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PODCAST

In Pursuit of Development

Step into conversations that travel across continents and challenge the way you think about progress. From democracy and inequality to climate resilience and healthcare, Dan Banik explores how societies navigate the complex terrain of democracy, poverty, inequality, and sustainability. Through dialogues with scholars, leaders, and innovators, In Pursuit of Development uncovers how ideas travel, why policies succeed or fail, and what it takes to build a more just and resilient world. Expect sharp

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All Episodes

00:50:01

Forging New Paths in Challenging Geopolitical...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/06/07

Steve Krasner has for decades been one of the most influential international relations scholars in the world. He is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations and a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute and the Hoover Institution.In 2002, he served as Director for Governance and Development at the National Security Council. And from 2005 to 2007, he was Director of the Policy Planning at the US Department of State. In his latest book, How to Make Love to a

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00:54:36

Unleashing the Power of Business to Change the World...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/05/31

Although traditional approaches to aid may often have been well-intentioned, they relied heavily on large-scale endeavors initiated by a handful of aid agencies and international organizations. The situation today is very different. There are disruptive forces in the form of large corporations, Silicon Valley startups, and billionaire philanthropists, who are spearheading a paradigm shift towards data-driven and outcome-focused global development. Entrepreneurial startups are also offering a range

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00:51:43

Using Evidence to Drive Policy and Achieve Lasting...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/05/24

There is considerable and growing attention and interest on understanding what works, where, how, and why in development. This also means there are numerous debates on how best we ought to generate evidence and measure development success and impact. One way of measuring development impact is through randomized control trials (RCTs), which have been very useful for establishing causal relationships and providing robust and reliable evidence for evaluating the effectiveness and safety of development

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00:53:43

Unpacking the complexities of corruption — Daniel...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/05/17

The conventional wisdom is that corruption is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that has a significant impact on societies and individuals around the world. And most people would agree that corruption is bad. It can undermine the rule of law, erode public trust, and distort economic development. But there are those who argue that to truly address corruption, we must rethink our understanding of what it is and how it operates. This may include adopting a dialectical approach that pays attention

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00:53:08

How industrialization reshapes modern ethnic...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/05/10

One of the most important factors explaining ethnic change in the modern world is industrialization, which has resulted in significant changes in the way we live and work, including changes in migration patterns and social structures. As people move from rural areas to urban centers, they may find themselves interacting with others from very different cultural backgrounds and must therefore adapt to new social norms and customs.Elliott Green is Professor of Development Studies in the Department of

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00:53:04

How China's digital entrepreneurs are redefining...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/05/03

Internet-based entrepreneurship has flourished in China for the past decade and a half. This includes start-ups in big cities, rural areas experiencing an e-commerce boom, and middle-class women reselling luxury goods. My guest argues that for many of these individuals involved in digital entrepreneurship, reinventing oneself as an entrepreneur has been an appealing way to adapt to a changing economy and society. Indeed, this everyday labor of entrepreneurial reinvention is remaking China amid

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00:53:15

Making every dollar count — Ryan Briggs

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/04/26

Effective altruism has been in the news of late. Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, which collapsed in 2022, was for many years a leading voice for and financial sponsor of the effective altruist movement. He and others have argued for ‘longtermism’: the idea that positively influencing the distant future is a key moral priority of our time. As effective altruism and longtermism have become increasingly influential, these ideas have also been subject to greater

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00:55:34

Patching development – Rajesh Veeraraghavan

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/04/19

Many well-designed development programs do not deliver social benefits effectively, especially to marginalized citizens. While political will and good policy design are vital for a program’s success, they often run into resistance from local power systems. How states react to the local exercise of power that often comes into play at the “last mile” of project implementation appears to be particularly important. Indeed, the extent to which development programs avoid being captured by state or local

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00:54:01

Is economic growth the magic wand for ending poverty?...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/04/12

Charles Kenny is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington DC. He was previously at the World Bank, where his assignments included coordinating work on governance and anticorruption in infrastructure and natural resources, and managing investment and technical assistance projects covering telecommunications and the Internet. Charles has written several books, two of which we discussed in this conversation: Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding, and Our World,

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00:46:09

A more fragmented world — Helen Clark

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/04/05

Our guest on this very special (100th) episode is someone I greatly admire and needs very little introduction. Helen Clark has engaged widely in policy development and advocacy across the international, economic, social and cultural spheres. She was Prime Minister of New Zealand for nine years and has also served as the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. Since 2019, she has chaired the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and in 2020, she was appointed

