David Booth

Director of APPP/Research Fellow, Politics and Governance

David Booth leads the Africa Power and Politics Programme (APPP), a five-year consortium research programme dedicated to "discovering institutions that work for poor people”. APPP brings together research organisations and think-tanks in France, Ghana, Niger, Uganda, the UK and the USA. It is undertaking research in nineteen African countries and is supported by DFID and Irish Aid.

David Booth’s other work currently focuses on the political economy of governance-improvement and aid in sub-Saharan Africa and, to a lesser extent, Latin America. Between 2000 and 2009 David was the editor of Development Policy Review.

Formerly a university academic at Hull and Swansea, David has been a Research Fellow at ODI since 1998.

Outputs

Downloads

Outputs

Can aid address key governance constraints in public service delivery?

Publication - Discussion papers - 7 September 2012

ODI Working Papers 356

Heidi Tavakoli with David Booth, Rebecca Simson and Helen Tilley

This Working Paper frames a branch of research by the Budget Strengthening Initiative (BSI) and the Center for Aid and Public Expenditure (CAPE) looking into how aid can best contribute to improving the delivery of public services in developing countries.

Download

Hierarchies, memberships, inclusion: institutions in an evolutionary perspective

Event - 11 June 2012 12:15 - 13:00 (GMT+00)

Dr Alice Sindzingre,Research Fellow at the French public agency for research (CNRS, Paris), presented her research on institutions, hierarchies and membership and the links with development in Africa and Asia.

The event sought to explore the following:

What the concept of‘institution’ exactly refers to, analysing the key features of institutions, including group memberships, hierarchies, and the capacity to regulate exchange.
What the consequences of different types of institutions are, arguing while ‘membership’ institutions inherently lead to inequality and exclusion, social interactions may also be regulated by altruistic norms.
How institutions change and evolve, explaining how institutions may get ‘trapped’ in a particular structure by self-reinforcement and may need an impersonal, autonomous, third party, for transformative change.

Find out more

Delivering maternal health: why is Rwanda doing better than Malawi, Niger and Uganda?

Publication - Briefing papers - 31 May 2012

ODI Briefings 74

Vikki Chambers, David Booth

This Briefing Paper uses new research from the Africa Power and Politics Programme (APPP) to explore the institutional factors that shape maternal health outcomes in Malawi, Niger, Rwanda and Uganda.

Download

Women traders buy fish from fishermen to trade at Ngwenye market in Mpulungu, Zambia

Zambia today: implementing policies for growth and poverty reduction

Event - Public event - 30 April 2012 16:00 - 17:30 (GMT+01 (BST))

Dr Guy Scott MP, Vice President of the Republic of Zambia, will discuss the key challenges, opportunities and trade-offs that the new Government is facing in order to sustain and utilise high levels of growth to accelerate poverty reduction, address high levels of inequity, and improve governance.

Watch

Good governance vs. collective action

Opinion - Articles and blogs - 16 April 2012

'Development outcomes in poor countries depend fundamentally on incentives. The political incentives facing elites and leaders are the key to possible change at national level.'

Read and comment