Category: Analysis
-
Making Sense of the Metrics
Challenges of Measuring Progress towards Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals In the latest ‘Conversation on Health Policy‘ Prof T Sundararaman and Dr Siyam Amani explore the two principal indicators of progress or otherwise towards universal health coverage (UHC). Their conversation addresses some of the technical challenges involved in the measurement of progress…
-
The Pink Tide in Latin America: limitations and possibilities
The recent article by Steve Ellner on the ‘Pink Tide (‘Applying/Misapplying Gramsci’s Passive Revolution to Latin America’, Monthly Review, 76(5), 47-63. https://doi.org/10.14452/MR-076-05-2024-09_4) provides a useful overview and analysis of the debates among progressives regarding the limitations and possibilities of the Pink Tide phenomenon in Latin America. ‘Pink Tide’ refers to the election of progressive governments…
-
Systematic delinking: a necessary condition for achieving development
In “The Structural Power of the State-Finance Nexus: Systemic Delinking for the Right to Development” (2022) Bhumika Muchhala of Third World Network sets out the case for ‘delinking’ as advocated by Samir Amin. “The current era of financial hegemony is characterized by a dense financial actor concentration, an exacerbated reliance of many South countries on…
-
Financing Africa’s Climate Action
By Mukupa Nsenduluka & Rachel Etter-Phoya from Tax Justice Network 22 May 2024, here Africa has contributed the least to global warming, yet millions of African people are facing the most severe impacts of the climate crisis. To combat these challenges – stopping floodwaters, feeding starving people, and increasing the resilience of the public sector –…
-
The ‘Billions to Trillions’ charade
By Jayati Ghosh, 27 May 2024, published first in Social Europe and then in IDEAs. The international-development sector has become fixated on calculating financing gaps. Hardly a day goes by without new estimates of the funds low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) need to meet their climate targets and achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals…
-
What Comes After Neoliberalism?
A panel of commentators brought together by Project Syndicate (4 June 2024) including Mehrsa Baradaran, Anne O. Krueger, Mariana Mazzucato, Dani Rodrik, Joseph E. Stiglitz, and Michael R. Strain are asked to respond to “What comes after neoliberalism?” The steep tariff increases on Chinese goods that US President Joe Biden’s administration recently announced are just the latest in a long string…
-
Trade disputes over IP and health
Thanks to KEI for sharing the following references on trade related bullying. Time-line of Disputes over Compulsory Licensing and Parallel Importation in South Africa, 1994 to 1999. http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa/sa-timeline.txt Susannah Markandya, Timeline of Trade Disputes involving Thailand and access to medicines, July 23, 2001 (Timeline entries from 1979 to 2001). http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/c/thailand/thailand.html Susannah Markandya, Timeline of disputes…
-
The Collapse of Neoliberal Privatisation
By C P Chandreasekhar on IDEAs 19 April 2024 Thames Water, one of England’s many regional water monopolies, infamously privatised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and symbolising the dramatic turn in economic policy that neoliberalism implied, is finally collapsing. Unable to mobilise £500 million from shareholders who have milked the company over years, Kemble…
-
Africa’s Debt Crisis needs a Political Fix, contend experts
By Meera Srinivasan, on IDEAs, 20 April 2024 Ghana’s women vendors and hawkers are hard to miss. Attired in bright colours and bold prints, they walk swiftly on capital Accra’s streets, bearing baskets with various items on their heads, as infants wrapped in cloth carriers sit clasping their shoulders. As key contributors to the country’s…
-
Water Flowing Upwards: Net financial flows from developing countries
from C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh on Real-World Economics Review blog, 1 May 2024, originally published in the Business Line on April 29, 2024 Once again, low and middle income countries (LMICs) are at the brutal receiving end of the fickle trajectory of international capital flows. As Figure 1 indicates, net financial flows to such countries, which…
