The centrality of politics in development is widely acknowledged, but still often ignored in practice. Raising the contribution of political analysis to the design of development policies and aid interventions is an ongoing task: much remains to be done. This meeting series covers three critical challenges to the politics of development today:

• understanding better how structures of governance - global, national, regional and local - constrain or enable patterns of development that are effective and equitable;
• the changing politics of aid, including new thinking about interventions in crisis states, and whether aid can be used more successfully to strengthen governance and build national commitment to poverty-reducing policies;
• the meaning, uses and abuses, of key concepts of political development: accountability, civil society and social capital.

The meetings are being organised jointly by ODI and the Development Studies Institute/Crisis States Programme of the Development Research Centre at the LSE. Most sessions will include two speakers, with different and sometimes contrasting points of view, and time for discussion.