knowledge

The solitude of an academic in the world of Italian politics

Prof. Mario Monti was nominated senator for life in late 2011 by the Italian president Giorgio Napolitano. This move allowed our president to assign to Prof. Monti the task to establish a new government after the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi at the time when Italy was on the brink of default (October 2011). Prof. Monti’s […]

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Six years of jail to scientists for L\’Aquila earthquake. Trial against science?

Six Italian scientists have been found guilty for having given insufficient warning to residents of L’Aquila about the seismic risks they faced ahead of earthquake that hit the city in the night of 6 of April 2009.  The earthquake had a magnitude of 6.3 and caused 309 deaths, more than 1.500 injured and more than

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Just published with the World Bank – Assessment of the delivery of the Vietnam development report 2010 : modern institutions and its impact on policy debates around institutional reforms in Vietnam – final report

Download the report at the World Bank website: http://bit.ly/LNOJZ1 The Vietnam Development Reports (VDR) is a series of reports, which have been published by the World Bank resident mission since 2002, and focus on key development issues for Vietnam. The VDRs aim at tapping into existing knowledge, achieving an \’upstream harmonization\’ so that donors can engage with

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Just published with ODI – Assessing the policy influence of research: a case study of governance research in Viet Nam

Download to the Backgrund Note at ODI: http://bit.ly/LNLHE0 As development processes become ever more complex, there is a growing demand for knowledge products that provide the necessary information to implement evidence-based policy change. However, the practice of monitoring the impact of knowledge products, often produced by international donors, is relatively new. This Background Note describes a case study of one attempt to

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Just published – Capacity, complexity and consulting: lessons from managing capacity development projects

Datta, A., Shaxson, L., Pellini, A. Capacity, complexity and consulting: lessons from managing capacity development projects Working Paper 344, March 2012, London: Overseas Development Institute This paper reflects on some of the Research and Policy in Development (RAPID) Programme\’s capacity development work in recent years and draw implications for future practice for both consultants and

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Just Published – Technically sound and politically achievable? A taxonomy of knowledge types and their influence on governance in three South-East Asian countries

Technically sound and politically achievable? A taxonomy of knowledge types and their influence on governance in three South-East Asian countries ODI Background Notes, February 2012 Arnaldo Pellini, Maria Dolores Alicias, Nguyen Thi Thu Hang and Palmira Permata Bachtiar This Background Note classifies different types of knowledge that aim to influence policy, which is then used

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Understanding the causes of the summer riots in England in 2011: how different forms of research evidence can help.

London and other cities in England have been on fire for few nights in August 2011. Gary Young has described in an article in the Guardian Weekly how they resemble the one that took place in July 1967 in Detroit: ‘In the early hours of Sunday 23. July 1967, the police of Detroit raided an

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Policy makers, politicians or intellectuals?

Should policy makers be intellectuals? This is what Prof. Gary Gutting asks in an interesting article he wrote for the International Herald Tribune. His point of departure is that in his Republic, the Greek philosopher Plato \’put forward the idea of a state ruled by intellectuals who combined comprehensive theoretical knowledge with the practical capacity

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