In Pursuit of Development

Host:

Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo

Subscribe:

Crises of democracy — Adam Przeworski Nov 23, 2022

Show notes

Democracy is valued by many people because it enables us to achieve freedom and political equality in addition to numerous economic and social goals. But democracy also allows us to decide from time to time by whom we wish to be governed. Through elections, we can place in office those who we expect to like and also remove from office those we do not like.

Adam Przeworski argues that the essence of democracy is that it processes in relative liberty and peace whatever conflicts that arise in society. And elections are the main mechanism by which conflicts are managed. This is because elections generate temporary winners and losers designated by specific rules. Elections peacefully process conflicts when the losers do not find their defeat too painful and if they expect to have a reasonable chance of winning in the future. This also means that the winners do not inflict too much pain on the losers and do not foreclose the possibility of being removed from office.

Adam Przeworski is Emeritus Professor of Politics at New York University and one of the world’s foremost scholars on democracy. He has studied political regimes, democracy, autocracy, and their intermediate forms, the conditions under which regimes survive and change, as well as their consequences for economic development and income equality. His latest book is Crises of Democracy, where he discusses the political situation in established democracies, places this in the context of past misadventures of democratic regimes, and speculates on the future of democracy. Twitter: @AdamPrzeworski

Key highlights:

Introduction - 0:44

Definitions and understandings of democracy – 2:42

The distinction between democracy and freedom – 11:15

Democracy and minority rights – 17:54

Income and democracy – 30:08

Processing conflicts – 37:27

The future of democracy in Poland – 45:36

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod

Host:

Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo

Subscribe:

Silenced voices in global health — Address Malata Nov 16, 2022

Show notes

Global health organizations are mainly located in the global North and experts from low- and middle-income countries are underrepresented in global health leadership positions. Thus, it is unsurprising that there has been considerable criticism and heated debate on who should represent the underrepresented. According to our guest this week, it is crucial to ask: Who Speaks for Whom and About What?

Professor Address Malata is the Vice Chancellor of the Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST). She trained to be a nurse and is former President of Africa Honor Society of Nursing and former Vice President of International Confederation of Midwives. She has previously served as principal of the University of Malawi’s Kamuzu College of Nursing and is the recipient of numerous honors both at home and abroad.

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod

Host:

Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo

Subscribe:

The development bargain — Stefan Dercon Nov 09, 2022

Show notes

Development is a gamble because success is not guaranteed when benefits materialize in the long-term and a host of factors may undermine elite positions. Some countries are able to settle on elite bargains that favour growth and development, and others are unable to reach such settlements.

While elite bargains in China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Ghana ended up being development bargains, the opposite was the case in Nigeria, DRC, Malawi and South Sudan.

Stefan Dercon is Professor at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Economics Department at theUniversity of Oxford, where he also directs the Centre for the Study of African Economies.

His latest book – Gambling on Development: Why some countries win and others lose– draws on his academic research and his policy experience across three decades. Twitter: @gamblingondev

Key highlights:

Introduction - 0:55

Bridging the gap between research and policy – 3:09

Why a general recipe for development is not very helpful – 11:22

Gambling for development: Key arguments – 28:38

The future of foreign aid – 45:13

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod

Instagram: @GlobalDevPod

E-mail: InPursuitOfDevelopment@gmail.com

Host:

Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo

Subscribe:

Transforming our global food system — Gunhild Stordalen Nov 02, 2022

Show notes

Over 2 billion people in our world lack access to adequate food, and over 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. Between 2014 and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people going hungry and suffering from food insecurity had been gradually rising. The pandemic only made things worse. And the Ukraine war has further disrupted global supply chains. In 2021, 702-828 million people faced hunger. The gender gap in food insecurity has widened under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic and women are more food insecure than men in every region of the world.

Food is linked to almost all of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And it is difficult if not virtually impossible to meet these global goals and the Paris Climate Agreement, without a radical transformation of the global food system.

