Erik Lundsgaarde

State Welfare Spending and Religiosity: A Cross-National Analysis

What accounts for cross-national variation in religiosity as measured by church attendance and non-religious rates? Examining answers from both secularization theory and the religious economy perspective, we assert that cross-national variation in religious participation is a function of government welfare spending and provide a theory that links macro-sociological outcomes with individual rationality. Churches historically have provided social welfare. As governments gradually assume many of these welfare functions, individuals with elastic preferences for spiritual goods will reduce their level of participation since the desired welfare goods can be obtained from secular sources. Cross-national data on welfare spending and religious participation show a strong negative relationship between these two variables after controlling for other aspects of modernization.

Business Motives in Global Multi‐Stakeholder Initiatives: Exploring Corporate Participation in Sustainable Energy for All

Public sector actors express rising interest in multi†stakeholder initiatives as a means of expanding private sector contributions to address sustainable development goals. Private sector interests in participating in such initiatives have however received limited attention. This article examines business motives for associating with global multi†stakeholder initiatives by analyzing corporate engagement with the Energy Efficiency Accelerator Platform of the Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) initiative. The analysis of the characteristics of participating firms highlights that the platform has mainly attracted companies based in Europe and those with a broad geographical reach. The article identifies clear economic rationales for companies to participate. The analysis emphasizes that indirect gains to firms through activities designed to shape the market for the uptake of energy efficient technologies and direct gains related to connecting with potential customers through networking activities are key motives for business participation. This case indicates that multi†stakeholder initiatives can provide a platform for transforming markets by facilitating interactions between private sector actors and national and subnational governments.

Bilateral Donor Bureaucracies and Development Cooperation Pluralism

This chapter highlights the role of diverse donor bureaucracies in a transforming development cooperation landscape. The participation of donor bureaucracies beyond foreign affairs and development agencies in international cooperation presents both challenges and opportunities. Positive aspects of diverse bureaucratic engagement include the mobilisation of additional financial resources for development, the contribution of thematic expertise, and the enlargement of policy networks relevant for international cooperation. At the same time, differences in bureaucratic interests and approaches can contribute to the coordination and policy coherence deficits known to limit aid and development effectiveness. The chapter elaborates on these prospects and concerns and provides an overview of bureaucratic engagement in international cooperation across donor contexts.

Mapping Development Trends in Africa

To analyse possible futures of African development, it is necessary to provide a contextual starting point. This chapter presents a descriptive overview of the current state of the African continent as a background to the exploration of its future. Just as it can be useful to discuss possible futures of African development, it can also be helpful to outline the continent’s current states. Numerous narratives about the contemporary state of Africa can be fashioned depending on the region or thematic area where emphasis is placed. The storyline is naturally different if one focuses on Cote d’Ivoire or Ghana, Botswana or Zimbabwe, extractive industries or mobile telephony, or government or the arts. Is Africa mired in instability and weak governance, struggling to confront basic economic and social development challenges, or is Africa a continent making progress in managing external and internal pressures and assuming an increasingly important role in the global political economy? As the spotlight shifts, so too can the answers to these questions.

The Global Development Agenda: 2010 and Beyond

The 2015 deadline set for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is fast approaching. In the coming years, governments around the world will not only evaluate development progress attributable to the MDGs, a centrepiece of the global development agenda, but will also reflect on how their policy priorities and organisational structures should be configured to address both the unmet challenges of the present day and the challenges of the future. This book is designed to provide policymakers and development researchers with a tool for thinking about how the context within which development policy will respond could change over the long term. Its focus is on exploring the changing African development landscape and the implications of developments in Africa for European development cooperation.

Africa Toward 2030: Scenarios for the Future

As the preceding chapters have indicated, even when the discussion of possible futures is limited thematically, the exploration of interaction effects with other key dimensions of change is inescapable. For example, pathways of demographic change are difficult to understand without reference to the policy context that influences how resources are allocated to specific priorities; the influence of emerging actors over African development prospects is hard to assess without knowing how other actors within and beyond Africa might respond to this engagement. This chapter seeks to draw together the possible trajectories presented in the individual treatments of drivers of change through the presentation of four generalised scenarios for Africa’s future. These scenarios thus serve a synthetic function in the present study, underlining the interaction of different forces in shaping the future and highlighting possible variations in outcomes suggested by the foregoing analysis. They are written in a similar retrospective form, from the standpoint of an observer describing developments over the previous two decades in the year 2030. As noted in Chapter 2, it is important to reiterate that these scenarios are not intended to represent deterministic pictures of what Africa’s future will look like. Rather, they are designed to offer a basis for reflection that researchers and policy makers may use to think about their own assumptions about how the continent’s future could evolve.