The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post‐2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non‐governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long‐standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development‐related research priorities of governmental and non‐governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations.
Summary
The evidence base on social protection programmes is expanding rapidly, largely pointing towards their positive impacts. Most evaluations rely heavily on quantitative techniques and experimental methods to allow for attribution of impacts. In this paper, we argue that new ways of investigation and analysis are needed to expand and deepen the evidence base in support of improved design and implementation of social protection. Greater emphasis on qualitative research, mixed methods and participatory evaluation is crucial, given current evidence gaps about programme dynamics and impacts. This paper proposes a new evaluation framework that goes beyond conventional approaches, by highlighting relatively neglected aspects related to programme processes, social dynamics and feedback loops in programme evaluations.
Questions of women's power remain a matter of heated debate globally, but take on a heightened intensity in a South Asia featuring rapid economic growth and structural transformation in recent decades. This Special Issue aims to improve understanding of how the women of South Asia are gaining and exercising power and of the obstacles and backlash they face, moving beyond discussion of women's empowerment as a matter of control over domestic economic resources or labour market participation. Articles from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan examine the struggles of garments workers in global value chains, middle class professionals, subsistence farmers and wage labourers, tracing the actors, institutions, and movements that build or block women's pathways to power. Collectively, the articles argue for paid work to be treated as a critical arena for struggles over women's power, not an end in itself. They draw attention to the roles of states and patriarchal forces in building or blocking pathways to power, and to the resilient nature of gendered norms that serve patriarchy. And they highlight the need for research into women's empowerment to focus on key episodes of political contention, as critical junctures for the progressor retreatof women's empowerment.
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