Desmond Mcneill
Biographic Data
| ID | 4004083 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Desmond Mcneill |
| GIVEN NAMES | Desmond |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcneill |
| SIGNATURE | MCNEILL D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8948-3197 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 149 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Misleading Metaphors: Culpable Optimism Concerning Development
Metaphors are very common in the field of development. Some have to do with economic growth: most obviously, the concept of ‘take-off’, implying an analogy with an aeroplane rising into the sky. Some have to do with the distribution of economic benefits: the notorious ‘trickle-down’ effect, for example. In the field of development assistance, more specifically, there are several metaphors which imply that a small input by the aid donor will resul…
Blended finance to the rescue? Subsidies, vaccine bonds and matching funds in global health
To close persistent global health financing gaps, policymakers have in recent years promoted the idea of 'blended finance', i.e. the strategic use of public funds to attract additional private sector investment. To better understand this trend, this paper studies three major blended finance instruments, namely vaccine bonds, advanced market commitments, and matching funds. In doing so, this paper makes two important contributions. On a practical …
Global ethics in practice
This paper is a study of ethics – in practice. It examines how people in the world, and more particularly in rich countries, have responded to the ethical challenges associated with recent crises: climate change, COVID-19 and international migration. What has been the nature of the discourse? What international agreements have been made? Have they, in practice, been followed up? The evidence is that – in practice – nations, and by implication the…
The World Economic Forum: An unaccountable force in global health governance
The World Economic Forum is a major player in global health governance, promoting the role of the private sector and specific public–private partnerships (PPPs). It exerts influence in three main ways: by exercising convening power, most notably in Davos where the most powerful representatives of the private sector meet with heads of governments and international organisations; by shaping ideas through its role as a think tank; by its engagement …
Financialisation: Economic and Social Impacts
Journal Article Financialisation: Economic and Social Impacts Get access MalcolmSawyer. Financialisation: Economic and Social Impacts. Agenda Publishing, 2022. pp. 240. ISBN: 9781788212304. Desmond McNeill Desmond McNeill Oslo University, Norway Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Contributions to Political Economy, bzad005, https://doi.org/10.1093/cpe/bzad005 Published: 10 Ma…
Accountability versus learning in aid evaluation: A practice-oriented exploration of persistent dilemmas
Learning and accountability are customarily defined as ‘the dual purpose’ of development aid evaluation, yet this notion is contested. Based on an overview of the existing literature, we identify four ideal type positions in this debate: (1) accountability and learning are complementary objectives, (2) there is a reconcilable tension, (3) there are problematic trade-offs and (4) the two are irreconcilable. Drawing on empirical evidence from Swede…
Fetishism and the Theory of Value: Reassessing Marx in the 21st Century
Reflections on Ipes-Food: Can Power Analysis Change the World
The major way in which IPES-Food seeks to achieve change is by preparing and widely disseminating reports on different aspects of the global food system, which are rigorous in both empirical and analytical terms. These reports are heavily critical of the productionist approach, demonstrating its negative impacts on the environment and human wellbeing. They use a political economy lens to analyse how powerful actors promote both this approach and …
Knowledge and Politics in Setting and Measuring the SDGs: Introduction to Special Issue
The papers in this special issue provide accounts of the politics and knowledge that shaped the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDG s). The open and transparent processes in the Open Working Group ( OWG ) and Post-2015 agenda consultations challenged the MDG paradigm and set more transformative and ambitious goals. But across many goals, there was slippage in ambition when targets and indicators were selected. In some cases, this is due to genuin…
Power, Suffering and the Struggle for Dignity: Human Rights Frameworks for Health and Why They Matter
What Counts as Progress? The Contradictions of Global Health Initiatives
Global initiatives to finance maternal and child health have saved millions of lives and protected millions more against the ravages of crippling and debilitating disease; for this they are to be highly commended. Such technological and vertical programmes are appealing to policy-makers at the global level; but these health interventions take place within complex social and economic structures, and pertinent questions have been raised both about …
Introduction to the Special Issue: Frontiers of Research on Development and the Environment
Post 2015: A new era of accountability
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were criticised for failing to address the issue of governance, and the associated notions of responsibility and accountability. The Sustainable Development Goals, we argue, need to recognise the structural constraints facing poor countries – the power imbalances in the global economic system that limit their ability to promote the prosperity and well-being of their people, as was clearly brought out by the…
Norway and Redd+ in Indonesia: The Art of Not Governing
