Brendan Whitty
Biographic Data
| ID | 915835 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brendan Whitty |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brendan |
| FAMILY NAME | Whitty |
| SIGNATURE | WHITTY B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of St Andrews |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9575-4782 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 4 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 4 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Threadbare consultancy: Straining budget margins in for-profit international development programmes
Critical understandings of public outsourcing often caricature private contractors and consultancies as profiteering, giving little consideration to either end-beneficiaries or taxpayers. Drawing on qualitative interviews across a range of for-profit development firms in the United Kingdom, this paper shows how growing political scepticism has generated commercial pressure and an adversarial contracting environment, constraining operational possi…
Dismantling the anti-politics machine in aid: Political mētis and its limits
In a recent article in NPE, Rajesh Venugopal (2022.Can the anti-politics machine be dismantled?New political economy, 1-15) concluded that the anti-politics machine was still in operation.He argued that development planners held a cognitive divide between the realm of political dynamicsan unknowable terra incognitaand the realm of operational technical knowledge.This article revisits and expands that argument.It takes a particular kind of adaptiv…
Blocking the Exit: Research Ethics and Bureaucratic Writing Practices
I argue that the standard model of research ethics pushes the ethnographer of bureaucracies to the cautious, concise and compliant textual practices styles of the bureaucracy itself. Given the methodological importance of writing to ethnography, this matters. To make the argument, I draw on my experience of my decision to embargo my PhD thesis, an ethnography of an international donor agency. I show how the key gatekeeper to my research sought to…
Outsourcing the Business of Development: The Rise of For-profit Consultancies in the UK Aid Sector
While much attention has been paid to the ways in which the private sector is now embedded within the field of development, one group of actors - for-profit development consultancies and contractors, or service providers - has received relatively little attention. This article analyses the growing role of for-profit consultancies and contractors in British aid delivery, which has been driven by two key trends: first, the outsourcing of managerial…
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Outsourcing the Business of Development: The Rise of For-profit Consultancies in the UK Aid Sector
While much attention has been paid to the ways in which the private sector is now embedded within the field of development, one group of actors - for-profit development consultancies and contractors, or service providers - has received relatively little attention. This article analyses the growing role of for-profit consultancies and contractors in British aid delivery, which has been driven by two key trends: first, the outsourcing of managerial…
Dismantling the anti-politics machine in aid: Political mētis and its limits
In a recent article in NPE, Rajesh Venugopal (2022.Can the anti-politics machine be dismantled?New political economy, 1-15) concluded that the anti-politics machine was still in operation.He argued that development planners held a cognitive divide between the realm of political dynamicsan unknowable terra incognitaand the realm of operational technical knowledge.This article revisits and expands that argument.It takes a particular kind of adaptiv…
Blocking the Exit: Research Ethics and Bureaucratic Writing Practices
I argue that the standard model of research ethics pushes the ethnographer of bureaucracies to the cautious, concise and compliant textual practices styles of the bureaucracy itself. Given the methodological importance of writing to ethnography, this matters. To make the argument, I draw on my experience of my decision to embargo my PhD thesis, an ethnography of an international donor agency. I show how the key gatekeeper to my research sought to…
Threadbare consultancy: Straining budget margins in for-profit international development programmes
Critical understandings of public outsourcing often caricature private contractors and consultancies as profiteering, giving little consideration to either end-beneficiaries or taxpayers. Drawing on qualitative interviews across a range of for-profit development firms in the United Kingdom, this paper shows how growing political scepticism has generated commercial pressure and an adversarial contracting environment, constraining operational possi…
International Development and Aid (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Economics (2 works) · Human Rights and Development (2 works) · Law (2 works) · Law (2 works) · Accountability (1 works) · Agency (philosophy (1 works) · Anthropology (1 works) · Argument (complex analysis (1 works)