Varun Gauri
Biographic Data
| ID | 1323912 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Varun Gauri |
| GIVEN NAMES | Varun |
| FAMILY NAME | Gauri |
| SIGNATURE | GAURI V |
| AFFILIATIONS | World Bank |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6720-5738 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 154 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 37 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Cooperation creates moral obligations
Public Reactions to Noncompliance with Judicial Orders
Constitutions empower people to ask judges for binding orders directing state agents to remedy rights violations, but state agents do not always comply. Scholars propose that by making it easier to observe noncompliance, courts can leverage public pressure for compliance when it exists. Yet, exposure to information about noncompliance might lead individuals to accept high levels of noncompliance and reduce support for judicial remedies. We estima…
Shifting social norms to reduce open defecation in rural India
Toilet ownership in India has grown in recent years, but open defecation can persist even when rural households own latrines. There are at least two pathways through which social norms inhibit the use of toilets in rural India: (1) beliefs/expectations that others do not use toilets or latrines or find open defecation unacceptable; and (2) beliefs about ritual notions of purity that dissociate latrines from cleanliness. A survey in Uttar Pradesh,…
Measuring Social Norms about Female Labor Force Participation in Jordan
This study conducted a large-scale, \n representative survey of social norms for female labor force \n participation in three governorates of Jordan. The social \n norms measures are disaggregated into thematic clusters, \n empirical and normative expectations, and interpersonal \n expectations within the household. The measurements satisfy \n reasonable tests for internal consistency, external \n validity, and test-retest reliability. The survey…
Judicialization 2.0
Over the past two decades, debate over the whys, the hows, and the effects of the ever-expanding phenomenon of right-to-health litigation (‘judicialization’) throughout Latin America have been marked by polarized arguments and limited information. In contrast to claims of judicialization as a positive or negative trend, less attention has been paid to ways to better understand the phenomenon in real time. In this article, we propose a new approac…
Judicialization 2.0
Over the past two decades, debate over the whys, the hows, and the effects of the ever-expanding phenomenon of right-to-health litigation ('judicialization') throughout Latin America have been marked by polarised arguments and limited information. In contrast to claims of judicialization as a positive or negative trend, less attention has been paid to ways to better understand the phenomenon in real time. In this article, we propose a new approac…
EMBeDding for impact and scale in developing contexts
While behavioral public policy remains underutilized in rich countries relative to its potential impact, the required infrastructure for diagnosing behavioral bottlenecks and the autonomy to act on those diagnoses are even less common in developing countries. At the World Bank, the Mind, Behavior, and Development Unit (eMBeD) aims to promote the systematic use of behaviorally informed tools in development policies and projects, institutionalize t…
Social Rights Constitutionalism
The increasing importance of social rights language in constitutional texts and in the politics of social provision and human security has triggered a voluminous academic literature. Despite its global origins, we argue, social rights language goes through a process of vernacularization, through which it transforms and is transformed by local politics. The process begins when particular rights are included in constitutional texts and continues wh…
The Costa Rican Supreme Court’s Compliance Monitoring System
In the summer of 2009, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Costa Rica began monitoring compliance with its direct orders in amparo and habeas corpus cases. The court announced the early results from its analysis at a well-attended March 2010 press conference. The president of the court promised to continue monitoring and publicizing the results for the foreseeable future. We use a unique data set on compliance derived from this mon…
The Law’s Majestic Equality? The Distributive Impact of Judicializing Social and Economic Rights
While many find cause for optimism about the use of law and rights for progressive ends, the academic literature has long been skeptical that courts favor the poor. We show that, with the move toward a robust “new constitutionalism” of social and economic rights, the assumptions underlying the skepticism do not always hold. Our theories must account for variation in the elite bias of law and litigation. In particular, we need to pay closer attent…
Intersubjective Meaning and Collective Action in Developing Societies
The capacity to act collectively is not just a matter of groups sharing interests, incentives and values (or being sufficiently small), as standard economic theory predicts, but a prior and shared understanding of the constituent elements of problem(s) and possible solutions. From this standpoint, the failure to act collectively can stem at least in part from relevant groups failing to ascribe a common intersubjective meaning to situations, proce…
MDGs That Nudge
The Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015, were a global agreement to promote human development and reduce poverty. But they did not create a legalized institutional regime, in which precise obligations would be delegated to specific actors, nor were they, in many respects, compatible with the incentives of the countries whose heads of state endorsed them. They most resembled international human rights treaties, which are also not le…
Global poverty
Global poverty is a huge problem in today's world. This survey article seeks to be a first guide to those who are interested in, but relatively unfamiliar with, the main issues, positions and arguments in the contemporary philosophical discussion of global poverty. The article attempts to give an overview of four distinct and influential normative positions on global poverty. Moreover, it seeks to clarify, and put into perspective, some of the ke…
Human Rights as Demands for Communicative Action
A key issue with human rights is how to \n allocate duties correlative to rights claims. But the \n philosophical literature, drawing largely on naturalistic or \n interactional accounts of human rights, develops answers to \n this question that do not illuminate actual human rights \n problems. Charles Beitz, in recent work, attempts to develop \n a conception of human rights more firmly rooted in, and \n helpful for, current practice. While a m…
Redressing Grievances and Complaints Regarding Basic Service Delivery
Human Rights Based Approaches to Development
This paper assesses the benefits, risks, \n and limitations of human rights based approaches to \n development, which can be catalogued on the basis of the \n institutional mechanisms they rely on: global compliance \n based on international and regional treaties; the policies \n and programming of donors and executive agencies; rights \n talk; and legal mobilization. The paper briefly reviews the \n politics of the first three kinds of human rig…
Human Rights-Based Approaches to Development
This article aims to organize thinking around human rights-based approaches to development (HRBAs) and to review available empirical evidence regarding their benefits, risks, and limitations. We propose a typology distinguishing four types of rights-based approaches: global compliance based on international and regional treaties; human rights-based programming on the part of donors and governments; rights talk; and legal mobilization. The article…
Redressing Grievances and Complaints Regarding Basic Service Delivery
Redress procedures are important for basic fairness. In addition, they can help address principal-agent problems in the implementation of social policies and provide information to policy makers regarding policy design. To function effectively, a system of redress requires a well-designed and inter-linked supply of redress procedures as well as, especially if rights consciousness is not well-developed in a society, a set of organizations that sti…
Do International Treaties Promote Development? The Convention On The Rights Of The Child And Basic Immunization
Little evidence is available on whether changing global rules so as to promote human rights can enhance development outcomes. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was almost universally ratified by the mid-1990s, but it is unclear whether treaty ratification was associated with better or wider protection of children s rights. This paper uses an instrumental variable approach to investigate whether treaty ratification was associated with stro…
Courting Social Justice
This book is a five-country empirical study of the causes and consequences of social and economic rights litigation. Detailed studies of Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa present systematic and nuanced accounts of court activity on social and economic rights in each country. The book develops new methodologies for analyzing the sources of and variation in social and economic rights litigation, explains why actors are now turning…
Boundary institutions and HIV/Aids policy in Brazil and South Africa
The Strategic Choices of NGOs
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play an increasingly important role in the delivery of public services in developing countries, but little systematic evidence is available about their strategic choices. We develop two stylised accounts of NGO strategies: one in which pragmatic and organisational concerns determine location decisions, and another in which charitable motivations are the principal determinants. We then use data from the 1995 a…
NGOs in Bangladesh
Separating financing from provision
OBJECTIVE: This article examines the impact of contracting health care provision to health care cooperatives in Costa Rica. METHODOLOGY: The article uses a panel dataset on health care outputs in traditional clinics and cooperatives in Costa Rica from 1990-99. RESULTS: Controlling for community socioeconomic characteristics, annual time trends and clinic complexity, the cooperatives conducted an average of 9.7-33.8% more general visits (95% confi…
Social Rights and Economics
NGOs in Bangladesh
The Law’s Majestic Equality? The Distributive Impact of Judicializing Social and Economic Rights
While many find cause for optimism about the use of law and rights for progressive ends, the academic literature has long been skeptical that courts favor the poor. We show that, with the move toward a robust “new constitutionalism” of social and economic rights, the assumptions underlying the skepticism do not always hold. Our theories must account for variation in the elite bias of law and litigation. In particular, we need to pay closer attent…
Immunization in Developing Countries
Boundary institutions and HIV/Aids policy in Brazil and South Africa
Social Rights and Economics
The Costa Rican Supreme Court’s Compliance Monitoring System
In the summer of 2009, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Costa Rica began monitoring compliance with its direct orders in amparo and habeas corpus cases. The court announced the early results from its analysis at a well-attended March 2010 press conference. The president of the court promised to continue monitoring and publicizing the results for the foreseeable future. We use a unique data set on compliance derived from this mon…
Human Rights-Based Approaches to Development
This article aims to organize thinking around human rights-based approaches to development (HRBAs) and to review available empirical evidence regarding their benefits, risks, and limitations. We propose a typology distinguishing four types of rights-based approaches: global compliance based on international and regional treaties; human rights-based programming on the part of donors and governments; rights talk; and legal mobilization. The article…
Social Rights Constitutionalism
The increasing importance of social rights language in constitutional texts and in the politics of social provision and human security has triggered a voluminous academic literature. Despite its global origins, we argue, social rights language goes through a process of vernacularization, through which it transforms and is transformed by local politics. The process begins when particular rights are included in constitutional texts and continues wh…
Public Reactions to Noncompliance with Judicial Orders
Constitutions empower people to ask judges for binding orders directing state agents to remedy rights violations, but state agents do not always comply. Scholars propose that by making it easier to observe noncompliance, courts can leverage public pressure for compliance when it exists. Yet, exposure to information about noncompliance might lead individuals to accept high levels of noncompliance and reduce support for judicial remedies. We estima…
Human Rights as Demands for Communicative Action
A key issue with human rights is how to \n allocate duties correlative to rights claims. But the \n philosophical literature, drawing largely on naturalistic or \n interactional accounts of human rights, develops answers to \n this question that do not illuminate actual human rights \n problems. Charles Beitz, in recent work, attempts to develop \n a conception of human rights more firmly rooted in, and \n helpful for, current practice. While a m…