Gunhild A. Stordalen is the founder and executive chair of EAT: the science-based global platform for food system transformation. She is a medical doctor and the recipient of the UN Foundation’s “Global Leadership Award”. Instagram: @gunhild_stordalen Twitter: @G_stordalen

The EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo

Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod

Instagram: @inpursuitofdevelopment

Host:

Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo

Subscribe:

Why we fight — Chris Blattman Oct 26, 2022

Show notes

While there are millions of hostile rivalries around the world, only a fraction of these erupt into violence. It is easy to overlook the underlying strategic forces of war and to see war mainly as a series of errors and accidents. It is also easy to forget that war shouldn’t happen—and most of the time it doesn’t.

Chris Blattman is a Professor at the University of Chicago in the Harris School of Public Policy. He is an economist and political scientist who studies violence, crime, and underdevelopment. His most recent book is Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace, which shows that violence is actually not the norm; and that there are only five reasons why conflict wins over compromise. Twitter: @cblatts

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod

Host:

Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo

Subscribe:

Africa's right to development — Mo Ibrahim Oct 19, 2022

Show notes

Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-British entrepreneur, founded one of the largest mobile phone companies that operated on the African continent. In 2006, he established the Mo Ibrahim Foundation with the goal of fostering improved governance. The foundation publishes The Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which assesses governance performance in 54 African countries. It also awards the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership (worth $5 million) to African leaders who have successfully delivered security, health, education, and economic development to their constituents and have democratically transferred power to their successors.

Resources:

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod

Host:

Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo

Subscribe:

The pursuit of liberty and prosperity along a narrow corridor — Daron Acemoglu Mar 30, 2022

Show notes

In the bestselling book – Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012), Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson ask why some nations are rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine. They claim that it is neither culture, weather, nor geography. Rather, they argue that economic success depends on man-made political and economic institutions. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty (2019), Daron and Jim show that liberal-democratic states exist in between the alternatives of lawlessness and authoritarianism. And while the state is needed to protect people from domination at the hands of others in society, the state can also become an instrument of violence and repression. Society’s default condition is anarchy (or the "Absent Leviathan"). The alternatives to chaos are despotism (the "Despotic Leviathan"), the powerless state (the "Paper Leviathan"), and the "Shackled Leviathan" (or state which equals the corridor between the Absent, Paper, and Despotic Leviathans). Thus, liberty originates from a delicate balance of power between state and society.

Daron Acemoglu is Institute Professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod

Host:

Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo

Subscribe:

Can fixing dinner fix the planet? — Jessica Fanzo Mar 23, 2022

Show notes

A complex web of factors affects our ability not only to meet nutritional needs, but also our efforts to sustain biodiversity and protect the environment. As the world's agricultural, environmental, and nutritional needs intersect—and often collide—how can nations, international organizations and consumers work together to reverse the damage by changing how we make, distribute, and buy food? And do we have the right to eat wrongly?

Jessica Fanzo is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food & Agricultural Policy and Ethics at Johns Hopkins University. She has previously worked as an advisor for various organizations and governments including the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Scaling Up Nutrition movement (SUN), the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN), and the World Health Organization (WHO). Her latest book is Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet?

Inextricably bound together by food (OECD forum)
It's Her Time: Jess Fanzo (Worldwildlife.org)
The Future of Food (video interview, CGTN)
Twitter: @jessfanzo

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod

Host:

Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo

Subscribe:

The Life You Can Save — Peter Singer Mar 16, 2022

Show notes

Peter Singer — one of the world’s most influential philosophers — is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Peter has written several influential books, including Animal Liberation, The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology, The Most Good You Can Do, Why Vegan? Eating Ethically and The Life You Can Save: How To Do Your Part To End World Poverty. He is one of the intellectual founders of the modern animal rights and effective altruism movements and has made important contributions to the development of bioethics. Twitter: @PeterSinger

Host:

Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik @GlobalDevPod

Host:

Centre for Global Sustainability, University of Oslo

Subscribe: