UNITED NATIONS NATIONS UNIES DIVISION FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON ENGAGED GOVERNANCE: CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DEVELOPMENTAL GOALS INCLUDING THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS PROFILES OF EXPERTS Wednesday, 1 November 2006 23rd Floor Conference Room, Two UN Plaza, New York Harry Blair Associate Department Chair, Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer Political Science Department, Yale University Professor Harry Blair has previously taught at Bucknell, Colgate, Cornell and Rutgers Universities. He has extensive experience in democratization in developing countries, particularly on civil society, and decentralization. He also served as Senior Democracy Advisor for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and has specialized in the areas of civil society, civic education, democracy measurement and indicators, and local governance activities. He has also worked for various development agencies which include: Department for International Development (UK), Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Ford Foundation, Swedish International Development Authority, United Nations Development Programme, and United States Agency for International Development and the World Bank. Among his recent publications include: i) Rural development and governance: Can democracy rescue a stalled enterprise? for Ahmed Shafiqul Huque and Hamid Zafrullah, eds., International Development Governance, 2006 ii) Civil Society and Pro-poor Initiatives at the Local Level in Bangladesh: Finding a Workable Strategy, World Development 33, 6 (June 2005). iii) Assessing Civil Society Impact for Donor-Assisted Democracy Programs: Using an Advocacy Ladder in Indonesia and the Philippines, Democratization 11, 1 (Spring 2004). Emilia T. Boncodin Professor, National College of Public Administration and Governance, University of the Philippines Professor Emilia T. Boncodin is currently a professor at the National College of Public Administration and Governance of the University of the Philippines. She is also a lecturer at various universities in the Philippines, including the Ateneo de Manila University and the Lyceum of the Philippines. She was a former Secretary of the Department of Budget and Management, where she served the Department since 1978 and occupied the following positions: Director; Assistant Director; Chief Fiscal Planning Specialist; Senior Fiscal Planning Specialist; 1
Fiscal Planning Specialist; 1989-91, Assistant Secretary; 1991-98, Undersecretary and Chief of Staff; 1998, Secretary. She also served as Consultant/Adviser to public and private institutions and was a Professional Lecturer in various schools including the University of the Philippines and the Lyceum of the Philippines. Professor Boncodin has been a recipient of many awards and citations attesting to her diligence and technical proficiency: the Most Outstanding Technical Employee in 1978 as well as the Most Outstanding Division Chief in 1981. She was also the Outstanding Alumna of the University of the Philippines College of Business Administration in 1992 and more importantly, an Awardee of Outstanding Women in Nation's Service in 1995. She was also the 1996 Dwight Eisenhower Fellow for the Philippines. Stephen Commins Lecturer, Urban Planning, School of Public Affairs, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Professor Stephen Commins is presently a consultant with several NGOs and public sector development agencies, particularly on issues of service delivery in fragile states. From 1999 to 2005, he was Senior Human Development Specialist in the Human Development Network at the World Bank. He is also affiliated with UCLA as a Lecturer in the Department of Urban Planning and the inter-departmental program of International Development Studies. He served prominent positions in regional and international organizations and international financial institutions, primarily the World Bank. He was one of the co-authors of the much acclaimed 2004 World Development Report on Making Services Work for Poor People. Since then, he has led several programmes on service delivery in post-conflict countries and the relationships between political reform and improved services. He was also involved with a World Bank Project on "Managing Dimensions of Economic Crisis: Good Practices for Policies and Institutions," which focused on the creation of the Bank's children and youth cluster, and a survey of service delivery programs of civil society organizations. Some of his recent publications include Africa Water and Sanitation Bibliography (2005), Other Voices on Making Services Work for Poor People (2003). Non-Governmental Organisations: Ladles in the Global Soup Kitchen? (2000), Good Practices in Social Policy (1999), and Development in States of War (1997). John Gershman Adjunct Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Director of the Global Affairs Program at the International Relation Centre, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University. Professor John Gershman is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Director of the Office of International Programs at Wagner. Previously he was the Director of the Global Affairs Program at the International Relations Center and the Co-Director of Foreign Policy in Focus, a progressive think tank on U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. He has worked at a series of nonprofit think tanks since the early 1990s, including the Institute for Food and Development Policy and Partners in Health. His research, writing, and advocacy work has focused on issues of U.S. foreign policy in East and Southeast Asia, the politics of international financial institutions and multilateralism, the political economy of democracy and development, the strategies and responses of social movements and NGOs to globalisation, and terrorism. 2
