Currently, Jochen is directing a major ESRC-funded three-year project entitled Whither Multilateralism? International Security Institutions and Informal Groups of States. The primary aim of the project is to open up and to develop a new research agenda that undertakes a cross-institutional and cross-regional comparison of the dynamic relationship between informal groups of states and international security institutions in the management of risk and the resolution of conflict. The project, which is associated with the Centre for International Studies at the University of Oxford, will develop and test the proposition that the effectiveness of multilateral institutions in addressing security threats and challenges can be enhanced by informal groupings.

In 2007, Jochen was awarded the Zvi Meitar/Vice-Chancellor Oxford University Research Prize in the Social Sciences. The Prize will facilitate the establishment of an international research team that examines the broader problems related to effective multilateralism and the design of international institutions. In Phase 1, the team will concentrate on East Asia as a test case. With the problem-solving capacities of East Asian regional forastill underdeveloped, the need to engage in a major discourse on how to enhance collective action is particularly strong in this part of the world. Especially China and Japan require special scholarly attention because both countries have key roles to play in providing regional stability. In this context, the impact of U.S. hegemony on East Asian regional dynamics has to come under scrutiny.

Jochen is co-editing (with Dr Amrita Narlikar, University of Cambridge) a recently launched book series with Martinus Nijhoff Publishers on Studies in International Institutional Dynamics.

Prior to his academic career, Jochen worked in financial services with Allianz SE.

Between 2005 and 2007, GEG carried out research on the factors accounting for the bargaining power in aid negotiations of governments in eight African countries: Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, Ethiopia and Botswana. The case studies assessed the degree of control governments are able to secure over their development policies. Through the country cases, the project sought to understand complex aid relationships from the viewpoints of recipient governments, investigating what strategies African states have adopted to advance their objectives in aid negotiations and how successful their efforts have been. The case studies developed detailed descriptions of the institutions and processes that make up contemporary donor-recipient relations. They concentrated on the past and present economic, ideological, political and institutional contexts of aid negotiations, and how these conditions shape the balance of negotiating capital between governments and donors. They then used specific cases of aid negotiations to move beyond this general picture.

The findings of the book are summarized in GEG Working Paper 2008/42.

A briefing paper for African governments is available in English, French and Portuguese, entitled ‘Managing Aid Dependence: How African governments lost ownership and how they can regain it’.

A separate briefing paper for donor agencies, entitled “Reforming Foreign Aid Practices: What country ownership is and what donors can do to support it,” is available in English and French.

Dissemination events were held in Ghana, Mozambique, Mali and Zambia.

Ngaire Woods (2008) From intervention to cooperation: reforming the IMF and World Bank London Progressive Governance Papers, prepared for the Progressive Leaders’ Governance Conference

Ngaire Woods (2008) Shaking Up the World Bank ft.com December 22

Ngaire Woods (2008) Governing the Global Economy: Strengthening Multilateral Institutions New York: International Peace Institute

Ngaire Woods (2006) The Globalizers: the IMF, the World Bank and their Borrowers, Cornell University Press

Ngaire Woods (2006) The Globalizers in Search of a Future: Four Reasons why the IMF and World Bank Must Change, and Four Ways they Can, Centre for Global Development Brief

Kevin Watkins and Ngaire Woods (2004) Africa’s Voice in the IMF and World Bank International Herald Tribune October 1

Ngaire Woods (2001) Making the IMF and the World Bank more accountable
International Affairs 77(1)

Ngaire Woods and Amrita Narlikar (2001) Governance and the limits of accountability: the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank International Social Science Journal No. 170

Ngaire Woods (2000) The Challenge of Good Governance for the IMF and the World Bank Themselves World Development 28(5)

To listen to the audio or watch the video of The post-crisis politics of financial reform: business as usual or new global order?, visit the OpenSpires project. You can also find it on iTunes U and via the University of Oxford’s podcasts.

In our new GEG Guide we survey the  aid debate, looking beyond Moyo and other well-known contributors to also include voices from the margins. You’ll find our aid ‘must reads’ as well as links to the GEG blog series on the aid debate.

Read more in the GEG Guide to the (Dead) Aid Debate.

‘Sridhar provides both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a World Bank–funded nutrition program in India that, despite a lack of evidence for its effectiveness, has become the blueprint for similar programs elsewhere. She shows how the political objectives of both Indian policymakers and nutrition-policy advocates within the World Bank explain the expansion and replication of a program that fails to address the social conditions responsible for undernutrition in India and other countries.’

For more, see Devi Sridhar’s publications or visit GEG’s Global Health Governance project.

edited by Leonardo Martinez-Diaz and Ngaire Woods, Oxford University Press, 2009

This edited volume resulted from a five-year research project which examined the role of developing countries in the proliferation of government networks, and the implications for these countries of the shift to a networked world order. Identifying the two critical conditions under which government networks can enhance developing country influence in international relations, the book also highlights the characteristics of effective networks and the key challenges states face in building them.

Contents: Leonardo Martinez-Diaz and Ngaire Woods: Introduction: Developing Countries in a Networked Global Order – Vanessa Rubio-Marquez: The G20: A Practitioner’s Perspective – Leonardo Martinez-Diaz: The G20 After Eight Years: How Effective a Vehicle for Developing-Country Influence? — Helen E S Nesadurai: Finance Ministers and Central Bankers in East Asian Financial Cooperation – Jochen Prantl: Voice for the Weak: ECOSOC ad hoc Advisory Groups on African Countries Emerging from Conflict – Myles Wickstead, A Commentary by Sir Nicholas Bayne: The Commission for Africa: A View through the Prism of Networks – Khadija Bah: Africa’s G4 Network – Matthew Martin, Commentary by Gerald Helleiner: The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries’ Finance Ministers Network –Alex Matheson, with contributions from Mickie Schoch and Dirk-Jan Kraan: Networking of Senior Budget Officials – Kenneth G. Coates, Commentary by Richard Webb: The Centre for Latin American Monetary Studies and its Central Bankers’ Networks – Leonardo Martinez-Diaz and Ngaire Woods: Conclusion: Networks of Influence?

The G20: the perils and opportunities of network governance for developing countries by Leonardo Martinez-Diaz and Ngaire Woods

What impact will the G20 Leaders’ group have on global governance? In this briefing we draw lessons from our research into eight other networks to examine the likely impact on emerging and developing countries in particular.  Our research and case studies, published in Networks of Influence: Developing Countries in a Networked Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2009), examine how other inter-governmental networks have functioned, what roles they play best, and under what conditions they have strengthened developing country participation in global governance.

For more GEG research, see our new Climate Change Governance resource guide.