Lindsay
@lindsaymay
Lindsay
These are problems that can only be solved by policymakers (including program managers working for donors, IFIs, and philanthropies) reclaiming their roles as bridges between rigorous academic research and policy formulation and implementation. That means internalizing the fact that the craft of policymaking is both an art and a science. Socio-hist... See more
Academic research and policy research are two different things
More than half a million Germans migrated to the United States in the two decades before the rise of the Third Reich, largely for economic reasons. It would be absurd to claim they were morally superior to those who stayed and participated in the Nazi regime. They were simply spared the moral test that so many of their compatriots, whether through ... See more
Arianne Shahvisi • Moral Luck
stubborn ounces :: bonaro w. overstreet
(To One Who Doubts the Worth of
Doing Anything If You Can’t Do Everything)
You say the Little efforts that I make
will do no good: they never will prevail
to tip the hovering scale
where Justice hangs in balance.
I don’t think I ever thought they would.
But I am prejudiced beyond debate
in favor of my right to choo... See more
(To One Who Doubts the Worth of
Doing Anything If You Can’t Do Everything)
You say the Little efforts that I make
will do no good: they never will prevail
to tip the hovering scale
where Justice hangs in balance.
I don’t think I ever thought they would.
But I am prejudiced beyond debate
in favor of my right to choo... See more
stubborn ounces :: bonaro w. overstreet
Unfortunately, being located in the field of international development also means that philanthropies suffer from the same pathologies as “traditional” development outfits — such as ontological solipsism, cynical paternalism, small ambitions, cyclical faddism, obsessive bean counting as an end in itself, and being used by their host governments to
... See moreDiscretion is disallowed because of a belief that deviation from a plan is necessarily a distortion. Impartiality is guaranteed by perfect system design, i.e., only the wisdom and impartiality of the system designer can be trusted. But few, if any, contexts are simple, uniform and controllable, which are the preconditions for allowing strict preset... See more
Simon Levine • Ten Traps to Avoid if Aid Programming is Serious About Engaging with Context - Lessons from Afghanistan
Ideally, philanthropies ought to have disrupted the “traditional” international development players. The entrepreneurial backgrounds of most philanthropists should have meant greater focus on private sector growth and a much higher appetite for risk taking on project design. Yet the international development “field” completely tamed these impulses,
... See moreThe advocates of revolutionary politics, meanwhile, are reduced to melancholic apathy, their ‘pseudo activity’ taking the place of the political work of the revolution. Žižek is scathing in his critique of the ‘local stupidities’ of the ‘Left’ (scare quotes are his) that is more concerned with ideological purity than material change, making enemies... See more
World War Three or World (Counter-)Revolution? Slavoj Žižek’s dialectics on Ukraine and Gaza - World Peace Foundation
A common delusion is that that the region has good policies, but implementation is the problem. In reality, implementation failures reflect poor policies borne of very low domestic policymaking capacity. Too many governments in the region merely act as implementation arms of multilaterals, foreign donors, philanthropies, and other external actors. ... See more
Ken Opalo • Africa in 2024
In the midst of all of that, the Arab world is moving on. The new game in town is Saudi-Israel normalization. The two-state solution is off the table. Palestinian freedom is off the table. Washington is distracted with other issues; it’s not a priority. So I think all of those are the context in which they’re saying, “Look, right now, Palestinians ... See more