Natasha Iskander Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University Professor Natasha Iskander, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, received her PhD in Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is currently finishing postdoctoral fellowship at NYU s International Center for Advanced Studies as part of the Authority of Knowledge project. Her research interests include labor migration and its relationship to economic development, labor mobilisation and its relationship to workforce development, and processes of institutional innovation and organisational learning. Recent work includes a study comparing the processes by which the governments of Mexico and Morocco elaborated policies to build a link between labor emigration and local economic development, and a study on undocumented immigrant labor protests in France during the late 1990s. Professor Iskander also holds a Master in City Planning from MIT, and a BA in Cultural Studies from Stanford University. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked for several years in nonprofits in Egypt and the United States on issues of urban development, micro credit and community health planning. She has also worked as a community activist and migrant labor organiser. James Manor Professor and Director, Civil Society Governance Programme, Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK VKRV Rao Professor, Institute for Social & Economic Change, Bangalore, India Professor James Manor is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, England. He specializes in the study of politics and state-society relations, mainly in South and East Asia. He has previously taught at Yale, Harvard, Leicester and London Universities, and between 1993 and 1997, he was Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. His research interests are focused on political science and statesociety relations, with research mainly on South Asia. He also has worked extensively on civil society and governance, democratic decentralization in a diversity of systems, and the editing of two volumes on politics, economic development and state-society relations in East and Southeast Asia. Professor Manor also served as a coordinator for a major Ford Foundation research project on 'Civil Society and Governance,' which involved research teams in 22 countries. His books include: i) The Political Economy of Democratic Decentralization (The World Bank, 1999); Nehru to the Nineties: The Changing Office of Prime Minister in India (Viking Penguin, 1994); ii) Rethinking Third World Politics (Longmans, 1990),iii) Against the Odds: Politicians, Institutions & the struggle against Poverty (with M. Melo & N. Ng'ethe), 2006 iv) Successful Governance Reforms in Low Income Countries under Stress (ed.), World Bank, 2006. v) Decentralization and Democracy in South Asia & West Africa: Participation, Accountability & Performance, Cambridge & NY, 1998. 3
George Minet Social Dialogue, Labor Law and Labor Administration Department, International Labor Organization (ILO) Mr. George Minet is a senior legal specialist at the ILO; current areas of work include international labor and human rights law, promotion of social dialogue mechanisms in national and regional settings, legal harmonization in regional communities, governance and public administration issues. Mr. Minet served for 10 years (1987-98) in inter-agency affairs as deputy-director of the ILO New York Office and chief of the Inter-Organization Relations Office (IGOs and NGOs) at ILO headquarters; in that capacity, in charge of preparing various reports on democracy-building, relationships of UN system to civil society, governance. Other activities have included visiting scholar at the Berkeley School of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley, and consultancies for the Council of Europe, the UN Secretariat and the University of Paris. Stephen Ndegwa Senior Public Sector Governance Specialist, World Bank Dr. Stephen N. Ndegwa is currently serving as a Senior Public Sector Governance Specialist at the World Bank, Washington, DC. He is presently attached to the Public Sector Governance central unit within the Poverty Reduction & Economic Management (PREM) Network, the largest network at the Bank. In 2002 and 2003, he served as a Young Professional in the Africa PREM and the East Asia and Pacific PREM units, respectively. Dr. Ndegwa is also a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern's Program of African Studies. Dr. Ndegwa is the author of The Two Faces of Civil Society (Kumarian Press, 1996) and editor of A Decade of Democracy in Africa (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001) as well as co-editor (with York Bradshaw) of The Uncertain Promise of Southern Africa (Indiana University Press, 2000). Several of his other publications on African politics, development, democracy, electoral systems, civil society, citizenship, ethnic politics and constitutionalism have appeared in journals such as American Political Science Review, African Studies Review, and Africa Today. He is also a recipient of over 20 national and local awards and grants for research, publications, and teaching. Siddiqur Osmani Professor of Development Economics, University of Ulster, UK Visiting Professor, BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Professor Siddique Osmani was affiliated with the World Institute for Development Economics Research as a Senior Research Fellow from 1986 to 1993 in Finland. He also worked at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies in Bangladesh from 1971 to 1976 and initially started as Staff Economist, then as a Research Fellow and finally as a Senior Research Fellow. He held noteworthy advisory positions at the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, South Asian Network of Economics Research Institutes (SANEI), Poverty Reduction Network for UNDP and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). He has also accomplished consulting work with numerous international agencies which include among others: UNDP, Asian Development Bank, International Labor Organization, Swedish International Development 4
