New Working Paper on Understanding Yemen's Economy
This working paper, authored by Richard Barltrop, TPP Associate and LSE Middle East Centre visiting senior fellow, explores how the prevailing picture of Yemen's economy is incomplete and misleading. Economic estimates ignore between half and two-thirds of the country. Analyses overlook Yemen’s relative strengths in infrastructure, agriculture and remittances, and overestimate the importance of oil and gas. This inaccurate picture of Yemen’s economy, which ignores the political context, has significant consequences. It contributes to an international misapprehension, whereby the country’s economy is seen primarily in terms of precarity and humanitarian emergency, with capabilities and resilience under-recognised.
The paper makes four recommendations to the international community:
1. Take a political economy perspective, combining analysis of Yemen’s economy with an understanding of the actual political and governance situation in the country.
2. Move away from unexamined assumptions and clichés about Yemen, and instead find and use new sources of data.
3. Draw on more accurate understandings of Yemen’s economy to contribute to peace efforts.
4. Use these fuller understandings to rebalance assistance to Yemen, with a shift from humanitarian towards development and peace-supporting aid.
Governance in a new development paradigm: Reformer leadership and partnership humility
This Working Paper, written by TPP Principal Wilfred Mwamba, calls for a major shift in how international actors support governance. It shows reforms only endure when domestic reformers lead, urging partners to drop “performance theatre” and back genuine, locally led, politically grounded change.
Reducing violence against defenders of the Amazon: a political economy approach
This Working Paper by TPP Principal Niki Palmer explores why environmental defenders in Brazil’s Amazon face persistent violence. It shows how powerful economic interests and competing ideas about the Amazon fuel conflict and impunity. It outlines three realistic pathways to strengthen protections, shift incentives toward conservation and reduce violence.
New guidance on context analysis
In collaboration with the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice, and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, TPP Director Laure-Hélène Piron has prepared a guidance note setting out options for context analysis (political economy analysis, conflict analysis, institutional reviews, etc). It provides advice to make sure the analysis is politically informed and influential with decision makers.