Does Decentralization Promote Poverty Alleviation? Evidence from Kenya's Constituencies Development Fund

Decentralization is thought to facilitate poverty reduction by giving power over resource distribution to officials with local knowledge about where resources are most needed. However, decentralization also implies less oversight and greater opportunities for local officials to divert resources for political or personal ends. We investigate this tradeoff by exploring the degree to which Kenya’s premier decentralized development program—the Constituency Development Fund—targets the poor.

Insecurities, Uncertainty, and Human Rights: A Conversation with the Colombian Ombudsman

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We kindly invite you to the third edition of the Occasional CONPEACE Webinar Series. As part of this series, researchers of the University of Oxford’s programme CONPEACE– From Conflict Actors to Architects of Peace (conpeace.ccw.ox.ac.uk) and international speakers analyse security challenges in Latin America and beyond. They explore differing visions of security, how they can be reconciled, and how security architectures need to be adapted to adequately respond to changing security landscapes from a people-centred security perspective.

America in Retreat: The Decline of US Leadership from WW2 to Covid-19

In the heady days after 1945, the authority of the United States was unrivalled and, with the founding of the UN, a new era of international co-operation seemed to have begun. But seventy-five years later, its influence has already diminished. The world has now entered a post-American era, argues Michael Pembroke (in 'America in Retreat: The Decline of US Leadership from WW2 to Covid-19', Oneworld, 2021), defined by a flourishing Asia and the ascendancy of China, as much as by the decline of the United States.

How China Loses: The Pushback against Chinese Global Ambitions

In How China Loses: The Pushback against Chinese Global Ambitions (Oxford University Press, 2021), Luke Patey argues that China’s predatory economic agenda, headstrong diplomacy, and military expansion undermine its ambitions to dominate the global economy and world affairs. He shows that countries around the world —rich and poor, big and small—are pushing back and recognizing that engaging China produces new strategic vulnerabilities to their independence and competitiveness.

Do Campaign Contribution Limits Curb the Influence of Money in Politics?

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Over 40% of countries around the world have adopted limits on campaign contributions to curb the influence of money in politics. Yet, we have limited knowledge of whether and how these limits achieve this goal. Using a regression discontinuity design that exploits institutional rules on contribution limits in Colombian municipalities, we show that looser limits increase the number of public contracts assigned to donors to the elected candidate.

Legacies of Yugoslavia on the region’s post-communist transition

After the collapse of Yugoslavia, the new states opted to eradicate the past, as such an approach seemed more convenient for the new national projects. But did Yugoslavia disappear completely during transition? In answering this question, the panel reflects on the influence of Yugoslavia during and after its dissolution, identifying and analysing the legacies left of this unique country through the prism of continuities and ruptures between the past and the present.

The struggle for redress: Victim Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina

How do we explain the differences in which victim groups are recognized and redressed in a post-war state? Opening with a puzzle about the diverse patterns of recognition and redress across victim groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina after 1995, this chapter introduces the topic of the book, its key concepts and arguments. Bosnian survivors of sexual violence and torture, families of the missing and killed persons, paraplegics and sufferers from other injuries have been granted varied types of redress across Bosnia.
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