Debating Development Research

23/09/202502/12/2025

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.

26/08/202502/12/2025

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.

19/08/202502/12/2025

Convergence, Divergence, Flatlining or Plateau: What has Happened to Inequality between and within Countries over the Last Decade?

By Saumik Paul and Andy Sumner

Understanding inequality trends remains central to assessing both development progress and global justice. Two major dimensions—inequality between countries and inequality within countries—have long structured debate in Development Studies. In the 1990s, Lant Pritchett’s provocation that the world was experiencing “divergence, big time” captured the mood of an era in which income gaps between countries were seen to be widening. More recently, the “converging-divergence” thesis proposed by Horner and Hulme in late 2010s argued that while inequality between countries was declining, inequality within countries was on the rise. In this blog, we argue that something new has emerged over the last decade akin to a flatlining or plateauing.

12/08/202502/12/2025

US Abdication of Leadership and the “Rise of the Rest”: What does this Mean for International Cooperation?

By Brendan M. Howe / Development and Development Policy in the Trump Era Series

US Abdication of Leadership and Geopolitical Challenges

The demise of the liberal international order (LIO) is a prominent topic of conversation among contemporary academics and practitioners. The first administration of Donald Trump disdained multilateralism in all forms and dealt global governance a serious blow. Joe Biden’s single-term administration, despite recommitting to some of the inter-national accords from which Trump had signalled an intention to withdraw, exacerbated rather than alleviated international concerns about US leadership (or a lack thereof).