Global Development Politics

Intrigued by global development? Fascinated by our changing world? Want to know more about how power, policies and publics are shaping it? We’ve got you covered. 

The Global Development Politics Specialist Group

The Global Development Politics Specialist Group provides a platform for researchers and teachers of development politics in the UK and from around the world. Our work concentrates on the politics of development. We understand politics broadly as 'exercise and use of social power'. Development we conceptualise as the 'immanent processes and intentional projects of social and economic change'. Our members consider development across a wide array of sectors, including - but not limited to- financial instruments of economic growth, infrastructure, investments in health and education, rural and urban development, welfare and employment, wealth-creation, poverty and inequality, and changing ideas of human personhood, dignified lives and possibilities for the future. Although a large number of our members focus their research on 'developing' regions in southern Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, rapid changes in the global political economy have compelled our members to consider the afore-mentioned questions in the context of 'developed' countries as well. Profound changes such as the emergence of the BRICS, growing inequalities within countries rather than between them, and sustained interrogations of liberalism in the industrialised capitalist democracies of the North Atlantic have made this an exciting time to study, teach and research development politics. Membership is open to all!

Call For Papers Oxford 2026 IS OPEN!

The ex-ordo portal is set up now for the three Global Development SG panels for you to consider submitting an abstract to for the PSA Conference in March/April 2026 in Oxford.

Our three panels are entitled:
1.After USAID: ruptures and continuities in the political economy of development. Dr. Portia Roelofs, Dr. Paul Gilbert.

This panel critically interrogates the various ruptures and continuities to the political economy of development following the shut down of USAID. Disbursing an average of $23bn annually since 2000, USAID has been lauded for achieving major reductions in adult and child mortality, whilst also embodying the inequalities and hierarchies of a Western-dominated world order.

The panel invites empirically-grounded papers examining the direct and indirect effects of the termination of the world’s largest foreign aid agency, as well as papers considering the wider slow down of aid spending across traditional donors. Possible themes include: the elite and institutional politics of public spending in the United States; contextualising the banning of USAID in ongoing trends such as ‘the private turn’ or the financialization of development; the impacts on networks of experts and expertise, especially how knowledge is held or lost in institutions, individuals and networks; and how the exit of international aid actors is negotiated, resisted or celebrated by partner organisations.

The panel especially invites case studies of how the cessation of programmes has played out in recipient countries and communities, including researchers who find themselves accidentally up close with the impacts of these transformations on pre-existing research relationships and fieldwork locales. 

http://psa26.exordo.com/panels/29/contribute/ee4c31fd78ef867a9bb2bfa76b8911811986e8c1

2. Renewable Energy Transition in the Global South - case studies of challenge and opportunity. Dr Siobhan Bygate and Dr Joe Lin

The panel invites papers examining the nature, challenges and opportunities of renewable energy transition in the Global South, in MENA and BRICS countries, exploring both domestic and international impacts.

Much has been written about transition in the Global North (Yergin, 1991; 2021), however, the application to the Global South has tended to concentrate on concepts such as neo-colonial extractivism (Hamouchene & Sandwell, 2023) and resource curse concepts (Sachs and Warner, 1999). Despite these considerations, the Global South itself covers a wide number of scenarios and is itself considered a contested term. If extractivism can apply to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (Yilanci et al. 2022), can it also apply to North Africa or Chile (Terra Dos Sanots et al, 2022)? And where do the BRICS countries fit into this landscape? Papers authored or co-authored by global south researchers with experience within this field are especially encouraged as are researchers new to the field. The panel aims to promote a new and innovative interdisciplinary enquiry required for the new era of energy transition including IPE, economic geography, geopolitics, public administration and post-colonialism.

http://psa26.exordo.com/panels/28/contribute/2199bd69d7681ef356b5b1bfd76e83190791d35b

3. Multipolarity and Global Development: future geopolitics and economic transformation. Dr Joe Lin and Dr Siobhan Bygate 

The world is undergoing tremendous transformation with thanks to the vicissitudes of politics arising from geopolitical conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, and potentially in East Asia, as well as ever-expanding artificial intelligence. This poses great challenges and opportunities for countries in the Global South. What has gained traction is the vision of multipolarity, which contrasts with the unipolarity that has defined the international order since the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the forefront of building a competing multipolar world order is the BRICS+ coalition, which further expanded at its 15th Summit in 2023. On 6 January 2025, Indonesia joined BRICS as a full member, with Nigeria joining as a partner country. As of now, BRICS has had ten full members and 9 partner nations. What does this mean for the development of the Global South countries? What does this mean for the futures of economic transformation and geopolitics?

