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Category: Politics

Why Do NGOs Go Where They Go?

That is the title of a forthcoming paper by Jennifer Brass in World Development. Here is the abstract:

“Using Kenya as a case study, this paper provides preliminary evidence of the factors influencing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to choose their locations within a country. Interpreting the findings from a range of models evaluating 4,210 organizations in 70 districts, and drawing on in-country interviews with NGO leaders and workers, government officials, and politicians, it finds that sub-national NGO location corresponds to an area’s objective level of need, as well as the convenience of the location for accessing beneficiaries, donors, and elite goods. Contrary to dominant theories of African political economy, political factors like patronage appear to have little or no significant influence.”

Food and Politics in the Arab World

“We’re taught that domestic life is not a ‘serious’ political topic, like war and peace, but the fact is that we spend most of our lives doing everyday things: at the dinner table, in the kitchen, washing dishes, grocery shopping, commuting. These things make up the fabric of our lives. Americans are curious about the texture of everyday life in the Middle East because they rarely get to see it. I wanted readers to feel like they were sitting around the dinner table with me and my friends, hearing what average people really say and really think, [where] the dinner table is the best place to find out.