As one of the only truly global institutions, the World Bank is uniquely positioned to be the world’s premier source funding for global public goods. But despite its global coverage, the World Bank has never truly been oriented towards global challenges. Its mission has been defined primarily by ind...

Many public organizations employ technologies of scrutiny such as peer review or quality assurance to improve their performance and decision-making. Such technologies may affect performance and decision-making directly, through scrutiny, and indirectly, through behavioural responses by agents within...

Official development assistance (ODA) can be and often is spent in well-off countries, where a vanishingly small proportion of the population live in poverty (Dissanayake & Tahmasebi, 2021). Such spending is sometimes justified either on the grounds that a large number of the global poor neverth...

Governments make policy to affect three domains: domestic outcomes, outcomes in foreign countries, and shared global challenges. This note sets out how the conceptual and analytical incoherence of policy set in developed countries across these three domains undermines their own effectivene...

If the ODA budget is to be cut, doing so will be painful, messy, and imperfect, but there is a way to wield the chisel well, says Ranil Dissanayake.

Being a force for good in the world is more than about branding, or even good intentions: it requires impact and an organisation capable of it. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s vision offers a good starting point for being a values-driven force for good in the world, but within tha...

Following the announcement of the merger between DfID and FCO, Stefan Dercon and Ranil Dissanayake take a look at the opportunities of the merger.