This article examines the dilemmas that Norway faces in seeking to secure good governance while minimising its role as a political actor. REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in developing countries) is a global programme which seeks to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands. The ambitions and expectations of RED…
The political origins of health inequity: Prospects for change
Despite large gains in health over the past few decades, the distribution of health risks worldwide remains extremely and unacceptably uneven. Although the health sector has a crucial role in addressing health inequalities, its eff orts often come into confl ict with powerful global actors in pursuit of other interests such as protection of national security, safeguarding of sovereignty, or economic goals. This is the starting point of The Lancet…
Trust in Global Health Governance: The Gavi Experience
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization provides a most interesting example of effective cooperation between international organizations—especially the World Health Organization, the UN Children's Fund, and the World Bank. Based on extensive research and interviews, this article examines how and why this cooperation came about. The role of the Gates Foundation in providing massive financial support was certainly crucial. An adequate exp…
Taking account of governance: The challenge for land-use planning models
Poverty, Human Rights, and Global Justice: The Response-Ability of Multilateral Organizations
In this article we argue that questions about responsibility for eradicating poverty may be restated as ‘who is response-able?’—in other words, ‘who is capable of responding in such a way as to remedy the harm?’; and an important part of the answer is international organizations. Created and maintained by ourselves acting collectively, these organizations play an important role in making and applying global rules that often determine the capabili…
The global politics of poverty reduction and social policy
Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security
Presenting human security perspectives on climate change, this volume raises issues of equity, ethics and environmental justice, as well as our capacity to respond to what is increasingly considered to be the greatest societal challenge for humankind. Written by international experts, it argues that climate change must be viewed as an issue of human security, and not an environmental problem that can be managed in isolation from larger questions …
Global Poverty, Ethics and Human Rights: The Role of Multilateral Organisations
Severe poverty is one of the greatest moral challenges of our times. But what place, if any, do ethical thinking and questions of global justice have in the policies and practice of international organizations? This books examines this question in depth, based on an analysis of the two major multilateral development organizations - the World Bank and the UNDP - and two specific initiatives where poverty and ethics or human rights have been explic…
The complete oral history transcripts from UN Voices
What is Wrong with Aid? What is Wrong with Africa
‘Human Development’: The Power of the Idea1
The idea of human development, and the related index, has been developed and promoted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) largely through its annual Human Development Reports. In recent years it has become more closely associated with the work of Amartya Sen. Initially, the concept formed an important part of the counter‐discourse against the dominant perspective associated with the Bretton Woods Institutions. Since then, the polic…
The Diffusion of Ideas in Development Theory and Policy
The article uses quantitative bibliographic data from 1972 to 2002 to trace how three selected ideas–‘the informal sector’, ‘sustainable development’ and ‘social capital’–took off and spread throughout the academic, policy and popular realms during this period. It analyses data from electronic databases–of academic journals, dissertations, newspapers, magazines, and World Bank and United Nations publications–and also draws on insights from the CA…
Knowledge and Politics in Setting and Measuring the SDGs: Introduction to Special Issue
The papers in this special issue provide accounts of the politics and knowledge that shaped the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDG s). The open and transparent processes in the Open Working Group ( OWG ) and Post-2015 agenda consultations challenged the MDG paradigm and set more transformative and ambitious goals. But across many goals, there was slippage in ambition when targets and indicators were selected. In some cases, this is due to genuin…
The Diffusion of Ideas in Development Theory and Policy
The article uses quantitative bibliographic data from 1972 to 2002 to trace how three selected ideas–‘the informal sector’, ‘sustainable development’ and ‘social capital’–took off and spread throughout the academic, policy and popular realms during this period. It analyses data from electronic databases–of academic journals, dissertations, newspapers, magazines, and World Bank and United Nations publications–and also draws on insights from the CA…
What Counts as Progress? The Contradictions of Global Health Initiatives
Global initiatives to finance maternal and child health have saved millions of lives and protected millions more against the ravages of crippling and debilitating disease; for this they are to be highly commended. Such technological and vertical programmes are appealing to policy-makers at the global level; but these health interventions take place within complex social and economic structures, and pertinent questions have been raised both about …
Taking account of governance: The challenge for land-use planning models
Post 2015: A new era of accountability
