The collapse of the USSR transformed the world from a bipolar rivalry into a unipolar order dominated by the USA. Today, the rise of China and shifting global dynamics have sparked debates about unipolarity, bipolarity, and multipolarity. As the USA retreats as the principal superpower, China's dramatic ascent and the growing influence of nations like Russia, India, and the BRICS coalition signal the emergence of a complex multipolar world.This book examines the decline of the unip...

This edited book provides a contemporary, critical and thought-provoking analysis of the internal and external threats to Western multilateral development finance in the twenty-first century. It draws on the expertise of scholars with a range of backgrounds providing a critical exploration of the neoliberal multilateral development aid.The contributions focus on how Western institutions have historically dominated development aid, and juxtapose this hegemony with the recent challen...

This book investigates the geopoliticisation of foreign aid in recent years, against a background of global overarching crises such as climate change, conflict, Covid-19, economic crisis, energy shortages and migration.Foreign aid has historically been understood as assisting both with the development objectives of the recipients and with the trade and geopolitical interests of the donors. In the first decades of the 21st century, however, this balance has been shifted by a series ...

This book provides a timely, critical, and thought-provoking analysis of the implications of the disruption of COVID-19 to the foreign aid and development system, and the extent to which the system is retaining a level of relevance, legitimacy, or coherence.Drawing on the expertise of key scholars from around the world in the fields of international development, political science, socioeconomics, history, and international relations, the book explores the impact of the COVID-19 pan...

Assessing the Impact of Foreign Aid: Value for Money and Aid for Trade provides updated information on how to improve foreign aid programs, exploring the concept and practice of impact assessment within the sometimes-unproblematic approaches advocated in current literature of value for money and aid for trade. Contributors from multi-lateral agencies and NGOs discuss the changing patterns of Official Development Assistance and their effects on impact assessment, providing theoretical, poli...

This edited collection explores the lives, consequences and motivations of female researchers in Africa, giving unprecedented insights into how their gender—and sometimes their ethnicity and age—impacted on their research experiences, and how doing research in Africa affected them as women. Each contributor considers her place or position in the research process and provides a vivid portrait of that experience. Drawing on research findings from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, M...

Across the world the Western dominated international aid system is being challenged. The rise of right-wing populism, de-globalisation, the advance of illiberal democracy and the emergence of non-Western donors onto the international stage are cutting right to the heart of the entrenched neoliberal aid paradigm. Foreign Aid in the Age of Populism explores the impact of these challenges on development aid, arguing that there is a need to bring politics back into development aid; no...

Used across the public health field, this is the leading text in the area, focusing on the context, participants and processes of making health policy.

Making policy is what governments do, but there are some fascinating and hotly debated issues associated with how government decisions get made in the interests of the people. The concept and practice of evidence-based policy-making insists that properly developed public policy draws on the best available evidence. This book considers how governments in Canada have historically interacted with research and what directions these interactions may take in the future. The goal of government maki...

Developing countries commonly adopt reforms to improve their governments yet they usually fail to produce more functional and effective governments. Andrews argues that reforms often fail to make governments better because they are introduced as signals to gain short-term support. These signals introduce unrealistic best practices that do not fit developing country contexts and are not considered relevant by implementing agents. The result is a set of new forms that do not function. Howeve...

This book examines the conceptual foundations of participatory approaches to building local institutions and builds an analytical framework in which civic participation is viewed as a potential solution to specific civil society, market, and government failures. It then uses this framework to review the evidence on the efficacy of participatory pproaches to problems of development nd to identify the ways in which bserved policy choices for inducing participation are intimately shaped nd const...

This fifth Annual Report describes the activities of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) during the year to April 30, 2008. This period saw the completion of two evaluations, "Structural Conditionality in IMF-Supported Programs" smf "Governance of the IMF".