Remembering with and Without Awareness Through Poetry to Better Understand Aging and Disability

SUMMARY

Poetry has been described as a universal translator. I offer three poems that are evocative of my experience as a child with my grandfathers and their disabilities; and as an adult attempting to deal with the impending death of my father. My wish is that the first poem will reinforce the idea that connecting with one's own memories of aged and disabled family members might support our interactions with people who are aged and disabled in the here and now. I present the final two poems to encourage those working with family members of seriously ill aged people in a hospital setting to better understand the stress of decision-making and to consider devising short-term mutual aid groups to support them during a time for which no preparation exists.     

Policy transfer and role of policy entrepreneur in international aid: exploring international development cases of Korea and Vietnam

This paper looks at how an innovative policy comes to be transferred to another country and be successfully implemented. We explore three key dimensions (time, location, and people) in policy transfer studies using two cases of international aid (Saemaul Undong and e-Government projects). Utilizing a case study method, this paper upholds the predominant role of the policy entrepreneur over the environment (different time frame and different social, political, economic systems). The stakeholder analysis shows that policy entrepreneur’s role is critical in making policy transfer successful. In part, this argument is in line with previous “Advocacy Networks” studies, such as that of Keck and Sikkink (1998), highlighted the importance of policy entrepreneurs being able to navigate in the networks of international development. This paper aims to contribute to the literature by applying Dolowitz and Marsh’s policy transfer framework in the international aid context and calls for further empirical research employing the network analysis method.     

Making Development Assistance More Effective Through Using Political‐economy Analysis: What Has Been Done and What Have We Learned?

Politics often explains where development assistance has been effective and where it has not. Yet, until the 2000s there has been little focus by development agencies on political issues. This has recently begun to change with political‐economy analysis (PEA) now being more systematically used by development agencies to understand the real world. Nigeria and Bangladesh are two positive examples. Much remains to be done in these countries and more widely, to ensure stronger uptake of PEA. On the supply side this includes getting the ‘product’ right, and better communicating the message. On the demand side, there is a need to take more account of the incentives facing development agencies and to gather more systematic evidence on the operational impact of PEA to date.     

What future for the Global Aid for Trade Initiative? Towards an assessment of its achievements and limitations

As with any form of contemporary global governance, the impact of the global Aid for Trade Initiative (2006) has been mixed. However, to dismiss it as a failure would be premature. The co‐ordination system established was based on best‐practice techniques of governance in a diverse non‐hierarchical environment, such as the international development community. This form of co‐operation cannot overcome global economic and political asymmetries, but it can be effective in several respects. In particular, the Initiative led to increased funding for AfT and kick‐started a range of initiatives and technical advances; while the monitoring process has evolved significantly to give voice to new actors and issues. Although the future of the AfT Initiative is uncertain, its achievements merit careful consideration.     

Policy Experiments,Democratic Ownership and Development Assistance

In an effort to enhance the impact of development aid, recipients are called on to provide democratically sustained ‘ownership’ for development policies, and donors to align their interventions with these ownership‐dictated strategies of their partners. This article illustrates the weaknesses of such an approach. From a political‐economy perspective, severe tensions exist between concepts of democratic ownership, on the one hand, and the experimental and iterative organisation of a society's encompassing interests in democratic settings, on the other. These tensions are even more pronounced in emerging democracies, making democratic ownership as a prerequisite for aid effectiveness an illusion, and provoking the re‐emergence of traditional donor‐recipient problems.     

The SDR Aid Link: It's Now or Never

The international community, in the form of the United Nations and, more recently, the G20, has committed itself to the Millennium Development Goals. The global financial crisis of 2008/9 served to increase the economic problems faced by low‐income countries, making it much less likely that the goals will be attained. At the same time, the decision has been made to reactivate the SDR scheme by making a new allocation of SDRs in order to create additional international liquidity. This article explores the idea of linking SDR creation with the provision of development assistance. Although the idea of a link is not original, contemporary global economic and political circumstances may generate an environment particularly conducive to the acceptance of the proposal.     

Newcomers to Like‐Minded Aid and Donor Darlings: The Strange Case of Spain in Vietnam

This article analyses the motives behind the relations between Spain as a donor and Vietnam as a recipient of international aid. The main hypothesis is that this relationship does not respond to the traditional causes for international aid, as identified by the academic literature. On the basis of qualitative data collected in interviews with elites, the article suggests instead that a ‘learning factor’ and an ‘image factor’ might be at play in the Spanish presence, as well as herd behaviour on the part of the donor community.     

Relocating Civil Society in a Politics of Civic‐Driven Change

Politics is central to development discourse, yet remains peripheral. Over some twenty years, a civil‐society narrative has not fulfilled its potential to ‘bring politics back in’. Reasons can be found in conceptual confusion, in selectivity in donor thinking, in policies towards civil society and in the growth‐driven political economy of NGO‐ism. Remedies for the political lacunae are being sought through a focus on rights, citizenship and leadership that show valuable focused progress. This article examines a comprehensive complement to such efforts referred to as civic‐driven change (CDC). Originating in a grounded empirical approach, the constituent principles and elements of CDC offer a lens that can both sharpen and deepen insights and advance analysis of socio‐political processes.     

The will to sanction: How sensitive are caseworkers to recipients’ responsibility when imposing sanctions on non-compliance in a welfare-to-work programme?

The activation trend in social policy entails that caseworkers on the frontlines of the welfare state are expected to decide ‘reasonable’ activation requirements for clients and when and how non-compliance should be sanctioned. This study investigates how caseworkers form judgements about their clients’ personal responsibility when activation requirements are violated and how their judgements about responsibility matter for the sanctions they impose. We find that caseworkers are sensitive to personal responsibility, varying the motivation for not fulfilling the activation requirement from a case where the client has less control (circumstances) to one with more control (choice) more than doubles sanctions.     

Frontline implementation of welfare conditionality in Norway: A maternalistic practice

Welfare conditionality is both ambitious and ambiguous for the frontline workers who put policy into practice. Since January 2017, the Norwegian frontline service should require social assistance benefit recipients under the age of 30 to participate in some sort of work-related activation, so-called mandatory activation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with frontline workers at local offices in the Norwegian Public Welfare Service (NAV), we investigate how the requirement is implemented in a context of a professionalised social welfare service. Mandatory activation is arguably a paternalistic measure. Drawing on Bernardo Zacka's concept of moral dispositions and Laura Specker Sullivan's concepts of maternalism, our findings indicate that at the frontline, mandatory activation policies are implemented by maternalistic decision making, emphasising the interpersonal relation between trained caseworkers and clients. The caseworkers use their discretionary powers in the implementation of conditionality and sanctions by emphasising care and support as embedded in the strict rules.