You might be noticing a few changes over here on the World Bank Meetings Center over the next few days — the elements around the main blog post area are slowly changing in preparation for the Annual Meetings.
The Annual Meetings are being held in Istanbul in early October, and over the next few weeks, we'll be bringing you updates about the run-up to the Meetings, as well as updates from Istanbul and the Meetings themselves.
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"Constellations of Change
Media structures, laws, and policies are scarcely ever modified to find a more beautiful form, or even to develop a more efficient way to achieve commonly agreed-upon goals. Changes in structure, including changes in law, occur because of pressure from within industry, the society, and the government, from within or without the state... Because (the global communications system's) contours are important for the fundamentals of national identity, for trade, and the world political order, the shaping of it is a matter not only of domestic preference but also of international debate and foreign policy."
Monroe E. Price (2002, pp. 12-13)
Media and Sovereignty: The Global Information Revolution and Its Challenge to State Power
Editor's Note: Peter Kusek is an Investment Policy Officer with the Investment Climate Advisory Services of the World Bank Group.
Microfinance has been getting its fair share of attention lately.
A presentation this afternoon sponsored by the Development Research Group of the World Bank promises to generate some heat (and hopefully some light as well). Justin Lin, Chief Economist of the World Bank, will be on a panel with Bill Easterly, professor at New York University and author of The White Man's Burden, to discuss Industrial Policy and the Role of the State in Promoting Growth.
My last post on this blog discussed public deliberation as a political ideal and what happens when that ideal is tested in an actual decision-making space. In a paper about municipal health councils in Brazil, Andrea Cornwall gives a blow-by-blow description of what happens when deliberative spaces stop being polite and start getting real.
Health councils were established in Brazil’s 1988 ‘Citizens’ Constitution’ and empowered citizens with the right to review and approve executive-level budgets, accounts and spending plans on health programs. Although overshadowed by the participatory budgeting process, Brazilian health councils can also provide some important lessons on how to deepen citizen engagement and decision-making. Through the example of these health councils, Cornwall argues that three elements in particular are often “under-theorized” by deliberative democratic theorists. First, understanding political culture is important. Second, how do party politics infiltrate and impact these spaces? And last, how is power challenged in these spaces? (She describes discussions in this deliberative space more as confrontational rather than reasonable.)
Every year, the World Development Report focuses on a different topic of global importance, and, as part of its preparatory activities, consults with various groups around the world. The 2010 World Development Report on Development and Climate Change is no exception. This report has required unique attention to varying points of view because climate change affects different countries in drastically different ways. Over the past year, as we approached the task of putting together a report on such a significant topic, we sent our team of authors all over the world to consult with representatives from over 40 countries. We listened to stories about how climate change is affecting them, and sought their views on our report’s evolving messages, which I described in an earlier blog post. We compiled this feedback as it was received, and have posted summaries of these consultations on our website.
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While people are largely well adapted to the ‘natural’ climate variability of their region (of which drought is one half of the equation, and abnormally wet periods the other), droughts can pose very serious risks when their severity exceeds expected levels, or when they strike in areas which are not used to coping with them. And this is likely to happen more frequently with climate change.
Climate change in the news (Sept 7- Sept 11, 2009)*
How do you get a small entrepreneur in northern Sicily to navigate through the maze of government bureaucracy, tap into the creative juices of an architect or a musician and submit a successful funding proposal for a government-funded development project?
