Campaign Art: Enough Food For Everyone IF-Thank You
People, Spaces, Deliberation bloggers present exceptional campaign art from all over the world. These examples are meant to inspire.
G8
Weekly Wire: the Global Forum
These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.
Integrilicious
A Working Definition of "Open Government"
"I’ve been spending a non-trivial amount of time lately watching and pondering the explosive uptake of the term "open government." This probably isn't too surprising given Global Integrity’s involvement in the nascent Open Government Partnership (OGP). As excited as I've been to witness the growth of OGP, the continued progress of the open data movement, and the emerging norms around citizen participation in government internationally, I've also been worrying that the longer we allow "open government" to mean any and everything to anyone, the risk increases that the term melts into a hollow nothingness of rhetoric.
My most immediate concern, which I've been chronicling of late over on this Tumblr, has been the conflation of "open data" with "open government," an issue well-explored by Harlan Yu and David Robinson in this paper. I've also been publicly concerned about the apparent emphasis put on open data - seemingly at the expense of other open government-related priorities - by the current UK government, which is slated to take over the co-chairmanship of OGP shortly. (An excellent unpacking of those concerns can be found in this letter from leading UK NGOs to the government.)" READ MORE
What Drives the Price of Remittances?: New Evidence Using the Remittance Prices Worldwide Database
Remittances to developing countries reached U.S. $338 billion in 2008, more than twice the amount of official aid and over half of foreign direct investment flows.1 Numerous studies have shown that remittances can have a positive and significant impact on many aspects of countries’ economic development. Hence, monitoring the market for remittance transactions has become critical for understanding the development process in many low-income countries.
Remittance transactions are known to be expensive. The Remittance Prices Worldwide database collected by the World Bank Payment Systems Group shows that, as of the first quarter of 2009, the cost of remittances averaged close to 10 percent of the amount sent.2 At the same time, the data also reveal a wide dispersion in the price of remittances across corridors, ranging from 2.5 percent to 26 percent of the amount sent (see Figure 1 below the jump).
Political Cartoons and the Millennium Development Goals
Most editorial cartoons make a forceful point in a playful manner. I think the artful combination of wit and cheeky criticism explains their popular appeal and potential effectiveness, but also hints at a possible limitation. Historical studies of political cartoons (see Backer, 1996 and Neiman Reports, 2004) describe the ways in which Martin Luther in the 16th century, Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, and people like Thomas Nast and Herb Block in the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively, satirized the political economies of their day through illustration.