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

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Outputs

Working with the grain and swimming against the tide: Barriers to uptake of research findings on governance and public services in low-income Africa

Publication - Discussion papers - 30 April 2011

David Booth

Under-provision of essential public goods is a key source of the malaise of development in sub-Saharan Africa. It is widely accepted that this is a governance problem. This paper draws on findings from the Africa Power and Politics Programme research stream which is investigating institutional sources of variation in public goods provision at sub-national levels.

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Informing the future of Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA)

Projects - April 2011 to October 2011

The UK office of the Japan International Coorperation Agency (JICA) has commissioned ODI to a carry out a study on Japan's ODA in order to help inform future ODA policy discussions within the Japanese government.

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The political economy of budget support

Event - Workshop - 8 April 2011 10:00 - 13:00 (GMT+01 (BST))

This session explore the incentives both recipient countries and donors face in implementing budget support. It included and went beyond examining the incentives surrounding conditionalities, exploring how the budget support agenda is generated and managed.

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Governance for development in Africa: building on what works

Event - Seminar - 6 April 2011 13:00 - 15:00 (GMT+01 (BST))

Should the governance of poor developing countries be based on mimicking what works in advanced capitalist democracies? Of course not. Yet for 20 years ‘good governance’ has meant exactly that.

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Working with the Grain? Rethinking African Governance

Publication - Journal articles or issues - 14 March 2011

Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Bulletin Vol. 42 No. 2

Richard C. Crook and David Booth (eds.)

At the heart of current policy thinking about Africa there is a significant knowledge gap concerning governance and development. This IDS Bulletin is concerned with what can be done about that, drawing on new findings from the research consortium, Africa Power and Politics Programme (APPP). APPP is committed to discovering forms of governance that work better for development than those prescribed by the current ‘good governance’ orthodoxy. It aims to do so chiefly by examining the range of post-colonial experience in sub-Saharan Africa focusing especially on under-appreciated patterns of difference in institutions and outcomes.

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