ZEF Bonn

1. Theories of Development and Change
The issue of “change" concerns fundamental aspects of development. This program
aims at establishing a dialogue between natural science, economics and social sciences
at the level of their basic theoretical models of change and development. In a
first step, the most relevant models were identified and discussed with senior researchers
from all three departments during an internal workshop in December 2001.
In the second step, an international workshop relating to these models was organised.
The preparation of these events has involved a fair amount of co-operation and
exchange across the three ZEF departments.
The international workshop, “Paradigms of Change", was held in Bonn from May 23
to 25, 2002. It brought together distinguished scholars representing such diverse
specialities as climate change, molecular biology, behavioural studies, quantum
physics in the natural sciences, economics emphasising the approaches of path
dependence, new institutional economics, as well as evolutionary economics and
financial economics, and, in social sciences, new modernisation theory, the historical
strand in new institutionalism, critical rationalism, systems theory and transformation
studies. The objective in bringing together this wide array of scientific approaches
was to explore how far models of change from one specific disciplinary field
can be related to those from others and which commonalities may be discovered
between such models. Secondly, we wanted to discuss the possibilities and limits of
an extra-disciplinary application of each of the approaches, and to foster cross-paradigmatic
exchange in an open process of mutual learning. Finally, clues for a better
understanding and conceptualisation of development going beyond teleological and
linear concepts were explored. Based on the workshop, which was funded by the
Volks-wagen Foundation, a book publication edited by Andreas Wimmer and
Reinhart Kössler is being prepared.
2. Poverty and Equity
To meet the Millennium Development Goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015, a
better access of the poor to assets, institutions, technologies and markets is of
urgent need. Millions of poor people are excluded from basic social services such as
education and health care as well as from technological innovations. Finding solutions
to overcome social exclusion through institutional and technology innovations
is a central theme of ZEF's research in the area of poverty and equity. While the
focus is on rural areas, where roughly 70 % of the world's poor still live and work,
ZEF is increasingly putting rural-urban linkages into perspective.
ZEF research in the area of institutional innovations to overcome social exclusion concentrates
on identifying determinants of participation in local organisations and insurance
arrangements. ZEF research on technological innovations for poverty reduction
explores the potentials of new information technologies for inclusion of the poor in
the market economy, as well as making public goods more accessible for the poor.
ZEF research focuses increasingly on public goods for the poor, including health services,
education and water, as well as access to rights and the court system.
Research on health insurance is highlighted as an example below. ZEF research on
poverty and equity has a strong emphasis on gender dimensions. This is reflected
Research
"Paradigms of Change", an
international workshop organised
by ZEF and held in Bonn in
May 2002, brought together
distinguished scholars to
explore the relations and commonalities
between models of
change from various disciplinary
fields.
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