The International Programme for the Development of Communication: A decade of infancy
The IPDC, which at inception promised practical assistance to developing nations unencumbered by the conflicting ideologies of the First and Third Worlds, quickly fell short of expectations and has been largely ignored since the mid-1980s. Despite administrative and budget problems, the Programme remains an acceptable, if small, effort to address communications imbalances. Most projects approved for funding in the past decade have dealt with media training and research, radio and television broadcasting, and the creation or improvement of regional news agencies. In support of the 1991 Declaration of Windhoek, future projects will be funded not only according to need, but also based on their contributions to press freedom and the principles of independence, pluralism and diversity of the media.
Unesco’s Road Toward Knowledge Societies
Abstract Though traditionally perceived as a more liberal international organisation, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) is part and parcel of the “development machine”. Inspired by post-structural thinking in development studies and Jessop’s (2004) cultural political economy approach, we examine the organisation’s 2005 World Report Towards Knowledge Societies as a text of development construing and constructing particular discourses. First, we introduce the knowledge-based economy discourse and the information society discourse. Then we situate UNESCO’s report as an attempt to provide an alternative to the die-hard information society discourse. Next, we argue that through its allegiance to knowledge-based economy reasoning (concerning education and learning; globalisation and development), UNESCO in this report actually endorses and helps to construct the discourse on the information society. The convergence of information society, knowledge-based economy and neo-liberal thinking has very real material consequences because it provides the ideal discursive context for the ICT4D (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) paradigm, the newest development craze which may belittle more than a reissue of the old modernisation paradigm.
Definitions of efficiency
This is the third in a series of occasional notes on economics

Decision makers are increasingly faced with the challenge of reconciling growing demand for health care services with available funds.1 Economists argue that the achievement of (greater) efficiency from scarce resources should be a major criterion for priority setting. This note examines three concepts of efficiency: technical, productive, and allocative.

Efficiency measures whether healthcare resources are being used to get the best value for money.1 Health care can be seen an intermediate product, in the sense of being a means to the end of improved health. Efficiency is concerned with the relation between resource inputs (costs, in the form of labour, capital, or equipment) and either intermediate outputs (numbers treated, waiting time, etc) or final health outcomes (lives saved, life years gained, quality adjusted life years (QALYs)). Although many evaluations use intermediate outputs as a measure of effectiveness, this can …