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Heather started following the work of Sophie Harman, City University London, Department of International Politics.
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Papers
Combining value for money with increased aid to fragile states: welcome partnership or clash of agendas?
Published in 'Crime, Law & Social Change', co-authored with Zoe Scott & Claire Mcloughlin
This article examines the origins and main strands of recent debates within the international development community regarding the tensions between increasing
aid allocation to so-called ‘fragile states’ and growing domestic and international pressure for donors to demonstrate measurable results and returns on their investments.
With particular reference to the UK context, the paper examines how the confluence of these two agendas is being viewed, at least publicly, and some of the main arguments that have been put forward about why they may be difficult to pursue simultaneously. It asks whether or not it is feasible that donors will explicitly seek to address and resolve the apparent trade-offs between these two agendas, and concludes that in both international and domestic political arenas, ‘good enough’ aid effectiveness, or a more nuanced, ‘developmentised’ understanding of value for money, are unlikely to become palatable or politically viable any time soon.
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Download (.pdf) Corruption, Religion and Moral Development
Lacking in much of the current research on religion and corruption is a sense that there may be alternative ways that people view corruption, which in their minds may be moral, and that if we are to truly develop an understanding of how religion influences people’s attitudes and behaviour towards corruption, we must start from a critical and interpretive perspective at the individual level of analysis.This paper argues that the methodologies used in many current studies are not adequate to study what is ultimately an individual decision, and one that is at least in part informed by a person’s own ethical and moral standpoint. As such, starting research with the mindset that particular types of activities are corrupt, and thus ‘wrong’, may prevent researchers from uncovering why people develop
particular attitudes to corruption, or why they choose to behave in a way labelled by some as corrupt.
If corruption research is to explore some of these issues at the individual, as well as the regional and national levels, it is important to learn from existing work that examines how attitudes are formed, both on religion and the impact that religion has on attitudes to moral issues and on moral reasoning. A
number of studies, few of which deal specifically with corruption, are reviewed in order to establish useful ways forward for corruption researchers. Research on religion and attitudes towards deviant behaviour shows that individuals’ interpretation of messages on moral behaviour is significant in determining their acceptance or rejection of deviancy. However, there is little evidence to suggest that the religious reject behaviour that is ‘anti-social’ any more than the non-religious. Indeed, there is little evidence to suggest that religion, in terms of religious content, impacts upon individuals’ attitudes to public morality. Membership of a religious community that rejects behaviour seen as being ‘corrupt’ seems more likely to have an impact, but a lot depends upon whether members of the community are encouraged to use religious principles to think through moral issues, or to interpret religious teachings literally.
The implications of this for research on corruption are
The messages individuals receive about behaviour that is deemed to be moral and behaviour that is seen as ‘deviant’ may be conflicting and the ways in which they interpret such messages are important, influencing their ideas about what constitutes ‘corruption’.
People are part of multiple communities – religious, family, friends, work, professional and so on – and may not separate their lives into ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres, governed by public and private morality.
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