Daniel E. Esser

Social Media and Global Development Rituals: a content analysis of blogs and tweets on the 2010 mdg Summit

Abstract Social media content generated by web logs (‘blogs’) and Twitter messages (‘tweets’) constitute new types of data that can help us better understand the reproduction of global rituals in the context of international development policies and practice. Investigating the United Nations High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals (mdgs), a three-day event held at UN Headquarters in New York in 2010, as a case study, we examine a sample of 108 blog entries discussing the meeting, as well as 3007 related tweets. We find that topics receiving the densest coverage mirrored existing priorities as defined by the mdgs. Although most blog entries created content which, in contrast to tweets, went beyond spreading mere factual or referential information on the event and even included some critical commentary, sustained debates did not emerge. Our findings suggest that social media content accompanying the Summit reproduced global development rituals and thus failed to catalyse alternative priorities for and approaches to international development.

The Political Economy of Post-invasion Kabul, Afghanistan: Urban Restructuring beyond the North–South Divide:

The article applies the Althusserian concept of overdetermination to a contemporary case of urban restructuring in the global South. Since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the international aid industry has been using its capital city, Kabul, as a laboratory and launch pad for liberal policies and programmes to demonstrate that security, economic growth and democracy are mutually reinforcing and can therefore be achieved in conjunction. These interventions have resulted in fundamental structural changes in Kabul’s political economy that mimic processes of accumulation by dispossession in the urban global North. Formerly shaped by indigenous political activism and cautious democratic experimentation, Kabul today is a space of accelerated accumulation in the shadows of international peacebuilding.

Ageing as a global public health challenge: From complexity reduction to aid effectiveness

Since 2002, ageing populations worldwide have received increasing attention by global policy-makers. However, resources committed by inter-governmental donors and US-based private foundations in support of ageing-related policies and interventions in non-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries have remained minimal during this decade and, where mobilised, have rarely responded to actual country-level demographics and institutional capacities. We argue that this lag between issue recognition and effective resource mobilisation, while mirroring known dynamics in global agenda-setting, has also been caused by a depiction of ageing as a uniform trend across the Global South. We develop and apply a comprehensive analytical framework to assess the state of ageing dynamics at the country level and uncover substantial regional and sub-regional variation. In response, we suggest replacing complexity reduction in the interest of issue recognition with targeted support for a more nuanced research agenda and policy debate on country-specific ageing dynamics in order to inform and catalyse effective international assistance.

Security scales: spectacular and endemic violence in post-invasion Kabul, Afghanistan:

This article juxtaposes two distinct violent dynamics in a highly securitized urban space: one covered by global media in every detail, yet of marginal importance to the vast majority of city dwellers; the other endemic, but absent from outsiders’ urban imaginary of life and death in Kabul. Although insurgent forces have utilized Afghanistan’s capital city as a stage for acts of spectacular violence ever since the 2001 international invasion, for most city dwellers, especially women and children, domestic abuse has constituted the main threat to physical well-being. In contrast, increases in mortality and morbidity due to insurgent attacks carried out in the city between 2002 and 2011 have been infinitesimal. An interpretive framework that draws from critical geographical scholarship by highlighting global discourses and local norms helps expose that the international community’s discursive construction of Kabul as the locus for post-2001 neoliberal state-building lies at the heart of persistent, yet largely invisible, victimization within the city. The analysis demonstrates how such scalar politics of security have turned Kabul into an urban stage that provides global visibility of spectacular violence against foreigners while eclipsing endemic causes of bodily harm among Afghans.

Fragile Politics: Weak States in the Greater Middle East

1. Weak States in the Middle East Mehran Kamrava, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar 2. Yemen: Failing State or Failing Politics? Charles Schmitz, Towson University 3. Questioning Failure, Stability, and Risk in Yemen Sarah Phillips, University of Sydney 4. Interventionism and the Fear of Urban Agency in Afghanistan and Iraq Daniel Esser, American University 5. Libya After Qadhafi: Fragmentation, Hybridity, and Informality Frederic Wehrey, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 6. Strong Actor in a Weak State: The Geopolitics of Hizbullah Shoghig Mikaelian, Concordia University; and Bassel F. Salloukh, Lebanese American University 7. Margin and Center in Sudan: On the Historicity of State Weakness Rogaia Abusharaf, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar 8. Sudan: A Turbulent Political Marketplace Alex de Waal, Tufts University 9. Women, Work, and the Weak State: A Case Study of Pakistan and Sudan Zahra Babar, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar; and Dwaa Osman, CIRS, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar 10. Whither Palestine? Weak State, Failed State, or No State at All? Glenn E. Robinson, Naval Postgraduate School 11. Diasporas and State (Re)building in the MENA Region: Potential and Constraints Laurie Brand, University of Southern California 12. State Capacity and Aid Effectiveness in Weak States in the Greater Middle East Mark McGillivray, Deakin University; Simon Feeny, RMIT University; and Ashton De Silva, RMIT University

Comparable and Yet Context-Sensitive? Improving Evaluation in Violently Divided Societies Through Methodology

This article shows that the current stalemate in peacebuilding evaluation is due to disagreements between donor agencies, practitioners and scholar-practitioners about the necessity, appropriate level and purpose of such evaluations. It synthesises these three axes of disagreement in a theoretical framework, which is then applied to the case of evaluating reconciliation processes in violently divided societies. This application provides a clear methodological rationale for pursuing a metrics-driven, locally anchored approach to evaluating reconciliation instead of employing interpretive methods or globally standardised checklists. Realising the potential of this approach requires that donors, practitioners and researchers recast mutual expectations based on methodological rather than normative considerations.

Violence and Community Capabilities: Insights for Building Safe and Inclusive Cities in Central America

This paper offers insights into dynamics of urban violence in two Central American countries that have evolved very differently historically. Costa Rica boasts the lowest overall levels of poverty and inequality of any country on the Isthmus, and has benefited from decades of stable and relatively inclusive governance highlighted by ambitious social policies. El Salvador, by contrast, exhibits severe levels of poverty and inequality typical of its neighbors, as well as a long history of exclusionary rule and corresponding inattention to social welfare. Yet our research reveals significant parallels between the two countries. This three-year, multi-method comparative study, carried out by teams at FLACSO-Costa Rica and FLACSO-El Salvador in collaboration with American University and with support from the IDRC/DFID Safe and Inclusive Cities program, focused on violence in two impoverished urban communities in Costa Rica and three in El Salvador. In all five settings, we analyzed neighborhood dynamics as well as community assessments of anti-violence interventions.We identified numerous lessons, some of which are counterintuitive, as well as concrete measures for consideration by regional, national, and local policymakers and community actors.

Sustaining Development as We Know It: Limits to Downward Accountability in Post-2015 International Development Policy

A review of the literature on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) published during the past fifteen years demonstrates that accountabilities have constituted one of this global framework’s weaknesses. In response, we develop four dimensions of accountability in global development governance and apply them to the emerging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the MDGs’ successors. We focus on the extent to which the SDGs change accountabilities of bilateral donors and multilateral aid organizations to national recipient governments and to local beneficiaries. We find that compared to the MDGs, national governments had markedly more influence on the content of the SDGs. At the same time, despite UN-sponsored efforts to seek input from the public, post-2015 agenda-setting in global development governance continues being determined by policy elites. We conclude with a call for strengthening and institutionalizing downstream accountabilities as building blocks for global transparency and international aid effectiveness.