Latest News Events
IDCR participates in UN conference
The IDCR will participate in the UNDP’s Oslo Governnance Forum 3-5 October 2011. Over 200 participants from around the world will come to Oslo to discuss questions ranging from participation, accountability, and democracy and how these relate to development.
IDCR Director Professor Todd Landman is an invited speaker and will participate in the panel session on human rights and a parallel session on open source data for governance assessments. The IDCR will also be able to discuss its new pilot software for collecting, analysing and visualising human rights events data developed in partnership with Cyberalpha.
Essex Architect Daniel Libeskind reflects on 9/11
Daniel Libeskind, celebrated architect for the new building, which will house the IDCR and other units in the University has remarked on his vision for the future of the World Trade Centre Site in New York:
To access his video, click HERE
IDCR Fellow Neo Louzides in the Economist
IDCR Fellow Neophytos Louzides has contributed to a debate in the Economist on justice for past wrongs and whether punishing wrongdoers is fundamental to achieving lasting peace. The debate can be found here:
http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/748
IDCR Fellow Marco Larizza and the World Bank
IDCR Fellow and World Bank Young Professional Dr Marco Larizza and his co-author Audrey Sacks from the University of Washington presented a new paper on decentralisation in post-conflict Sierra Leone at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Seattle on 4 September.
The paper title is
Abstract:
Over the last thirty years, decentralization has been a crucial component of public sector reforms in many developing countries, designed to transfer greater power to subnational levels of government and to provide a more effective oversight role to the people. Despite these arguments, little attention has been paid to empirically test under what conditions decentralization reforms succeed in their stated objectives of enhancing popular trust for local authorities and strengthening government legitimacy. The paper addresses this gap by looking at the consequences of political decentralization in post-conflict Sierra Leone and examining the impact of decentralized service delivery on legitimating beliefs towards local governments and the consequences of these beliefs for quasi-voluntary compliance. We use a unique longitudinal survey to estimate multi-level models which exploit variation over time and within and across sub-national units in Sierra Leone. Results suggest that the improvements in service delivery under conditions of decentralized governments are associated with greater trust in local government authorities Moreover, this impact is significantly higher for the most remote communities. We also find that citizen’s trust in local government authorities is associated with greater participation in road cleaning, our indicator of quasi-voluntary compliance. The findings are robust to control for alternate explanations and speak to the remarkable success of decentralization reforms in enhancing government legitimacy before ordinary citizens. The paper concludes by considering the policy implications of the findings for the design of international development programs in support of decentralization reforms in Sierra Leone, while also raising a number of interesting questions about the sources and consequences of trust in post-conflict and ethnically diverse states.
For a PDF file of the Presentation, please click the title:
IDCR participates at the American Political Science Association meeting
The IDCR participated in the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Seattle 1-4 September. Over 6,000 political scientists spent three days presenting papers on the general theme of The Politics of Rights.
IDCR Director Professor Todd Landman participated in three panels on human rights and gave out this year’s Gabriel Almond Award for the best dissertation in comparative politics.
This year winner was Professor Brian Min from the University of Michigan for his dissertation Democracy and Light, which compares levels of democracy and satellite data on the provision of electricity.
The use of these new kinds of data is truly innovative and provides a significant way forward in thinking about the provision of public goods, particularly in developing countries.
IDCR Fellow Dr Marco Larizza from the World Bank presented a paper along with Audrey Sacks from the University of Washington on decentralization and trust in government in the case of post-conflict Sierra Leone.
