Julius Court

Bridging research and policy in international development: an analytical and practical framework

Better use of research-based evidence in development policy and practice can help save lives, reduce poverty, and improve the quality of life. But for this to happen more effectively researchers need to do three things. First, they need to develop a detailed understanding of (a) the policy-making process; what are the key influencing factors, and how do they relate to each other?; (b) the nature of the evidence they have, or hope to get - is it credible, practical, and operationally useful?; and (c) all the other stakeholders involved in the policy area - who else can help to get the message across? Second, they need to develop an overall strategy for their work; identify political supporters and opponents; keep an eye out for, and be able to react to, policy windows; ensure the evidence is credible and practically useful; and build coalitions with like-minded groups. Third, they need to be entrepreneurial; get to know, and work with the policy makers, build long-term programmes of credible research, communicate effectively, use participatory approaches, identify key networkers and salespeople, and use shadow networks. Based on over five years of theoretical and case-study research, ODIs Research and Policy in Development programme has developed a simple analytical framework and practical tools that can help researchers to do this. This article is hosted by our co-publisher Taylor & Francis.

Policy entrepreneurship for poverty reduction : bridging research and policy in international development

Bridging research and policy is a topic of growing practical and scholarly interest in both North and South. Contributions by four experienced practitioners and in four papers by researchers illustrate the value of existing frameworks and add four new lessons: the need for donors and research foundations to foster research capacity and to protect it from political interference; the need for researchers to use detailed case material in order to inform high-level policy debates within and across national boundaries, often by working in cross-country teams; the importance of presenting research results in such a way that they cannot be over-simplified; and the value of creating alliances between researchers and civil society advocacy groups. Copyright

Bridging research and policy in development : evidence and the change process

Foreword Simon Maxwell Preface About the authors Acronyms Part I. Background and Theoretical Framework 1. Research and Policy in International Development: Introduction Julius Court, Ingie Hovland and John Young 2. Context, Evidence, Links: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Research-Policy Processes Emma Crewe, Ingie Hovland and John Young Part II. Case Studies 3. The PRSP Initiative: Multilateral Policy Change and the Role of Research Karin Christiansen with Ingie Hovland 4. How the Sphere Project Came into Being: A Case Study of Policy-making in the Humanitarian Aid Sector and the Relative Influence of Research Margie Buchanan-Smith 5. Animal Health Care in Kenya: The Road to Community-based Animal Health Service Delivery John Young, Julius Kajume, and Jacob Wanyama 6. Sustainable Livelihoods: A Case Study of the Evolution of DFID Policy William Solesbury Part III. Synthesis and Conclusion 7. Cross-cutting Issues and Implications: Promoting More Informed International Development Policy Julius Court, Ingie Hovland and John Young Bibliography Index

Conference Report: Global Finance and Development

The rapid rise of private ̄ ows of capital from developed to developing countries is a key aspect of the new context for international development that emerged in the 1990s. Bringing great opportunities and great risks, governments, NGOs, and international organisations are struggling to assess the implications and to adjust accordingly. The huge increase in capital ̄ ows and the Asian ® nancial crisis have particularly thrust the IMF into the spotlight. Partly spurred by the importance of private capital (and partly by millennial Angst perhaps), there is a wealth of new thinking on development. After winning the 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics, Amartya Sen ’ s book Development as Freedom (Sen 1999) has attracted great interest. On a more practical note, World Bank President Jam es Wolfensohn released a discussion document in early 1999 on a Comprehensive Development Framework, which marks a new direction in Bank thinking. The Symposium on Global Finance and Development brought together these and other leading development thinkers and practitioners (among others Stanley Fisher, Joseph Stiglitz, and the Finance Ministers of Japan and Thailand). This paper reports on the main points of discussion and some of the implications in three areas. 3 The aim is to highlight the inter-linkages between global ® nance and development issues as well as the sources of tension, and even disconnectedness.