Opinion Pieces – Debating Development Research

28/10/2025

How Social Science Fiction Could Transform Development Research: Extending our Methodological Horizons

By Laura Camfield

In an era of increasing complexity and uncertainty, conventional methodological approaches to pressing development concerns such as extreme income inequality often fall short. In a new reflection paper, Andy Sumner and I propose a new approach, social science fiction (SSF), not merely as an opportunity to cultivate empathy, but also as a robust methodological tool for development research.

30/09/2025

Legitimacy at the Core: Transformative Green Industrial Policy for a Just Mineral Extraction

By Anabel Marin and Santiago Cunial

The global race for minerals is accelerating. Minerals like lithium, copper, and nickel are increasingly treated as the “new oil” of the energy transition and other global agendas. From critical mineral alliances to supply chain pacts, consumer countries are seeking “secure and sustainable” flows of these resources.

But in mining territories, “sustainable” is too often an empty promise. Recent evidence strongly suggests that without legitimacy, even the most technically advanced projects face roadblocks, reversals, or outright cancellation. Yet legitimacy cannot be built through communication campaigns, tokenistic participation, or compensation alone; it requires transforming how decisions are made and how projects are designed from the ground up.

26/09/202521/10/2025

Development Cooperation at a Tipping Point: How do Policy Norms Break?

By Stephan Klingebiel and Andy Sumner

The global system of development cooperation is entering uncertain territory. For decades, multilateralism and global solidarity shaped the expectations of how global development policy should be organised and justified. These norms provided a degree of stability, even if practice often fell short. In a new Discussion Paper we argue that those assumptions can no longer be taken for granted.

23/09/202521/10/2025

Asia-Pacific Middle Powers: Holding the Line in Global Development Governance

By Taekyoon Kim

A World in Interregnum

We are living through what Antonio Gramsci once called an interregnum – a moment when the old order is collapsing but a new one has yet to be born. The liberal international order (LIO), once anchored by the United States and European leadership, is fraying under multiple pressures: authoritarian resurgence, populist nationalism, widening global inequality, accelerating climate change, and recurring global health crises.

26/08/202527/08/2025

Merit, Meritocracy, and Decolonising Knowledge for Development

By Amitabha Sarkar / part of our “Share your Decolonising Story” project

I grew up in a family shaped by the complexities of colonial misadventure in Calcutta, a refugee past marked by economic hardship and structural violence. For my mother, merit was the only way out. She believed that humility, hard work, and academic excellence could open doors that history had closed. As a child and young adult in South Asia, I absorbed this moral ideal without question.