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We estimate the causal effect of a large development program on conflict in the Philippines through a regression discontinuity design that exploits an arbitrary poverty threshold used to assign eligibility for the program. We find that barely eligible municipalities experienced a large increase in conflict casualties compared to barely ineligible ones. This increase is mostly due to insurgent-initiated incidents in the early stages of program preparation. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that insurgents try to sabotage the program because its success would weaken their support in the population.

The South African National Framework towards the Professionalization of the Public Service, moots the belief that professionalizing public administration is one of the key requirements for building state capacity. An efficient and effective public service may positively impact the state’s development agenda. The United Nations’ (UN) 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) serve as a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all with the focus on an end to poverty, and inequality, the protection of the planet, and the assurance that global citizens enjoy health, justice and prosperity. The core question that this paper addresses is: To what extent will professionalization of the South African public sector through learning and training programs offered at the National School of Government (NSG), contribute to the UN’s SDGs specifically and Africa Agenda 2063 (Agenda 2063) and the South African National Development Plan (NDP) 2030 in general? The paper is premised on a systematic stand-alone literature review. Content analysis was used to make sense of the secondary data consulted by honing in on pre-identified search terms. The study found that while the training programs offered at the NSG are aligned with the government’s focus on professionalization of the public service, specific mention of the SDGs, the NDP and Agenda 2063, are not made. It is recommended that with much talk around the re-calibration of the public sector by way of the NSG, an opportunity exists to explicitly teach the principles, objectives and aims of the aforementioned SDGs, NDP goals and Agenda 2063 objectives, in all its training programs, or that new programs are devised by the NSG solely focused on the attainment of the SDGs.

PurposePolicy for women's entrepreneurship is designed to promote economic growth, not least in depleted rural areas, but very little is known about the contributions of rural women entrepreneurs, their needs or how the existing policy is received by them. Using a theoretical framework developed by Korsgaard et al. (2015), the authors analyse how rural women entrepreneurs contribute to rural development and discuss the implications for entrepreneurship policy. This paper aims to focus on the aforementioned objectives.Design/methodology/approachThe authors interviewed 32 women entrepreneurs in rural Sweden representing the variety of businesses in which rural Swedish women are engaged. The authors analysed their contributions to rural development by analysing their motives, strategies and outcomes using Korsgaard et al.’s framework of “entrepreneurship in the rural” and “rural entrepreneurship” as a heuristic, interpretative device.FindingsIrrespective of industry, the respondents were deeply embedded in family and local social structures. Their contributions were substantial, multidimensional and indispensable for rural viability, but the policy tended to bypass most women-owned businesses. Support in terms of business training, counselling and financing are important, but programmes especially for women tend to miss the mark, and so does rural development policy. More important for rural women entrepreneurs in Sweden is the provision of good public services, including for example, schools and social care, that make rural life possible.Research limitations/implicationsTheoretically, the findings question the individualist and a-contextual focus of much entrepreneurship research, as well as the taken-for-granted work–family divide. How gender and how the public and the private are configured varies greatly between contexts and needs contextual assessment. Moreover, the results call for theorising place as an entrepreneurial actor.Practical implicationsBased on the findings, the authors advise future policymakers to gender mainstream entrepreneurship policy and to integrate entrepreneurship and rural development policy with family and welfare state policy.Originality/valueThe paper highlights how rural women respond to policy, and the results are contextualised, making it possible to compare them to other contexts. The authors widen the discussion on contributions beyond economic growth, and the authors show that policy for public and commercial services and infrastructure is indeed also policy for entrepreneurship.

Regional development in developing countries is predominantly oriented towards exploitation of natural resources and tends to ignore environmental problems. Optimization of the utilization of natural resources towards the development of the agropolitan area has an impact on economic growth and increases farmers’ income in rural areas. This study aims to examine the significance of the development of agropolitan-based agribusiness areas in rural areas and the direct and indirect relationship of the development of agropolitan-based agropolitan areas to the improvement of community productive economic endeavors and ecosystem sustainability. Research data were obtained through observation, surveys, and documentation. The research method used a qualitative-quantitative combination in sequence. The results of the regression analysis show that the development of the agropolitan area has a significant effect on regional economic growth, and the results of the path analysis confirm that the development of the agropolitan area based on rural agribusiness has a significant effect on increasing the productive economy of the community and the ecosystem sustainability. The results of this study confirm that an increase in the productivity of the regional economic base sector has an impact on the development of agropolitan areas based on the rural agribusiness system in the direction of increasing community income and the regional economy. This article offers the concept of system integration in the development of agropolitan areas based on ecosystem sustainability and regional economic growth in developing countries.

