beautiful College Libraries in the...
The Trinity College Library, aka “The Long Room,” Dublin, Ireland. More here.
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Correlation or Causation?
Correlation may not imply causation, but it sure can help us insinuate it.
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The Swazi Bull
For traditionalists, King Mswati III’s troubled year, the rapid collapse of Swaziland’s economy and the surge in pro-democracy protests has little to do with South Africa’s revision of [the regional] Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) disbursements late last year. It has its roots, instead, in an unfortunate variation in the mystic, and private, Incwala ceremony last December.
The ceremony...
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Corrosive corruption
The Economist shows the correlation between UN’s Human Development Index and the Corruption Perception Index, published by Transparency International. Although we should never forget the golden rule of inference, the graphic is quite interesting.
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What do we really know about microfinance?
Depending on whom you ask, with almost 200 million borrowers around the world, microfinance might be the best thing ever to happen to international development or an overhyped and dangerous intervention. Microfinance, the largest trend in international development in years, remains mostly unproven; it’s a realm of heartwarming stories and vague ideas about why and how it should work – and for...
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Corruption Perception Index 2011 →
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November 2011
31 posts
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Where the bribes are
From the WSJ Law Blog:
The investigative firm James Mintz Group has a new database of every FCPA case that it says allows users to access such information in short order by clicking on an interactive map.
Law Blog’s favorite feature is the filtering by sector. Pick your sector on the bar on the left, and you can see which countries apparently have been the most treacherous for a particular...
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Revolution R Enterprise 5.0 now available for free... →
From David Smith, published on R-bloggers.
Revolution R Enterprise 5.0, which we announced last week, is now available for free download to students and faculty at academic institutions worldwide. If you’ve downloaded Revolution R Enterprise via the academic program before and are on the mailing list, you will have already received an email with download instructions; if not, just...
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Voices of the poor - Can anyone hear us? →
A World Bank’s survey of people living in poverty in 60 countries and their views on poverty.
Hat tip to Good Intentions are not Enough.
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Médecins sans Frontières book reveals aid...
A controversial new book produced by one of the world’s best-known aid agencies, Médecins sans Frontières, lifts the lid on the often deeply uncomfortable compromises aid organisations are forced to make while working in conflicts.
How humanitarian aid organisations work – and the sometimes unintended consequences of their actions – has been brutally cross-examined in recent years, not...
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A hard life for one Latina teenager →
“I feel like I don’t belong,” she says. “Like they want us out. Even me, even though I’m American.”
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Thinking Little: Giving Greater Focus to Small... →
thepoliticalnotebook:
Weapons of mass destruction fears, which aren’t invalid, overshadow what might actually be a bigger, and less easy to approach, threat: that of the proliferation small arms and light weaponry. Are nukes the weapons we should be most immediately worried about? I don’t think so.
Not that we shouldn’t care about nuclear programs, or about people like Ahmedinejad or Al Qaeda...
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The Guardian: Development studies student... →
Data, books, blogs, articles and more to support your development studies
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Behavioural Economics and the White House
The Making Work Pay tax credit, part of President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill, was one of the least noticed tax cuts of all time. Rather than coming as a check from the government with the sum written on the dotted line, Making Work Pay—a credit of up to $400, or $800 for couples filing jointly—was disbursed in a steady dribble. The middle-class workers who were its target had their...
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WatchAnthropologist John Comaroff spoke at The Graduate Institute in Geneva about the themes that lie at the heart of (the introduction to) the latest book he co-wrote with Jean Comaroff, and which carries the same title as the lecture: ‘Theory from the South: Or, How Europe is Evolving Toward Africa.’ (Keynote starts 5 minutes into the recording; there’s a Q&A in the last third, including some...
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Taxation, Political Accountability, and Foreign...
An interesting paper by Nicholas Eubank on how the need for tax revenues forced the government of Somaliland to provide public goods for its citizens. Here’s the abstract:
For years, studies of state formation in early and medieval Europe have argued that the modern, representative state emerged as the result of negotiations between autocratic governments in need of tax revenues and...