We are pleased to announce the launch of our next Political Economy Analysis in Action online training course, starting 5 February and running until 13 June 2024

The course is designed to equip participants to identify the challenges arising from political economy features of the contexts in which they work, and to draw well-grounded conclusions for policy, strategy, or programme design and implementation.

If you or your colleagues are interested in participating in this course or a tailored one in the future, please see our course flyer or email training@thepolicypractice.com for further details.

We are very sad to hear of the passing of Prof. Saleem Ul Huq, one of the world’s most prominent climate change experts and Director of the International Centre for Climate and Development in Bangladesh. Saleem was a tireless champion of action on climate change. As a leading author in two of the major assessments undertaken by the International Panel on Climate Change, his work highlighted the impact of climate change on developing countries, and the importance of greatly increased funding for adaptation to climate change. He also advocated for the establishment of a mechanism to pay for the loss and damage already sustained by countries such as his own, which was finally agreed, in principle, at COP27 in 2022. In the same year, he was named one of the top 10 scientists in the world by Nature, the international science journal.

Having attended every single one of the Conference of Parties of the UNFCCC, Saleem was a strong believer in the importance of understanding the political economy of climate action. In 2021, he kindly agreed to be interviewed by TPP Principal, Sam Bickersteth as a contribution towards our course on the Political Economy Analysis for Climate Action. The interview can be found here.

The Policy Practice is delighted to announce a new short online course focussing on the Political Economy of Climate Action. This course explains how political economy analysis can be used to understand the challenge of action on climate change and to design more effective interventions.  The course will consist of seven, 2-hour online sessions from 31 October to 27 November 2023. For more information and to register please click below

In March 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a Synthesis report of its huge sixth assessment report, pointing out that greenhouse gas emissions must fall dramatically – starting immediately – for us to have any chance of keeping the global temperature within 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2100.   The response to this depressing reality from many advocating urgent action to tackle climate is that we must try harder. That failing to do so will result in catastrophe. This blog argues that this is the wrong approach. That the rallying cry to keep on pushing forward is unlikely to work unless we have a better understanding of the political barriers to doing so.

Neil was interviewed by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) about the controversial fuel subsidy reforms that have just taken place in Nigeria. 

This article first appeared on the IISD website - see link below:

TPP Director Neil McCulloch’s book Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies: the politics of saving the planet was featured in the Financial Times (paywalled) as one of three good books on ‘How to rethink climate change’. 

A Policy Brief summarising the book's main messages is available here.

Duncan Green has published this blog to coincide with a webinar on “Making a difference: How Applied Political Economy Analysis contributes to impact through better informed decisions” on Wednesday 24 May. It shares the findings of a Learning Review on the use of PEA in three USAID-funded human rights projects under the Human Rights Support Mechanism, which is led by Freedom House with the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative and Pact as core consortium partners.

During May 2023, Laure-Hélène, TPP Director, and Ben French, TPP Associate, are delivering workshops in Islamabad, Kinshasa and Nairobi to introduce government officials and World Bank staff to a new way of designing and implementing public financial management reforms - based on participatory diagnostics and action planning.

How does Applied Political Economy Analysis (APEA) help us to inform choices about our programs, and what difference does that make to the kind of impact we hope to achieve?

This webinar was led by PACT in association with Alina Rocha Menocal and Laure-Hélène Piron from The Policy Practice who will share the findings of their learning review.

Listen to the recording here.

Read the final report here