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were criticised for failing to address the issue of governance, and the associated notions of responsibility and accountability. The Sustainable Development Goals, we argue, need to recognise the structural constraints facing poor countries – the power imbalances in the global economic system that limit their ability to promote the prosperity and well-being of their people, as was clearly brought out by the…
Private Sector Influence in the Multilateral System: A Changing Structure of World Governance
Private sector participation in the multilateral system has increased significantly over the last years. Critics have characterized this as a ‘privatization’ of the multilateral system, leading to a decreasing power of the institutions and the states that direct them. However, changes in the multilateral system relate to, and form an integral part of, the changing nature of global governance. In order to understand the consequences of this we nee…
Fetishism and the Theory of Value: Reassessing Marx in the 21st Century
Accountability versus learning in aid evaluation: A practice-oriented exploration of persistent dilemmas
Learning and accountability are customarily defined as ‘the dual purpose’ of development aid evaluation, yet this notion is contested. Based on an overview of the existing literature, we identify four ideal type positions in this debate: (1) accountability and learning are complementary objectives, (2) there is a reconcilable tension, (3) there are problematic trade-offs and (4) the two are irreconcilable. Drawing on empirical evidence from Swede…
Introduction to the Special Issue: Frontiers of Research on Development and the Environment
Norway and Redd+ in Indonesia: The Art of Not Governing
This article examines the dilemmas that Norway faces in seeking to secure good governance while minimising its role as a political actor. REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in developing countries) is a global programme which seeks to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands. The ambitions and expectations of RED…
Poverty, Human Rights, and Global Justice: The Response-Ability of Multilateral Organizations
In this article we argue that questions about responsibility for eradicating poverty may be restated as ‘who is response-able?’—in other words, ‘who is capable of responding in such a way as to remedy the harm?’; and an important part of the answer is international organizations. Created and maintained by ourselves acting collectively, these organizations play an important role in making and applying global rules that often determine the capabili…
The changing practice of urban planning
The global politics of poverty reduction and social policy
The complete oral history transcripts from UN Voices
Global ethics in practice
This paper is a study of ethics – in practice. It examines how people in the world, and more particularly in rich countries, have responded to the ethical challenges associated with recent crises: climate change, COVID-19 and international migration. What has been the nature of the discourse? What international agreements have been made? Have they, in practice, been followed up? The evidence is that – in practice – nations, and by implication the…
Reflections on Ipes-Food: Can Power Analysis Change the World
The major way in which IPES-Food seeks to achieve change is by preparing and widely disseminating reports on different aspects of the global food system, which are rigorous in both empirical and analytical terms. These reports are heavily critical of the productionist approach, demonstrating its negative impacts on the environment and human wellbeing. They use a political economy lens to analyse how powerful actors promote both this approach and …
What is Wrong with Aid? What is Wrong with Africa
Making Social Capital Work: An extended comment on the concept of social capital, based on Robert Putnam's book
Counterpart training
The changing practice of urban planning
Learning by doing: World Bank lending for urban development, 1972–82
The appraisal of rural water supplies
The end of the third world: Newly industrializing countries and the decline of an ideology
Practical and Ethical Problems in Planning for Sustainable Development: A Reply
Making Social Capital Work: An extended comment on the concept of social capital, based on Robert Putnam's book
Market Ethics as Global Ethics
Desmond McNeill, ‘Market Ethics as Global Ethics’, Forum for Development Studies, 1999: 1, pp. 59–76. The market is the dominant institution of modern-day life. The ethic which it embodies emphasises autonomy and choice, but also disconnectedness—in social and moral terms. This article, which draws on perspectives from different disciplines—economics, sociology and philosophy—is concerned with the norms of the market, and it claims that the sprea…
Statistics—the Development Researcher's Guilty Secret
Introduction Those development researchers who spend extended periods of time in the countries they study, find out – sooner or later – that most of the statistics available are very unreliable. This puts them in a difficult position; for if they do not use these statistics, with all their inaccuracies, what are they to use? For those who collect primary data, the problem may be rather different; if, as if often the case, their own statistics dif…
Multilateral Institutions: A Critical Introduction
The Development of the Political Economy of Development
The Critical Role of Development Research
Research is, by definition, critical—in the academic sense. This often includes questioning the underlying, often implicit, categories, values and perspectives of established disciplines, such as economics. Disciplines that are more sensitive to context—such as anthropology—face a different challenge: that of dealing with unprecedently rapid social and environmental change, and of conceptualising complex global power relations. There is a danger …
Multilateral institutions: A Critical Introduction
Global Institutions and Development
Global Institutions and Development: Framing the World?
