Nightcap: Development with Dignity

There’s a new book coming out that y’all should read: Development with Dignity: Self-determination, Localization, and the End to Poverty. Here’s the link. Here’s the description:

At a time when the global development industry is under more pressure than ever before, this book argues that an end to poverty can only be achieved by prioritizing human dignity.

Unable to adequately account for the roles of culture, context, and local institutions, today’s outsider-led development interventions continue to leave a trail of unintended consequences, ranging from wasteful to even harmful. This book shows that increased prosperity can only be achieved when people are valued as self-governing agents. Social orders that recognize autonomy and human dignity unleash enormous productive energy. This in turn leads to the mobilization of knowledge-sharing that is critical to innovation and localized problem-solving. Offering a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives and specific examples from the field showing these ideas in action, this book provides NGOs, multilateral institutions, and donor countries with practical guidelines for implementing “dignity-first” development.

Compelling and engaging, with a wide range of recommendations for reforming development practice and supporting liberal democracy, this book will be an essential read for students and practitioners of international development.

It’s by Tom Palmer (one of my favorite scholars) and Matt Warner. Again the link is here.

Nightcap

  1. Duke, lacrosse, and the accusations that have never gone away William Cohan, Vanity Fair
  2. How James Burnham won the Cold War for the West Francis Sempa, Claremont Review of Books
  3. Common sense and the American frontier RealClearHistory
  4. Why the GOP is wrong about work Rachel Lu, the Week