Last week, we hosted the live launch webinars for our two online Political Economy Analysis in Action courses. One course has been specifically tailored for UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office staff. The other is our Open PEA course with a diverse cohort of participants from civil society, the private sector, bilateral and multilateral agencies.

We have revised our course material to reflect the wider set of objectives and interests in foreign policy as well as development interventions and we’ve updated our online PEA library .

We look forward to interacting with our 140+ course participants over the next four months.

If you or your colleagues are interested in participating in this course or a tailored one in the future, please email training@thepolicypractice.com to join our waiting list, or visit our training page for further details.

We are pleased to share a new publication by the World Resources Institute, authored by Jesse Worker and Niki Palmer (a TPP associate). This new guide takes a political economy lens and applies it to the extremely challenging area of domestic climate change governance. Just out and soon to be trialled in India, it hopes to inspires greater attention to the local constraints and enablers of climate action. 

TPP Director, Neil McCulloch moderated a webinar on “Model for tackling Lebanon’s electricity crisis”.  The webinar featured a range of experts discussing alternative approaches which might be adopted to improve the Lebanon’s highly inefficient and unreliable electricity system.  This included evidence from TPP’s recent paper on “From dysfunctional to functional corruption: the politics of reform in Lebanon’s electricity sector”.  Over 180 people registered for the webinar which was livestreamed on Facebook and is available from the Youtube channel of the American University of Beirut here.

The SOAS-University of London Anti-Corruption Evidence Research Programme, together with The Policy Practice, has published a new report entitled: From dysfunctional to functional corruption: the politics of reform in Lebanon’s electricity sector. The study explores how it has been possible to establish Electricité de Zahlé’s functional, but problematic, electricity service provision within the complex sectarian political context of Lebanon.

The World Bank’s 2019 report on Rethinking Power Sector Reform recognises that many of the key challenges in power sector reform result from the political economy of the sector.

Barnett and McCulloch state that the report is weak in four areas and make recommendation to the World Bank and other development partners on how these could be tackled.

Our new Working Paper from TPP - Rwanda's Electricity Boom and the Danger of Too Much Power written by Dr Barnaby Joseph Dye. This discusses Rwandas energy production capacity and whether it's success is actually a problem.

The UK’s engagements in Nigeria are a showcase for the gradual integration of a thinking and working politically (TWP) approach into development practice. This new Working Paper from the Policy Practice provides an overview of these nearly two decades of TWP mainstreaming - both successes and failures.

New Policy Practice Policy Brief - The Political Economy of Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness in Africa. Using a political economy perspective the policy brief asks why the health security agenda has been neglected in Sub-Saharan Africa and what can be done. 

The blast in Beirut has exposed Lebanon’s corrupt energy sector and therefore should be the starting point for a wholesale reform of a crippled political system to rebuild trust and ease rising public agitation. This blog explore it further.