We exploit randomly assigned political quotas for women to identify the impact of women’s political leadership on corruption and on the governance of India’s largest poverty-alleviation program to date. Using survey data, we find more program inefficiencies and leakages in village councils reserved for women heads: political and administrative inexperience make such councils more vulnerable to bureaucratic capture. This is at odds with claims of unconditional gains from women assuming political office. A panel of official audit reports enables us to explore (a) whether newly elected women leaders in reserved seats initially perform worse; (b) whether they partly catch up, fully catch up, or eventually outperform (male) leaders in unreserved seats; and (c) the time it takes for such catch-up to occur. We find that women leaders in reserved seats initially underperform but rapidly learn and quickly and fully catch up with male politicians in unreserved seats. Over the duration of their elected tenure, we find no evidence of overtake. Our findings suggest short-term costs of affirmative action policies but also that once initial disadvantages recede, women leaders are neither more nor less effective local politicians than men.

PurposeThe public sector (PS) has extensively utilized information technology (IT); however, research reveals that the failure rate remains high, particularly for national and sectoral IT (NaSIT) applications. To this end, numerous studies have been conducted to gauge the success of IT applications, where a significant number have demonstrated the importance of planning in this regard. Consequently, the current study aims to investigate the factors that influence the success of NaSIT planning and implementation within this sector.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative methodology and a systematic literature review encompassing papers indexed in seven databases until November 2022 were utilized.FindingsThe review of 92 selected papers revealed that the success of NaSIT planning and implementation is influenced by a number of factors divided into nine main categories. These include vision, goals and objectives; alignment; interoperability; infrastructure; involvement; equity and digital divide; privacy, security and trust; administration; and culture. Human, social, economic and organizational factors comprise the vast majority of these factors. By addressing these factors, the failure rate of IT plans can be reduced. Governments will be able to effectively employ this technology to accomplish their missions if these factors are considered in order to decrease the failure rate of IT plans.Originality/valueBy examining the factors that influence the success of NaSIT planning and implementation in the PS, this study attempts to provide a comprehensive view of various types of research. Furthermore, policymakers can employ this perspective to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the PS.

The introduction of the new delivery model in the 2023-2027 Common Agricultural Policy increased the decision-making and management autonomy of Member States and their regions when implementing Rural Development policies. Thus, understanding the drivers behind allocation choices for rural development funds is crucial. This study analyses the allocation of rural development funds across Italian regions, considering ex-ante share allocation for different types of Rural Development interventions. A cluster analysis is then performed. Different groups of Italian regions are characterised using the indicators developed within the common monitoring and evaluation framework, the allocation of spending in the previous programming period, and other variables. Four clusters of Italian regions are identified: cluster 1 includes rural regions with low urbanisation, prioritising supporting interventions in disadvantaged areas and “environmental” ones; cluster 2 shows large allocation for cooperation interventions; cluster 3 includes regions funding primarily agricultural investments; cluster 4 shows no distinct or unique characteristics. This study is the first one addressing expenditure allocation of the 2023-2027 Common Agricultural Policy. It confirms that expenditure patterns partially couple with geographical and historical similarities, although two main spending priorities (i.e. “environment” and “investments”) persist.

Donors have strongly advocated decentralization on the grounds that it broadens the participation of citizens in development processes, thereby increasing government responsiveness to their needs. Although there have been studies seeking to establish the veracity of this claim, they remain weak on two fronts. One, while wealth differentials affect citizen participation, these studies approach citizens as a homogenous group. Two, participation is mostly viewed narrowly—participation in elections. Drawing on empirical data from Ghana’s decentralization reform, this paper addresses these gaps by questioning how pro-poor citizen participation in decentralized development planning has been. I argue that although Ghana’s decentralization was propagated on championing pro-poor grassroots participation in governance and development, in reality, participation is elitist and has failed to reflect the voices of the poor. My findings demonstrate that the participation structures and processes used in local development planning are unfavourable to the poor in many respects. Elite and representative participation is promoted to the detriment of broad citizen participation. This exclusion is resulting in surging apathy of citizens towards the district assemblies—institutions hitherto trusted as their development champions. This paper concludes that the poor will remain voiceless despite decentralization unless the structural barriers to their participation are tackled in decentralization design and praxis.

Despite commonalities, the development of a broad range of approaches to rural development has sometimes produced hermetic language and values which is exacerbated by siloed scientific orientations. In this article, we provide a critical analysis of three popular approaches to rural development among Global North rural researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers: the community-based approach, the place-based approach, and the territorial approach. By locating the disciplinary origins and pragmatic boundaries of each approach as well as the interfaces between them, we argue that working across a potential conceptual nexus could foster collaboration among policy-makers, practitioners, and researchers alike. Our analysis points to shared interests in issues of governance, actors agency and geographical embeddedness; it highlights a shared emphasis on rural defined interests. We conclude future rural development research and practice could be rejuvenated by working at the nexus of these interfaces to achieve the goals of contemporary rural development initiatives.