New Frontiers of Social Policy
13 items available
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This series is designed to address issues of importance to the World Bank's Social Development Strategy, which aims to empower people by transforming institutions to make them more inclusive, responsible, and accountable, and transforming subjects and beneficiaries into citizens with rights and responsibilities. Titles in this series undergo internal and external review under the management of the World Bank Social Development unit.
Items in this collection
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Publication
Opening the Black Box: The Contextual Drivers of Social Accountability
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-04-14)This publication fills an important knowledge gap by providing guidance on how to assess contextual drivers of social accountability effectiveness. It aims to strategically support citizen engagement at the country level and for a specific issue or problem. The report proposes a novel framing of social accountability as the interplay of constitutive elements: citizen action and state action, supported by three enabling levers: civic mobilization, interface and information. For each of these constitutive elements, the report identifies 'drivers' of contextual effectiveness which take into account a broad range of contextual factors (e.g., social, political and intervention-based, including information and communication technologies). Opening the Black Box offers detailed guidance on how to assess each driver. It also applies the framework at two levels. At the country level, the report looks at 'archetypes' of challenging country contexts, such as regimes with no formal space or full support for citizen-state engagement and fragile and conflict-affected situations. The report also illustrates the use of the framework to analyze specific social accountability interventions through four case studies: Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Yemen, and the Kyrgyz Republic. -
Publication
Societal Dynamics and Fragility : Engaging Societies in Responding to Fragile Situations
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-01)The objective of the study reported in this book was to understand how societal dynamics can be mobilized toward a convergence across groups in society and thus toward greater social cohesion overall. The team began with an extensive consultation phase to identify some key societal dynamics that seemed important in understanding fragility. The German Development Cooperation (GIZ) was a key partner in the study, providing support to the analytical phase in the form of a background paper, and technical advice throughout the preparation of the report. The team continued to consult with these experts throughout the fieldwork and the writing of the book. This book reports a study about societal relationships in fragile situations. Drawing on relevant literature and fieldwork in five countries, it suggests that fragility, violent conflict, and state failure are functions not only of state inability or unwillingness to perform core tasks, but also of dysfunctional relationships in society that do not permit a state to be formed or sustained. The present chapter has introduced the problem of fragility and suggested that seeing fragility as a problem of relationships in society can lead to more effective interventions in fragile situations. Chapter two turns to a key area of societal relations, the state society relationship in fragile situations. Chapter three begins a conversation about social cohesion in fragile situations. It suggests a critical element of social cohesion: a convergence across groups in society. Chapter four discusses how perceptions of injustice across groups can deepen divisions and hinder coexistence and collective action. Many times such perceptions can be even more influential than measurable differences across groups (such as income inequality) in fomenting resentment and division. Chapter five then takes up the issue of interactions between institutions in fragile situations. It is suggested that social cohesion contributes to more constructive interactions among institutions, increasing their capacity to realize development goals. Chapter six shifts the focus to certain relationships in society that are particularly important for social cohesion. Chapter seven describes an overall approach to policy and programming, including how to conduct research and develop knowledge from this perspective. Chapter eight offers specific orientations for adapting existing tools and instruments to address the societal bases of fragility. -
Publication
Social Dimensions of Climate Change : Equity and Vulnerability in a Warming World
(World Bank, 2010)Climate change is widely acknowledged as foremost among the formidable challenges facing the international community in the 21st century. It poses challenges to fundamental elements of our understanding of appropriate goals for social and economic policy, such as the connection of prosperity, growth, equity, and sustainable development. This volume seeks to establish an agenda for research and action built on an enhanced understanding of the relationship between climate change and the key social dimensions of vulnerability, social justice, and equity. The volume is organized as follows. This introductory chapter first sets the scene by framing climate change as an issue of social justice at multiple levels, and by highlighting equity and vulnerability as the central organizing themes of an agenda on the social dimensions of climate change. Chapter two leads off with a review of existing theories and frameworks for understanding vulnerability, drawing out implications for pro-poor climate policy. Understanding the multilayered causal structure of vulnerability then can assist in identifying entry points for pro-poor climate policy at multiple levels. Building on such analytical approaches, chapters three and four, respectively, consider the implications of climate change for armed conflict and for migration. Those chapters are followed by a discussion of two of the most important social cleavages that characterize distinct forms of vulnerability to climate change and climate action: gender (chapter five) and ethnicity or indigenous identity (chapter six), in the latter case, focusing on the role of indigenous knowledge in crafting climate response measures in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Chapter seven highlights the important mediating role of local institutions in achieving more equitable, pro-poor outcomes from efforts to support adaptation to climate change. Chapter eight examines the implications of climate change for agrarian societies living in dry-land areas of the developing world, and chapter nine does the same for those living in urban centers. Chapter ten considers the role of social policy instruments in supporting pro-poor adaptation to climate change; and it argues for a focus on 'no-regrets' options that integrate adaptation with existing development approaches, albeit with modifications to take better account of the ways in which climate variables interact with other drivers of vulnerability. Finally, chapter eleven turns to the implications of climate policy and action for forest areas and forest people. -
Publication
Assets, Livelihoods, and Social Policy
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008)This series "New Frontiers of Social Policy" aims to promote social development through systematic attention to the underlying social context and the social outcomes of development interventions and public policy. This book series has been conceived and produced for the broader development community, rather than for social policy specialists alone. This book is particularly, although not exclusively, relevant to those concerned with the one-third of the world's population that still depends on the informal economy for its livelihood. By making the case for an asset-based social policy, it moves well beyond social welfare palliatives for needy households toward public actions that give people the means and opportunities to accumulate assets and have greater control over their livelihoods. To be successful, an asset-based social policy needs to address several challenges, initial inequality, informality, imbalance in asset building opportunity, and inadequate state effectiveness, endemic in many developing countries. -
Publication
Institutional Pathways to Equity : Addressing Inequality Traps
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008)Inequalities and development: dysfunctions, traps, and transitions by Anthony J. Bebbington, Anis A. Dani, Arjan de Haan, and Michael Walton. Asset inequality and agricultural growth: how are patterns of asset inequality established and reproduced? By Rachel Sabates. Beneath the categories: power relations and inequalities in Uganda by Joy M. Moncrieffe. Inequalities within India's poorest regions: why do the same institutions work differently in different places? By Arjan de Haan. Indigenous political voice and the struggle for recognition in Ecuador and Bolivia by Jose Antonio Lucero. Cash transfers for older people reduce poverty and inequality by Armando Barrientos. Mineral wealth, conflict, and equitable development by Michael L. Ross. Spain: development, democracy, and equity by Carles Boix.