The panel invites case studies of how economic development and geopolitical concerns are connected within the Global South context. Any case studies engaged may be either regionally or nationally focused, and the papers produced are expected to consider both empirically and conceptually how Global South members negotiate with the Global North members; how the negotiation would change with an increasingly influential BRICS+ coalition; and how we conceive multipolarity as an alternative to unipolarity and bipolarity as well as multiple futures of economic transformation and geopolitics.

http://psa26.exordo.com/panels/30/contribute/e711366d8a7d2cfa061eb07229916acfa5a6697c

Details of each panel theme are also available through the above links.

Submission Process:

If you submitted a paper proposal to be reviewed by our Specialist Group last year, this process will feel familiar. If you don’t yet have an ExOrdo account, you’ll be able to create one using the same link. The deadline for submissions to our Specialist Group Global Development as with other SGs is 17 October.

More information can be obtained here: /psa22-submission-guidance-ex-ordo

Instructions

Once you are logged into the PSA26 Ex Ordo platform, click the ‘Dashboard’ link in the top bar. On the dashboard home page, you will see a card that says, ‘SUBMIT ABSTRACT’ and a button labelled ‘Submit Your Abstract’ which will take you to the My Submission Portal.
In the My Submission portal, you will find an easy step-by-step process to follow.
When submitting your abstract, please select our Specialist Group’s name in the ‘Topics’ section, which will identify us as the intended recipient and ensure your abstract is sent to us by the PSA team.

Please note that where there is more than one author per paper, you should also ensure that the ‘Lead Author’ includes the details of the co-authors.    

If you have any queries regarding this, please don’t hesitate to contact the PSA team via conference@psa.ac.uk. 

We look forward to reviewing your submissions very soon and to welcoming you all to the Global Development Group in March/April 2026 in Oxford!

Conversations on Global Development Politics

“Conversations on global development politics” is your portal to a richer understanding of the profound transformations that are shaping the world. We investigate issues of poverty and inequality; capitalism and democracy; and climate change, public health, and changing forms of human personhood as the political orders and economic structures that have framed social life for over two centuries are reconfigured. We investigate problems. We spotlight innovations. And we chat with experts who have written books that explore problems and solutions.

Join us on this intellectual quest with some of the sharpest minds who are reshaping our understanding of global development and its politics.

Conversations Schedule 2025-2026

Symposium at University of Hertfordshire - PSA Excellence Fund supported (Global Development Politics and Environmental Politics Groups): 

Geopolitics of NetZero Transition, Green Hydrogen, and international dimensions of a Just Transition 

online and in person on Friday 28th November 2025 - please conatct s.bygate@herts.ac.uk for more information.

Previous Conversations

Schedule 2024

September 16 2024, 12 noon to 1 pm BST: The Politics of Development, a pathbreaking introduction to the controversial, contested and deeply political topic of development. Speaker: Claire McLoughlin. Watch the recording here.

September 26, 2024 10 am to 11 am BST: The Spectre of State Capitalism, a comprehensive study of the material, discursive, and ideological dimensions of the ongoing reconfiguration of the state's role as promoter, supervisor, shareholder-investor, and direct owner of capital across the world economy.Speakers: llias Alami and Adam Dixon. Watch the recording here.

September 30, 2024  11am to 12 noon BST: Development, (Dual) Citizenship and its Discontents in Africa, a rich examination of socio-economic change in Liberia, Africa's first black republic, through the prism of citizenship. Speaker: Robtel Neajai Pailey. Watch the recording here.

Decolonising Pedagogical Strategies: A summary: Joe Lin examines decolonial pedagogical strategies in  a report (August 2022-July-2023) funded by the PSA Research and Innovation Scheme. The report analyses voices of international studies in internationalised and multicultural settings of UK universities. The aim is to identify and confront Eurocentrism in the contested field of Global Development Politics and other fields within international studies, broadly defined. This is a summary of the report - link. This is the full report - link