Agency, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Among his recent publications include i) The Employment Nexus between Growth and Poverty: An Asian Perspective, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, 2005 ii) The Macroeconomics of Poverty Reduction: The Case Study of Bangladesh, UNDP, 2003. iii) Poverty and Human Rights: Building on the Capability Approach, Journal of Human Development, 2005. iv) Exploring the Employment Nexus: Topics in Employment and Poverty, in R. Islam (ed) Fighting Poverty: The Development Employment Link, 2005 and v) Expanding Voice and Accountability Through the Budgetary Process, Journal of Human Development, 2002. Sonia Ospina Associate Professor Public Management and Policy and Faculty Director of the Research Center For Leadership in Action, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University Professor Sonia Ospina is Associate Professor of Public Management and Policy and Faculty Director of the Research Center for Leadership in Action. She has taught foundations of nonprofit management, managing public service organizations, qualitative research methods, the theoretical foundations of applied research, women in management and human resources management. Professor Ospina s work is grounded on institutional analysis and organizational theory and spans both the US and Latin America. Her research explores how responsibility is negotiated and distributed among stakeholders participating in collective problem-solving in society and in organizations and its impact on democracy. Her current interests include social change leadership as public leadership; the dynamics of collaboration across sectors, organizations and communities of practice (i.e labor/management; academics/practitioners); the role of civil society, community participation and nonprofits in governance; and evaluation of public sector performance (governmental and social accountability initiatives). Professor Ospina earned her Ph.D. in Sociology and a Masters in Public Policy and Management from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Paul Shaffer Research Fellow, Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, Canada Mr. Paul Shaffer is a research fellow at the Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto and senior economist at the Institute for Development in Economics and Administration. He has served as an advisor on poverty reduction to development agencies and governments in around fifteen countries in Asia and sub-saharan Africa. Mr. Shaffer holds a DPhil from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.. Shaffer s research focuses on the interdisciplinary study of poverty in the developing world. He is the co-organiser with Cornell s Ravi Kanbur of a recent conference on mixed method approaches to poverty analysis and director of an IDRC research project on the same theme. 5
Paul Smoke Associate Professor, Public Finance and Planning, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University Mr. Paul Smoke, Associate Professor and Director of the Office of International Programs, teaches courses on public finance, development planning, and governance in developing countries. His research and policy interests include urban and regional development, fiscal reform and public sector decentralization. He previously taught in the International Development Program and chaired the Master in City Planning Program at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT, and worked as a resident advisor with the Harvard Institute for International Development in Kenya and Indonesia. Professor Smoke has worked with various international organizations, including the World Bank, UN Development Program (UNDP), UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), UN Center for Human Settlements (UNCHS), US Agency for International Development (USAID), UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and GTZ (German Aid Agency). Professor Smoke has published in numerous journals, including World Development, Public Administration and Development, International Journal of Public Administration, Third World Planning Review, African Urban Quarterly, Regional Development Dialogue, Public Budgeting and Finance, Economic Development Quarterly, and Journal of Developing Areas. His most recent book (edited with Roy Bahl) is Restructuring Local Government Finance in Developing Countries: Lessons from South Africa (Edward Elgar, 2003). Professor Smoke received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rehman Sobhan Chairman, Centre for Policy and Dialogue Mr. Rehman Sobhan was educated at St. Paul's School, Darjeeling, Aitichison College, Lahore and Cambridge University. He began his working career at the faculty of Economics, Dhaka University. He served as Member, Bangladesh Planning Commission, in charge of the Divisions of Industry, Power and Natural Resources, and of Physical Infrastructure, as Chairman, Research Director and Director General, BIDS and as a Visiting Fellow, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University. He was a Member of the Advisory Council of the President of Bangladesh in charge of the Ministry of Planning and the Economic Relations Division. He is today the Chairman, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD). Mr. Sobhan has held a number of important professional positions. He was a Member of the Panel of Economists of the Third and Fourth Five Year Plans of Pakistan. He served as Envoy Extraordinary with special responsibility for Economic Affairs, Govt. of Bangladesh during 1971, as President, Bangladesh Economic Association, as a Member, Bangladesh National Commission on Money Banking and Finance, as a Member, UN Committee for Development Planning, as a Member, Governing Council of the UN University, Tokyo, as a Member of the Commission for a New Asia, Kuala Lumpur, as a Member of the Board of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva, as a Member of the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association, and as a Member, Group of Eminent Persons appointed by SAARC Heads of State. He is the Chairman of the Board of Grameen Bank. 6
SECRETARIAT STAFF Guido Bertucci Director of the Division for Public Economics and Public Administration, UNDESA John-Mary Kauzya Chief, Governance and Public Administration Branch, DPADM, UNDESA Haiyan Qian Chief, Knowledge Management Branch, DPADM, UNDESA M. Adil Khan Chief of Branch, Socio-Economic Governance and Management Branch (SGMB), DPADM, UNDESA Jacinto De Vera Chief, Policy Analysis and Coordination Unit, (SGMB), DPADM, UNDESA Olympios Katsiaouni Interregional Advisor, DPADM, UNDESA Mary Christine Ong-Reyes Programme and Research Assistant, DPADM, UNDESA Luis Prugue Administrative/Technical Cooperation, DPADM, UNDESA Craig Garnet Gilbert Intern/DPADM, UNDESA Jun Hee Choi Intern/DPADM, UNDESA 7