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'Reform' Coalitions: A New Concept Paper

'Reform? or coalitions have been noted by many authors in a very diverse range of literatures. But what do we know about them? And should we not understand better their role in the politics of development? What are the circumstances of their provenance, and the political conditions and characteristics of successful ones? Can it be demonstrated that such coalitions have contributed directly to growth and poverty reduction? And, if so, can or should donors work politically to facilitate, encourage and promote their emergence and functioning? In this paper Caryn Peiffer identifies some of the common features of these coalitions and suggests some of the important questions that will be explored by further DLP research.

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Different Take on Africa - a joint statement

The Danish Institute of International Studies (DIIS), recently brought together five major research groups, including the Developmental Leadership Program (DLP), to discuss and share their findings on the politics of development with special reference to Africa. While each of the research groups approach this key developmental question from different angles, they all explore the diverse ways in which political and policy choices, elites, leaders, informal institutions, incentive structures, coalitions and democratization processes have shaped development trajectories in different contexts. Their findings overlapped on enough common ground to enable the groups to agree a Joint Statement which can now be downloaded from the DLP website.

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Riker in the Tropics: Revisiting the Theory of Political Coalitions (1962)

As part of DLP's coalitions series, this paper revisits one of the earliest attempts to develop a theory of political coalitions, or perhaps a political theory of coalitions - William Riker's classic account of The Theory of Political Coalitions, first published in the early 1960s. While Riker's account focused essentially on legislative and electoral coalitions in stable institutional environments, many of the insights and questions in the book - such as, size, duration, stability, and coherence of goals - remain relevant for a wide range of reform and developmental coalitions in the politics of developing countries. The paper reviews Riker's theory, assesses its limitations, and suggests a series of important issues that require attention.

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Islands of Integrity: Identifying positive outliers

Under what conditions does a reduction in practices of corruption occur? Can it be attributed to improved institutional arrangements and enforcement procedures? Does it turn as much, or more, on the role of key players and coalitions? Or is it both? And what can the international community do to support these processes? In collaboration with Transparency International (TI), DLP has commenced a program of work to try to answer these questions. This new paper by Caryn Peiffer, the first in a series of products from this joint project, explains how a long list of cases has been identified using statistical analysis of the data contained in TI's very rich data source: The Global Corruption Barometer.

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