Promoting sustainable development through civil society: A case study of the EU’s NSA/LA thematic programme in Kyrgyzstan

The article focuses on the contribution of the European Union (EU) in promoting sustainable development through the involvement of civil society in partner countries. More specifically, it analyses the main features and outcomes of the projects implemented by civil society organizations (CSOs) in Kyrgyzstan under the EU thematic programme Non‐State Actors and Local Authorities in Development (NSA/LA). Despite its importance—this is the only EU programme providing direct support to non‐state actors and local authorities engaged in poverty reduction—to date, there has been very little research on the functioning of this instrument on the ground. This article seeks to fill this gap in the literature by examining the EU’s contribution to sustainable development through a case study on Kyrgyzstan. The study is based on primary data: 10 semi‐structured interviews conducted with the EU‐funded organizations implementing the NSA/LA programme. The NSA/LA projects were analysed by considering two major fields of engagement of non‐state actors in the development process: as service providers and as advocates (Banks & Hulme, 2012). Overall, the organizations awarded EU support were not only focused on fulfilling short‐term needs but also sought to introduce new ways of dealing with poverty and inequality, positioning themselves between the “Big‐D” and the “little‐d” approaches to development (Bebbington, Hickey, & Mitlin, 2008). Nonetheless, the EU‐funded projects were too limited and fragmented to be able to sustain long‐term structural change. Therefore, the EU should place new emphasis on creating synergies between new and old structures at the grassroots level and establishing mechanisms and bodies that could merge and co‐ordinate their efforts. In addition, the calls for proposals could highlight the need to share the lessons learnt by “obliging” the beneficiaries to act as multipliers and to pass on their positive experience to neighbouring communities. Finally, the EU could stimulate the funded organizations to experiment with innovative mechanisms of involvement in the policy‐making process, by making this aspect a mandatory requirement of the projects implemented with its support.     

Steering the Poverty‐Environment Nexus in Central Asia: A metagovernance analysis of the Poverty‐Environment Initiative (PEI)

The close and reciprocal ties between poverty and environmental degradation present significant potential for simultaneous improvement of the livelihood of the poorest along with increased opportunities and enhanced resilience of the environment and natural resources. By supporting governments and other stakeholders in designing and implementing development plans that tackle environmental and poverty concerns in a joint manner, the globally operating UNDP‐UNEP Poverty‐Environment Initiative (PEI) addresses a major governance challenge for sustainable development (SD) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in particular. Focusing on Central Asia, and specifically Tajikistan, a country outside the spotlight of studies concerned with SD governance mechanisms, and through the analysis of PEI programme documents and stakeholders’ interviews, this article probes into the governance and governance co‐ordination (metagovernance) settings for SD. The article closes by presenting a set of recommendations to improve governance co‐ordination, while achieving more inclusive decision‐making and ultimately increasing the impact of PEI on the society and the environment. Specifically, it argues for improved information policy and enhanced integration of endogenous knowledge. Furthermore, national and local development planning and private initiatives should be better linked, and the different levels of governance for poverty‐environment mainstreaming should be more coherent. The solutions discussed are of relevance for wider Central Asia and the global community engaged in moving the SDGs into the mainstream of governance and policy frameworks.     

100 key research questions for the post‐2015 development agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post‐2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non‐governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long‐standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development‐related research priorities of governmental and non‐governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations.     

Implementing Evidence‐Based Parenting Programmes in a Small Sample of English Urban Local Authorities: Eligibility,Fidelity and Intensity

This article focuses on the implementation of evidence‐based parenting programmes (EBPPs) in a small sample of urban local authorities in England. The first part discusses the development of government policy, guidance and implementation issues. The second part presents findings from an exploratory study, which focused on the implementation of EBPPs in terms of programme eligibility, fidelity and intensity in six urban local authorities. Implementation was not necessarily in line with policy or guidance. Issues associated with programme fidelity along with concerns about sustainability as a result of cuts in funding are discussed and implications for policy and future research considered.     

Micro politics of Social Safety Net Programmes: The case of the Food‐For‐Work Programme in Bangladesh

A number of studies have established that politics has a role in shaping and implementing Social Safety Net Programmes (SSNPs) and, conversely, SSNPs also influence national or local politics. This study qualitatively analyzes the micro level political discourses of the Food‐For‐Work programme, one of the top 10 SSNPs in Bangladesh, using the concepts of access, institutions and agency under livelihood framework. The analysis of the findings reveals that the programme is not effective in terms of the stated objectives of reducing poverty, but rather serves the interest of political elites. Beneficiary access to the projects depends on categorical membership, ability to participate and gender, which lead the programme to be reduced to subsidized infrastructure projects.     

The importance of networking in development co‐operation: A social network analysis‐based evaluation of an international development programme

This article aims to demonstrate that networking activities, if properly planned, applied and monitored, can help increase the long‐term impact of development co‐operation actions. We demonstrate the added value of networking within development actions, focusing on dynamics of trust and reciprocity and on the rationales beyond different collaboration patterns, demonstrating the impact of networking on program effectiveness, intercultural learning and sustainability. Using social network analysis coupled with participant observation, it was possible to trace the development of a large multi‐stakeholder development programme and to understand a number of dynamics not considered by the donor when evaluating the action, thereby reaching a better understanding of the challenges and success of the programme.     

How could conditional cash transfer programme conditionalities reinforce vulnerability? Non‐compliers and policy implementation gaps in Uruguay's Family Allowances

Influential research shows that conditionalities could incentivize recipients of conditional cash transfer programmes (CCTs) to send their children to school and to regular health check‐ups. However, a growing literature is elucidating the risks of conditional transfers, from both a philosophical and an empirical perspective. This article highlights the varied deficits that have accompanied the implementation process in some Latin American countries, as well as the consequences that these deficits might have on the beneficiaries. In particular, it suggests that, rather than reducing vulnerability by improving access to services, conditionalities could be reinforcing vulnerability among non‐compliers if non‐compliance leads to the immediate suspension of the cash transfer and if this sanction is poorly implemented. While this hypothesis has gained attention and is part of both an academic and a political debate, empirical research around it is scarce. This article is an attempt to start filling this gap by focusing on the implementation process of conditionalities in a CCT programme in Uruguay (Family Allowances) and how this is experienced by a group of recipients who failed to comply with the conditionalities and were sanctioned with the suspension of the benefit. In particular, it identifies the main reasons why these beneficiaries did not comply, how they experience the sanction and how they managed—when they do—to apply for the benefit to be restored. Based on a qualitative design of in‐depth interviews, it provides empirical evidence to unpack causal relationships linking conditionalities to increased vulnerability among non‐compliers. Our findings offer evidence on the role played by the conditionalities in reinforcing vulnerability and the possible causal mechanisms that could be operating between both phenomena. This picture of policy implementation constraints that could lead conditionalities to reinforce vulnerability among recipients could be relevant to policy‐makers having to deal with non‐compliance and managing sanctions in CCTs.     

Rescaling the Sanctuary City: Police and Non‐Status Migrants in Ontario,Canada

Canadian cities pledge to provide access to municipal services to non‐status migrants and withhold information identifying non‐status migrants from federal immigration authorities. Despite these promises, local police continue to cooperate with the Canada Border Services Agency, which raises questions about the capacity of cities to honour their promises. An empirical study involved interviews with high‐ranking police officers in eight local jurisdictions in Ontario about police perceptions regarding their role in the enforcement of federal immigration law and their obligations to honour sanctuary‐city policies. The results show that many police officers believe they possess legal authority to report non‐status migrants to federal authorities. We suggest that this belief rests on misconceptions about the relationship between criminal law and immigration law, claims of jurisdictional immunity from municipal government, and distortions of the principles of policing in Canada. Rescaling of sanctuary policies to the provincial level may offer solutions.     

Gender‐Related Opportunities and Turnover: The Case of Medical Sector Employees

This study examined the relationships between gender, objective and perceived work‐related opportunities, and turnover behavior. This was achieved using an interdisciplinary approach that combined the macro‐level perspective on opportunities in internal and external labor markets, with the micro‐level perspective of individual perceptions of opportunities. The results revealed that the opportunities–turnover linkage is gender‐specific rather than gender‐neutral. Women's turnover behavior was affected by their ‘perception’ of employment opportunities in the organizational and local labor markets. By contrast, men's turnover behavior was affected by ‘objective’, organizational and local labor market conditions. These findings indicate that the objective opportunities of the work market may be compatible with men’s, but not women’s, work needs and hence question existing assumptions of a ‘gender‐neutral’ effect of opportunities on turnover decisions.     

Transition Programming for Sustainable Livelihoods Beyond Institutional Care in Zimbabwe: Service Providers’ Perspectives

This article explores the perspectives and programme needs of transition service providers (institutions and the government) in preparing and supporting adolescent girls leaving institutional care in Harare, Zimbabwe. Key informant interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with institutional staff from Institution A (government‐owned) and Institution B (privately owned) and social services officers from the Department of Child Welfare and Probation Services. Service providers define successful transition programming as the provision of comprehensive services and support to facilitate the achievement of sustainable livelihoods beyond care and recommend the development of well‐resourced transition models for adolescent girls leaving institutional care.     