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00:47:53

The European Union and global development — Johanne...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/03/29

The European Union is collectively the biggest provider of international aid in the world, contributing over € 50 billion a year to the fight against poverty and the advancement of global development. However, while the EU’s capacities and impact in foreign and security policy have been extensively discussed among scholars and policymakers, its role in promoting global development has attracted less attention. Our guest has focused her research on the contestation of international norms and values,

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00:57:44

Banking on Beijing — Axel Dreher

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/03/22

China plays a crucial role in the development policies of many countries around the world. It offers grants and loans, and builds major infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges, power plants, parliament buildings, hotels, and football stadiums. A new book claims that that much of the conventional wisdom about Chinese development finance rests on untested assumptions, individual case studies, and incomplete data sources. The authors argue that Beijing’s use of debt rather than aid to bankroll

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00:54:29

Africa’s youth in the race for climate action — Hilda...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/03/18

Fridays For Future is a youth-led movement that began in August 2018. This movement was inspired by 15-year-old Greta Thunberg and other young activists, who sat in front of the Swedish parliament every school day for three weeks, to protest against the lack of action on the climate crisis. While Greta has become a household name, there are many other young activists around the world who are also making a vital contribution by pressuring their governments to undertake climate action. Our guest –

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00:49:49

Poverty and the new threat to prosperity — Indermit Gill

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/03/15

The onset of the pandemic in 2020 marked a turning point in the 30-year pursuit of successful global poverty reduction. According to recent World Bank estimates, the incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population likely fell by 4 percent in 2020. And as a result, the number of people living in extreme poverty likely increased by 11 percent in 2020—i.e. it increased from 648 million to 719 million. The pandemic also increased global inequality. In terms of lost income, the world’s poor

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00:54:53

Rethinking "evidence" — Eivind Engebretsen and Mona...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/03/11

In the past few decades, we have witnessed the rise and consolidation of “evidence-based medicine” among health professionals. This refers to a systematic approach to medicine in which doctors and other health care professionals use the best available scientific evidence from clinical research to help make decisions about the care of individual patients. But the COVID-19 pandemic has managed to transform what constitutes reliable medical evidence into a topic of public concern and debate. These

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01:02:27

Locally led development and the future of aid —...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/03/08

The global development domain currently faces huge challenges. Apart from trying to stimulate economic growth and ensuring a fair distribution of the benefits of that growth, national governments and their international partners must also tackle complex conflicts, provide humanitarian assistance, and not least address the harmful impacts of climate disruption. What then should the role of external actors be? How can good intentions be best mobilized into effective actions on the ground?Håvard

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00:58:12

The Wild World of WhatsApp — Jamie Hitchen

In Pursuit of Development ·

2023/03/01

The role of social media in spreading political misinformation has received considerable attention. But various forms of social media also facilitate and enable participatory democracy across boundaries. They help to hold leaders to account as well as provide channels for airing the needs and demands of marginalised communities and vulnerable groups. These demands can sometimes even be propelled to the centre of public debates. While there has been considerable focus on Twitter and Facebook, the

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00:08:46

Christmas special – The acronisation game

In Pursuit of Development ·

2022/12/26

While much of the success of the show is due to my fabulous guests, I am also lucky to have a wonderful team to assist me at the University of Oslo. I wish to in particular thank Kristoffer Ring, our IT guru, and Oda Fagerland, Bella Reid, and Eliska Sottova for research assistance and transcripts.My colleague Desmond McNeill, who was on the show earlier this year discussing the power of ideas and metaphors in international development policy, has invented a game which he calls “acronisation”. The

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00:51:50

Just copy us! Why can’t the rest of the world be more...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2022/12/21

Scandinavian countries are well-known for high standards of living and many people wonder about the origins of the welfare state model in Scandinavia and why it has worked so well. The features of the welfare state in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden typically include high state spending, strong universal public services, and relatively high equality in gender roles.But what explains the success of this model of development and how did these countries get to where they are today? These are some of the

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00:58:12

Contemporary state building and elite taxation in...

In Pursuit of Development ·

2022/12/14

While many Latin American states have experienced severe public-safety crises in the context of fiscal duress, elite engagement in state building has taken place in some countries but not in others. Why is that the case?In explaining the adoption of elite taxes for public safety, Gustavo Flores-Macías argues that the conventional crisis-centered explanations are insufficient. Whereas economic elites are generally reluctant to shoulder a greater tax burden, public-safety crises can soften this

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