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

In April 2023, Alex Duncan revisited South Sudan for the first time in 40 years since working there for four years as an agricultural economist.  This is a lecture he gave at Juba University on the work that was then started, the lessons learned and the implications for the present.

Neil McCulloch gave a presentation of the main ideas in his new book "Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies: the politics of saving the planet"  on Wednesday 12 April from 2pm-3.30pm BST (GMT+1).  Dr. Mashekwa Maboshe, a researcher at the University of Zambia, provided some initial short comments, after which the floor was open for questions and discussion.  You can now listen to the recording.

This policy brief from TPP Director Dr Neil McCulloch is based on his book “Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies – the politics of saving the planet”, published by Practical Action Publishing. 

It summarises the problem with fossil fuel subsidies, how they inflict harm and what steps are being taken to reduce them.  It also shows why subsidies persist and why existing efforts have been so ineffective. Drawing lessons from countries which have tried to remove fossil fuel subsidies, it explains that the fundamental challenge to reform is not technical, but political. 

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 5 June to 28 June. For more information and to register please click below

Laure-Hélène Piron and Alina Rocha Menocal contributed to this Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) guide on applied political economy analysis (PEA) which updates the UK Department for International Development's 2009 original guidance.

This guide provides an overview of PEA and explains how analytical work should be planned and completed. It also provides an introduction to techniques and concepts used by FCDO governance experts, when designing and implementing related UK aid programming. It aims to inform development professionals, and it summarises different approaches, from very light-touch to more in-depth.