Lindsay

former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, used to call this kind of negotiation “dead cat diplomacy,” where the goal was less to reach an accord and more to ensure that if the negotiations failed, the responsibility—the dead cat—would be left at the other’s doorstep.

Never bring a model to a political economy fight.

Atrocities tend to rhyme.

I had an exchange this week about the importance (indeed, primacy) of economic growth in development. I’ve had many such exchanges over the last few years, and at some point they all turn to the same point: even if this is true, what can we do about it? I used to say that growth is hard, not complicated: more like playing the trumpet than building ... See more

One of the central findings from the Lobbying and Policy Change project was that the s tatus quo dominated – it was much harder for advocates inside and outside of government to successfully create a policy change than it was to pr event such change . The hurdle of the status quo is especially high in the United States because of the many vet o poi... See more

French Foreign Minister Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand (1754-1838) was an accomplished political survivor who managed to serve the French revolutionary government, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the postwar Bourbon restoration. He was a subtle and accomplished statesman, remembered today primarily for his sage advice to his fellow diplomats: “Above all, no... See more

In 1980, the richest one-hundredth of 1 percent of Americans provided 10 percent of all donations to federal elections. By 2012, they provided 40 percent.

The topic on the table was debt , specifically the hundreds of billions in debt currently owed by Africa. Sixty percent of that debt is just interest, says Hannah Ryder from consultancy Development Reimagined.

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