Redressing Grievances and Complaints Regarding Basic Service Delivery
Shifting social norms to reduce open defecation in rural India
Toilet ownership in India has grown in recent years, but open defecation can persist even when rural households own latrines. There are at least two pathways through which social norms inhibit the use of toilets in rural India: (1) beliefs/expectations that others do not use toilets or latrines or find open defecation unacceptable; and (2) beliefs about ritual notions of purity that dissociate latrines from cleanliness. A survey in Uttar Pradesh,…
Global poverty
Global poverty is a huge problem in today's world. This survey article seeks to be a first guide to those who are interested in, but relatively unfamiliar with, the main issues, positions and arguments in the contemporary philosophical discussion of global poverty. The article attempts to give an overview of four distinct and influential normative positions on global poverty. Moreover, it seeks to clarify, and put into perspective, some of the ke…
Human Rights Based Approaches to Development
This paper assesses the benefits, risks, \n and limitations of human rights based approaches to \n development, which can be catalogued on the basis of the \n institutional mechanisms they rely on: global compliance \n based on international and regional treaties; the policies \n and programming of donors and executive agencies; rights \n talk; and legal mobilization. The paper briefly reviews the \n politics of the first three kinds of human rig…
In the Literature
In the Literature
Research Notes
Research Notes
In the Literature
No Decision on Cruzan
In the Literature
Research Notes
In the Literature
In the Literature
In the Literature
Immunization in Developing Countries
Social Rights and Economics
The author analyzes contemporary \n rights-based and economic approaches to health care and \n education in developing countries. He assesses the \n foundations and uses of social rights in development, \n outlines an economic approach to improving health and \n education services, and then highlights the differences, \n similarities, and the hard questions that the economic \n critique poses for rights. The author argues that the policy \n conse…
Separating financing from provision
OBJECTIVE: This article examines the impact of contracting health care provision to health care cooperatives in Costa Rica. METHODOLOGY: The article uses a panel dataset on health care outputs in traditional clinics and cooperatives in Costa Rica from 1990-99. RESULTS: Controlling for community socioeconomic characteristics, annual time trends and clinic complexity, the cooperatives conducted an average of 9.7-33.8% more general visits (95% confi…
Social Rights and Economics
The Strategic Choices of NGOs
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play an increasingly important role in the delivery of public services in developing countries, but little systematic evidence is available about their strategic choices. We develop two stylised accounts of NGO strategies: one in which pragmatic and organisational concerns determine location decisions, and another in which charitable motivations are the principal determinants. We then use data from the 1995 a…
NGOs in Bangladesh
Boundary institutions and HIV/Aids policy in Brazil and South Africa
Courting Social Justice
This book is a five-country empirical study of the causes and consequences of social and economic rights litigation. Detailed studies of Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa present systematic and nuanced accounts of court activity on social and economic rights in each country. The book develops new methodologies for analyzing the sources of and variation in social and economic rights litigation, explains why actors are now turning…
Do International Treaties Promote Development? The Convention On The Rights Of The Child And Basic Immunization
Little evidence is available on whether changing global rules so as to promote human rights can enhance development outcomes. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was almost universally ratified by the mid-1990s, but it is unclear whether treaty ratification was associated with better or wider protection of children s rights. This paper uses an instrumental variable approach to investigate whether treaty ratification was associated with stro…
Redressing Grievances and Complaints Regarding Basic Service Delivery
Redress procedures are important for basic fairness. In addition, they can help address principal-agent problems in the implementation of social policies and provide information to policy makers regarding policy design. To function effectively, a system of redress requires a well-designed and inter-linked supply of redress procedures as well as, especially if rights consciousness is not well-developed in a society, a set of organizations that sti…
MDGs That Nudge
The Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015, were a global agreement to promote human development and reduce poverty. But they did not create a legalized institutional regime, in which precise obligations would be delegated to specific actors, nor were they, in many respects, compatible with the incentives of the countries whose heads of state endorsed them. They most resembled international human rights treaties, which are also not le…
Global poverty
Global poverty is a huge problem in today's world. This survey article seeks to be a first guide to those who are interested in, but relatively unfamiliar with, the main issues, positions and arguments in the contemporary philosophical discussion of global poverty. The article attempts to give an overview of four distinct and influential normative positions on global poverty. Moreover, it seeks to clarify, and put into perspective, some of the ke…
Human Rights as Demands for Communicative Action
A key issue with human rights is how to \n allocate duties correlative to rights claims. But the \n philosophical literature, drawing largely on naturalistic or \n interactional accounts of human rights, develops answers to \n this question that do not illuminate actual human rights \n problems. Charles Beitz, in recent work, attempts to develop \n a conception of human rights more firmly rooted in, and \n helpful for, current practice. While a m…
Redressing Grievances and Complaints Regarding Basic Service Delivery
Political science (27 works) · Law (21 works) · Economics (16 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Politics (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Business (12 works) · Law and economics (11 works) · Citation (10 works) · Law (10 works)