Private Sector Influence in the Multilateral System: A Changing Structure of World Governance
Private sector participation in the multilateral system has increased significantly over the last years. Critics have characterized this as a ‘privatization’ of the multilateral system, leading to a decreasing power of the institutions and the states that direct them. However, changes in the multilateral system relate to, and form an integral part of, the changing nature of global governance. In order to understand the consequences of this we nee…
The Diffusion of Ideas in Development Theory and Policy
The article uses quantitative bibliographic data from 1972 to 2002 to trace how three selected ideas–‘the informal sector’, ‘sustainable development’ and ‘social capital’–took off and spread throughout the academic, policy and popular realms during this period. It analyses data from electronic databases–of academic journals, dissertations, newspapers, magazines, and World Bank and United Nations publications–and also draws on insights from the CA…
‘Human Development’: The Power of the Idea1
The idea of human development, and the related index, has been developed and promoted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) largely through its annual Human Development Reports. In recent years it has become more closely associated with the work of Amartya Sen. Initially, the concept formed an important part of the counter‐discourse against the dominant perspective associated with the Bretton Woods Institutions. Since then, the polic…
Global Poverty, Ethics and Human Rights: The Role of Multilateral Organisations
Severe poverty is one of the greatest moral challenges of our times. But what place, if any, do ethical thinking and questions of global justice have in the policies and practice of international organizations? This books examines this question in depth, based on an analysis of the two major multilateral development organizations - the World Bank and the UNDP - and two specific initiatives where poverty and ethics or human rights have been explic…
The complete oral history transcripts from UN Voices
What is Wrong with Aid? What is Wrong with Africa
Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security
Presenting human security perspectives on climate change, this volume raises issues of equity, ethics and environmental justice, as well as our capacity to respond to what is increasingly considered to be the greatest societal challenge for humankind. Written by international experts, it argues that climate change must be viewed as an issue of human security, and not an environmental problem that can be managed in isolation from larger questions …
Poverty, Human Rights, and Global Justice: The Response-Ability of Multilateral Organizations
In this article we argue that questions about responsibility for eradicating poverty may be restated as ‘who is response-able?’—in other words, ‘who is capable of responding in such a way as to remedy the harm?’; and an important part of the answer is international organizations. Created and maintained by ourselves acting collectively, these organizations play an important role in making and applying global rules that often determine the capabili…
The global politics of poverty reduction and social policy
The political origins of health inequity: Prospects for change
Despite large gains in health over the past few decades, the distribution of health risks worldwide remains extremely and unacceptably uneven. Although the health sector has a crucial role in addressing health inequalities, its eff orts often come into confl ict with powerful global actors in pursuit of other interests such as protection of national security, safeguarding of sovereignty, or economic goals. This is the starting point of The Lancet…
Political science (31 works) · Economics (19 works) · International Development and Aid (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (12 works) · Engineering (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Business (10 works) · Human Rights and Development (8 works)