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Mainstreaming the social dimension into the overseas development administration: a partial history
Author(s) -
Eyben Rosalind
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/jid.1041
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , international development , administration (probate law) , context (archaeology) , mainstreaming , public administration , politics , agency (philosophy) , dimension (graph theory) , political science , social change , economic growth , sociology , social science , economics , law , history , special education , mathematics , archaeology , pure mathematics
Written by the first Chief Social Development Adviser of the Overseas Development Administration (now called the Department for International Development), this article describes when, why and how an understanding of the social dimension became mainstreamed into the policy and practice of the British aid programme. Exploring the growth within the context of the changing political aid environment of the final quarter of the last century, the history of social development within the British aid programmes is described from its origins in the mid‐1970s up to 1997. It asks how it was that a new specialist group of social analysts was established as part of the agency's bureaucratic machinery and compares this with the World Bank's experience. The article concludes by briefly considering the challenges facing social development expertise following 1997. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.