October 30, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Global Development 2.0: Can Philanthropists, the Public, and the Poor Make Poverty History?
edited by Lael Brainard and Derek Chollet
The world of global development is changing, and with the changes come unprecedented opportunity as well as new challenges, write the editors of this volume, Lael Brainard, vice president and director of the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution, and Derek Chollet, a fellow in the same program.
The book consists of essays written by experts in development. In one, Matthew Bishop, American business editor of The Economist, writes about how the “new philanthropists” — market-savvy, high-net-worth individuals — are making an impact in alleviating poverty because they are able to work “unencumbered by share holders, political cycles, or excessive red tape.”
In another essay, Darrell M. West, a political scientist at Brookings, explores some of the problems with celebrity philanthropists, a subset of the “new philanthropists.”
“Our fascination with celebrities raises the risk that there will be more superficiality and less substance in our political process,” he writes.
Other chapters provide a breakdown of total aid flowing to the developing world; a study of the Jubilee 2000 campaign, a successful advocacy movement to have the external debt of the world’s poorest countries written off; exploration of the ways in which social enterprises — hybrid for-profit/nonprofit local groups that deliver basic services to the villages in which they operate — can help create sustainable economies; and discussion of the need for more sophisticated accountability measures to accompany the extended reach, influence, number, and diversity of individuals and groups now involved in international development.
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; http://www.brookings.edu/; 150 pages; $22.95; ISBN 978-0-8157-1393-7.
