A New Model for Foreign Aid?

[John T. Fishel]

"issue effort" it is polemical. I don't see the DFID stuff in that way but rather as a comparative inquiry with policy implications for US practitioners. Of course, the authors advocate a point of view, but so does most policy oriented research. I also don't see this as terribly sophisticated analysis but still well within the legitimate rubric for an academic institution with policy pretensions - in the most positive sense, of course.

Cheers

JohnT

[Rex Brynen]

"issue effort" it is polemical. I don't see the DFID stuff in that way but rather as a comparative inquiry with policy implications for US practitioners. Of course, the authors advocate a point of view, but so does most policy oriented research. I also don't see this as terribly sophisticated analysis but still well within the legitimate rubric for an academic institution with policy pretensions - in the most positive sense, of course.

Agreed.

Ken—also, various university subunits and research groups are relatively free to publish what they want, provided that it meets some standard of quality. It is not unusual to find entirely different analyses being put forward, or policies recommended, by different folks in different places at the same institution.

Universities are about as close as you'll ever come to a functioning anarcho-syndicalist commune

[Ken White]

I guess on one level, I knew all that but on another it hit the 'Reject button.'
Perhaps I had an unconscious delusion that Johns Hopkins was above the fray, so to speak.

Thank you both.

To return to the thread; having read all the links it does seem the British approach has much to recommend it but I'm unsure that congress will cede that much authority -- or money -- to anyone without micromanaging.

[Beelzebubalicious]

It is interesting that Anne Richards, a VP at IRC and George Rupp, the President of IRC, published this in SAIS' journal. I guess they were just looking for a place to publish.... I didn't see any requirements for publication, though. It's an occasional paper, so perhaps there aren't any.

[Shek]

I guess on one level, I knew all that but on another it hit the 'Reject button.'
Perhaps I had an unconscious delusion that Johns Hopkins was above the fray, so to speak.

Ken,

This publication came through the School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), which is the graduate school for international relations based out of DC. Maybe the Roberts et al study was announced through SAIS, but I suspect that it came through Johns Hopkins proper since he was an epidemiologist working for the school of public health out of Baltimore. I was doing my MA at SAIS at the time both studies came out and don't remember them being publicized at SAIS (we did discuss the methodology in my applied econometrics class, but that was the only time that it really got air time in my classes). I don't know how independent the various schools under the Johns Hopkins brand name are, but SAIS is away from the flagpole, so to speak.