The Commonwealth

The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 56 independent and equal countries. It is home to 2.5 billion people, and includes both advanced economies and developing countries. 33 of our members are small states, including many island nations. Our member governments have agreed to shared goals like development, democracy and peace. Our values and principles are expressed in the Commonwealth Charter.

The Commonwealth Secretariat is the intergovernmental organisation that supports member countries to achieve the Commonwealth’s aims of development, democracy and peace. It publishes authoritative, evidence-based research and knowledge products for policymakers, academics, professionals and wider publics across the world. Our areas of focus and expertise include small and developing states; environment and climate change; democracy, law and government; and social issues concerning young people, gender, health and education.

A Risky Business

Center for Global Development Global Health Forecasting Working Group

Access to medicines is an issue of life or death for millions of people in poor countries. While great strides have been made in the last decade to improve health in poor countries the global supply chain that connects the dots does not work well. This report of the Global Health Forecasting Working Group, which was convened in early 2006 by senior fellow and director of programmes Ruth Levine, provides an elegant analysis of the problem and a sensible agenda for action.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781933286181
Publication Date: Sep 2014
Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5-7 Working Days

George Bush's Foreign Aid

Carol Lancaster

Over the past seven years, the Bush administration has launched a revolution in U.S. foreign aid. At no time since the administration of President Kennedy have there been more changes in the volume of aid, in aid's purposes and policies, in its organization, and in its overall status in U.S. foreign relations. George Bush's Foreign Aid: Transformation or Chaos? analyzes in detail the array of recent reforms of U.S. economic assistance and the difficult issues these reforms raise, while placing the changes and the manner of their implementation in a historical and political context. Lancaster draws out the challenges and opportunities this transformation of U.S. aid offer for the next administration to engage the emerging world of the 21st century.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781933286273
Publication Date: Apr 2008
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Growing Pains in Latin America

Liliana Rojas-Suarez

This book tackles the complex issue of how to accelerate economic growth and ensure sustainability in Latin America. It first lays out the framework designed by experts in the economics and politics of growth in the region. Although simple and intuitive, the framework addresses the many ingredients that shape economic growth there, including macroeconomics, the quality of political institutions, productivity, income inequality, democracy, and resistance to reform.A second group of experts then apply the framework to five countries: Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Peru. They provide specific policy recommendations on how to proceed with the reform process while taking into account the local conditions (economic, social, and political) that characterize the individual countries.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781933286310
Publication Date: Jun 2009
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Cash on Delivery

Nancy Birdsall

Cash on Delivery (COD) Aid proposes a new approach to foreign assistance—one that links aid payments more directly to desired outcomes to promote accountability, responsibility, learning, and strengthening of local institutions.Using an example from education, this book outlines how COD Aid could work in practice. It offers guidance on the identification of measurable outcomes and mechanisms for verification and the management of a variety of risks. The authors provide practical advice, documents, term sheets, and other supporting material that donors and potential recipient governments can use as a basis for designing and implementing COD Aid in particular settings.It also shows how COD Aid could be applied to other sectors and includes guidance for assessing whether COD Aid is achieving its goals.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781933286365
Publication Date: Mar 2010
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Achieving an AIDS Transition

Mead Over

Five million people in poor countries are receiving AIDS treatment, but international AIDS policy is still in crisis. Donors are giving less than they had been, even though infections continue unabated, and the number of people dependent on treatment rises each year.This book proposes a feasible medium-term objective for AIDS policy: achieving an "AIDS transition," that is, keeping AIDS deaths down by sustaining treatment while pushing new infections even lower, so that the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS begins to decline. How? Through a new, incentive-driven strategy to improve HIV prevention and a sustained effort to get the most from AIDS treatment.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781933286389
Publication Date: Aug 2011
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The Governor's Solution

Todd Moss

Reliance on natural resource revenues, particularly oil, is often associated with bad governance, corruption, and poverty. Worried about the effect of oil on Alaska, Governor Jay Hammond had a simple yet revolutionary idea: let citizens have a direct stake. The Governor's Solution features his firsthand account that describes, with brutal honesty and piercing humor, the birth of the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, which has been paid to each resident every year since 1982.Thirty years later, Hammond's vision is still influencing oil policies throughout the world. This reader, part of the Center for Global Development's Oil-to-Cash initiative, includes recent scholarly work examining Alaska's experience and how other oil-rich societies, particularly Iraq, might apply some of the lessons. It is as a powerful reminder that the combination of new ideas and determined individuals can make a tremendous difference—even in issues as seemingly complex and intractable as fighting the oil curse.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781933286709
Publication Date: Nov 2012
Availability: In Stock - Despatched Within 5-7 Working Days

The Rebirth of Education

Lant Pritchett

Despite great progress around the world in getting more kids into schools, too many leave without even the most basic skills. In India's rural Andhra Pradesh, for instance, only about one in twenty children in fifth grade can perform basic arithmetic.The problem is that schooling is not the same as learning. In The Rebirth of Education, Lant Pritchett uses two metaphors from nature to explain why. The first draws on Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom's book about the difference between centralized and decentralized organizations, The Starfish and the Spider. Schools systems tend be centralized and suffer from the limitations inherent in top-down designs. The second metaphor is the concept of isomorphic mimicry. Pritchett argues that many developing countries superficially imitate systems that were successful in other nations— much as a nonpoisonous snake mimics the look of a poisonous one.Pritchett argues that the solution is to allow functional systems to evolve locally out of an environment pressured for success. Such an ecosystem needs to be open to variety and experimentation, locally operated, and flexibly financed. The only main cost is ceding control; the reward would be the rebirth of education suited for today's world.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781933286778
Publication Date: Oct 2013
Availability: Temporarily out of stock: Usually despatched in 14-18 days