(NOTE: Inclusion of any given article or web link does not constitute endorsement by UAA.)
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Articles
Below are three articles on development happenings, issues, etc. If you have comments on them, please share them with us. If there is enough interest, we can post a blog at this site where articles and other subjects can be discussed by the broader UAA community. If you have articles that you believe would be of general interest to the UAA membership, please submit them here.
- New! Fortress Embassies – Designing buildings for America’s diplomats is getting ever trickier. (The Economist, July 30, 2011)
- The War on Soft Power – Joseph Nye, Foreign Policy, April 12, 2011. Even the U.S military does not want to cut the State Department and foreign aid budgets.
- The Clash of the Counter-Bureaucracy – Andrew Natsios, July 2010. The ex-USAID Administrator explores the powerful and disruptive tensions that lie in the clash between the compliance side of aid programs (e.g. measurement of results, working with an IG) and the technical programmatic side.
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Web Links
These are links of general interest to folks involved in the development “arts.” Over time, with your contributions, we would like to grow this resource. If you have links you would like to submit, please send them here.
- Civic Literacy Exam – Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking this test was 49%; college educators scored 55%.
- The CIA World Factbook – This is a good first place to go for basic information on any country in the world.
- Transparency International Corruption Perception Index – Transparency International is dedicated to increasing government accountability and curbing both international and national corruption. The Index scores the perceptions of business people.
- World Competitiveness Scorecard – Countries compete by providing an environment with the most efficient structure, institutions and policies for enterprises to compete successfully.
- Failed States Index – This index uses 12 social, economic, political, and military indicators and ranks 60 states in order of their vulnerability to violent internal conflict.
If you have articles and/or links you would like to share with the rest of us, please send your suggestions to: usaid.alumni@gmail.com, Attn: Development Issues.
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Foreign Aid Reform
Find articles and links on the topic of foreign aid reform here.