Non‐job work/unpaid caring: Gendered industrial relations in long‐term care

This article explores the operation of gender and industrial relations in long‐term care work or nursing home work, ‘from within’ the experience of the predominantly female workforce in seven unionized facilities in Canada. Drawing on qualitative case study data in non‐profit facilities, the article argues that the main industrial relations challenges facing long‐term care workers are that their workplace priorities do not fit within existing, gendered, industrial relations processes and institutions. This article starts from the experience of women and threads this experience through other layers of social organization such as: global and local policy directions including austerity, New Public Management, and social and healthcare funding; industrial relations mechanisms and policy; and workers’ formal [union] and informal efforts to represent their interests in the workplace. The strongest themes in the reported experience of the women include: manufacturing conditions for unpaid work; increasing management and state dependence on unpaid care work; fostering loose boundaries; and limiting respect and autonomy as aspects of care work. The article extends the feminist political economy by analysing the links between the policies noted above and frontline care work. Building on gendered organizational theory the article also introduces the concept of non‐job work and suggests a fourth industrial relations institution, namely the needs and gendered expectations of residents, families and workers themselves, operating within the liminal spaces in care work.     

Overcoming Market Constraints on Pro‐Poor Agricultural Growth in Sub‐Saharan Africa

In sub‐Saharan Africa, there is fairly broad agreement that increased investment in key public goods such as roads and communications infrastructure, agricultural research and water control will be required if revitalised agricultural development is to take place. However, it has proved more difficult to reach agreement on what needs to be done to improve the performance of agricultural markets. In this article we set out an agenda for investment and policy reform in this area, providing a brief theoretical examination of the co‐ordination problems involved before examining in turn demand and supply constraints affecting smallholder farmers, and policies for price stabilisation and the co‐ordination of support services. We also argue that increased attention needs to be paid to governance issues.     

Participatory shaping of community futures in e‐waste processing hubs: Complexity,conflict and stewarded convergence in a Palestinian context

This article describes an unconventional participatory development approach carried out in an informal e‐waste hub in South‐West Hebron, an area that has collected and processed the bulk of Israeli e‐waste for over a decade. Our approach contributes to the critique and recovery of community representation in participatory development and the search for ways to facilitate representative community engagement. Specifically, we describe our use of a novel Delphi‐like method that allowed us to facilitate a broadly endorsed development trajectory within a heterogeneous and conflicted community. We show how the results yielded by this approach diverged from those that were likely to emerge from more facile forms of participation in ways that are important for other similar e‐waste hubs internationally, which face a destructive status quo on the one hand, or the economically ruinous international policies that ban e‐waste trade from “developed” to “developing” countries on the other. Despite real tensions and cleavages within the affected communities, the process described facilitated a shift from deadlocked environmental versus livelihood positions towards building capacity and regulating existing informal e‐waste trades to preserve livelihoods dependent on these.     

The Effect of Residential Concentration on Voter Turnout among Ethnic Minorities

Utilizing a large and unique dataset composed of government records, we study the widely contested effect of co‐ethnic residential concentrations on voter turnout. Non‐Western immigrants are moderately affected by the concentration of co‐ethnic voters in their neighborhoods. As the local concentration of same‐ethnicity voters increases, so does the individual's propensity to turn out for the election. In general, the concentration of non‐Western immigrants in the neighborhood has only a very limited impact on an immigrant's propensity to vote. Finally, we investigate the possible mobilizing effect of local candidates and, in particular, local co‐ethnic candidates on voter turnout. We find that the presence of candidates in general and co‐ethnic candidates running for office in a neighborhood has a moderate positive mobilization effect. However, taking this factor into account, the effect of residential concentrations was not eliminated.     

The Experience of Academic Non‐Mothers in the Gendered University

In this article we report on data from an empirical study concerned to explore the experience of women academics managing non‐motherhood and work in the gendered university. Although there is a growing body of work on the gendered experience of higher education in general and the experience of mothers as academics in particular, as yet there is little on non‐mothers and work. Drawing on our data we suggest that non‐mothers as well as mothers are affected by the ideology of motherhood and this has consequences for non‐mothers as workers within the academy. In addition to being perceived by students and other staff as ‘natural’ carers because they are women, academic non‐mothers are expected to put in the time and energy that mothers can not. However, as our data demonstrate, non‐mothers often have caring responsibilities outside the institution too. Overall, we argue that non‐motherhood needs to be recognized for the complex identity that it is.     

Beneficiaries’ participation in development organizations through local partners: A case study in Southern Africa

In a case study of one European non‐governmental organization (NGO) (data obtained from 10 staff members in Europe and Southern Africa, and 19 representatives of local partner organizations) we investigate whether the involvement of the partners in local and ‘northern’ policy‐making affects their perception of the governance quality of their organizations and that of the European donor organization, as well as the perception of the NGO's staff members. The answer is positive as to the local organizations, but local partners (as representatives of the eventual beneficiaries) are hardly involved in decision‐making at donor level. Finally, the presence of specific participation mechanisms seems to be more affected by beneficiary country factors than by activity‐related influences.     

Challenges in Counter‐disaster Measures for People with Functional Needs in Times of Disaster Following the Great East Japan Earthquake

This article describes the three major challenges that were identified and their possible solutions are proposed in counter‐disaster measures for “people with functional needs in times of disaster (PFND)” following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. First, recent developments in preparedness measures for PFND in Japan have been uncritically relying on the assumption that hazard maps represent “correct” estimates of future hazardous events, which are based on the maximum probable event (MP_rE) framework. In reality, however, a maximum possible event (MP_oE) has occurred in the Tōhoku regions. This has tremendous implications for fundamentally re‐thinking the entire hazard estimation process from a MP_rE to MP_oE framework. Second, counter‐disaster measures for PFND have focused mainly on warning and neighborhood‐based evacuation assistance activities. Needs for shelters and temporary housing units that were specially designated for PFND arose following the earthquake. However, their provisions were neither systematic nor universal due to the lack of pre‐planning. More detailed guidelines for specially designated shelter and temporary housing operations need to be developed in order to address this issue. Third, people with disabilities (PWD) became invisible in shelters and communities or in the eyes of local government administrators. This was due to the fact that a majority of PWD did not ask for help in evacuation shelters because they felt general shelters were not “barrier free” and were unresponsive to their functional needs. Furthermore, many local government administrators felt hesitant to release their PFND registry to non‐governmental and self‐help organizations that were eager to check the whereabouts and current situations of PWD. This was due to the fear of breaking the Personal Information Protection Bylaw despite the fact that the bylaw provided exceptional conditions, where the onset of disaster was clearly one of these exceptional conditions. Further elaboration and education on the use of personal information of PFND during a disaster period is needed among public and local government administrators.     

Supporting public financial management in conflict‐affected situations: Adapting to change in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

This article traces the introduction of public financial management (PFM) processes and systems in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) since they came under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA). A number of factors combined make for an extremely challenging context for external actors to catalyse change: non‐existent formal central government functions at the time the PA was established, major restrictions in the movement of goods and people, ill‐designed donor budget support and a very asymmetric distribution of power that favours the status quo. An unelected government, donor‐dependency and a suffocating and chronic (yet low‐level) conflict are increasingly de‐incentivizing long‐term institutional reform. Such a complex problem requires multi‐faceted solutions. This article describes a dual delivery model adopted by the Palestinian Governance Facility (PGF) encompassing adaptive interventions that support longer‐term PFM improvements combined with the introduction of a selective workstream targeting service delivery. This focuses on the management of external medical referrals, which emerged as a political problem. A flexible development assistance delivery model can allow reform areas not anticipated at project design to be tackled as they emerge on the political agenda and open the space for political capital. A constant examination of contextual issues and re‐programming of project activities are offering lessons from which to learn and adapt. The ideal coalition involves flexible, aligned donors and relevant “institutional entrepreneurs” from within local organizations, with direct access to politicians. If high‐level government buy‐in falters, a coalition of technocrats may help construct and broker problems from which to gain political access.     

Exploring the joint dynamics of intercity internet and corporate networks: a stochastic actor‐based modelling approach

In this article, I show one possible solution to synthesis dynamics in multiple intercity networks. I adopt a stochastic actor‐based modelling approach to explore the co‐evolution of an intercity corporate network of 57 globalized advanced producer service firms across 93 cities, and another intercity internet network between these 93 cities, for the period 2004–2010. Stochastic actor‐based models (SABMs) help to connect interactions among cities and firms on the local scale with empirically observed networks on the global scale. My analysis accounts for the co‐evolution/interdependence among multiple world city networks (WCNs) and associated network changes in individual WCNs with exogenous city‐related covariates and endogenous local network structures.     

Provision of basic services in slums: A review of the evidence on top‐down and bottom‐up approaches

This article synthesizes the evidence on the effectiveness of top‐down and bottom‐up approaches in providing basic services in slums in developing countries. The findings indicate that: (1) government‐led top‐down approaches focus predominantly on connectivity, but approaches led by community‐based organizations (CBOs) and non‐government organizations (NGOs) improve many additional dimensions of access; (2) legal recognition of slums improves access to services in both approaches; and (3) NGO and CBO involvement results in the right balance between the technical, social and financial resources required for effective service delivery.