Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre (ESID)
The Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre (ESID) is a Research Programme Consortium funded by the UK Department for International Development.
Researchers and practitioners agree that an effective state is central to inclusive development. But non-state actors play an equally critical role in delivering goods and services to poor people.
Recent research shows how the inter-play between state-society relations, bargaining and informal politics can shape development. ESID research will therefore take a multifaceted approach, looking at the combined influence of elitist and popular forms of politics and the importance of global influences in creating the conditions for a government to achieve its development goals and produce policies that are pro-poor.
There will be a particular focus on policies and programmes that have been successful in terms of reducing extreme forms of poverty in specific policy areas, chosen from growth and employment, basic services, social protection, access to justice and natural resource governance. But ESID research will also look more broadly at how ‘developmental states’ emerge and might be promoted.
Research Themes
Some of the issues ESID research will look at include:
- the forms and levels of state capacity needed for inclusive development;
- incentives and ideas that influence elite commitment to inclusive development and state effectiveness; and
- the political, institutional and political economy conditions that lead to developmental states and elite commitment .
Partners
ESID is a partnership project and the consortium includes the following institutions, as well as research associates in Uganda, the UK and other countries