LIST OF PANELS

The panel aims at revisiting the variety of development strategies and approaches while specifically contrasting international organizations and donor involvement with bottom-up entrepreneurial activities in developing countries. It invites for papers, which describe, assess and evaluate the impact of foreign, top down involvement as well as entrepreneurial bottom-up initiatives preferably in countries and regions of the Global South. The panel further aims at contributing to a vivid discussion about the advantages and drawbacks of classical top-down and alternative bottom-up development approaches. In this context, entrepreneurship is defined in a broader sense referring to start-up activity as well as forms of local, autochthonous capacity building.

In 1980, the Brandt Report North-South: A Programme for Survival advocated for the urgent implementation of an emergency program for the Global South that implied monetary transfers but more importantly transfers of knowledge, energy, technology and overall a “massive transfer of resources”. Indigenous technological capacities should be increased through education, and “(…) health care, social development and economic progress must advance interdependently if we are to attain our objectives for the year 2000”. Not only did hunger, global poverty and the number of armed conflicts increase since the Brandt Report was published, but also does Climate Change increasingly put pressure on public policy. We regard the Sustainable development Goals as a continuation of the recommendations made by the Brandt Commission, which illustrate that a sustainable form of progress is still at the core of international development policy.

Our panel discussion puts capacity building at national level and local community level into the focus of the discussion. We will address the aforementioned issues in three parts. Firstly, we aim at assessing why past development strategies led to the unsatisfying policy outcomes (Sachs 2018). Secondly, we will analyze what factors contribute to an unsuccessful development policy and give examples of strategies we consider potentially more adequate. We argue that building upon the structures of local institutions and existing ideas within communities can be successful alternatives to top-down approaches. In this context, entrepreneurial activity has proven to be a successful accelerator of local capacity building as it increasingly promotes social and environmental outcomes. We believe that it can contribute to a sustainable progress and the implementation of international climate and sustainability goals (Farinelli et al. 2011). In a third part, we invite participants to discuss about the role of public policy for sustainable development and local capacity strengthening.

The panel aims at revisiting the variety of development strategies and approaches while specifically contrasting international organizations and donor involvement with bottom-up entrepreneurial activities in developing countries. It invites for papers, which describe, assess and evaluate the impact of foreign, top down involvement as well as entrepreneurial bottom-up initiatives preferably in countries and regions of the Global South. The panel further aims at contributing to a vivid discussion about the advantages and drawbacks of classical top-down and alternative bottom-up development approaches. In this context, entrepreneurship is defined in a broader sense referring to start-up activity as well as forms of local, autochthonous capacity building.

In 1980, the Brandt Report North-South: A Programme for Survival advocated for the urgent implementation of an emergency program for the Global South that implied monetary transfers but more importantly transfers of knowledge, energy, technology and overall a “massive transfer of resources”. Indigenous technological capacities should be increased through education, and “(…) health care, social development and economic progress must advance interdependently if we are to attain our objectives for the year 2000”. Not only did hunger, global poverty and the number of armed conflicts increase since the Brandt Report was published, but also does Climate Change increasingly put pressure on public policy. We regard the Sustainable development Goals as a continuation of the recommendations made by the Brandt Commission, which illustrate that a sustainable form of progress is still at the core of international development policy.

Our panel discussion puts capacity building at national level and local community level into the focus of the discussion. We will address the aforementioned issues in three parts. Firstly, we aim at assessing why past development strategies led to the unsatisfying policy outcomes (Sachs 2018). Secondly, we will analyze what factors contribute to an unsuccessful development policy and give examples of strategies we consider potentially more adequate. We argue that building upon the structures of local institutions and existing ideas within communities can be successful alternatives to top-down approaches. In this context, entrepreneurial activity has proven to be a successful accelerator of local capacity building as it increasingly promotes social and environmental outcomes. We believe that it can contribute to a sustainable progressand the implementation of international climate and sustainability goals (Farinelli et al. 2011). In a third part, we invite participants to discuss about the role of public policy for sustainable development and local capacity strengthening.

We invite scholars to submit abstracts in line with the panel. Topics of interest for submission include, but are not limited to:

- Community-based development approaches

- Empirical analysis of bottom-up development initiatives

- Entrepreneurship promotion for development

- Empirical analysis of sustainable entrepreneurship

- Policy support for sustainable entrepreneurship

- Discussion of alternative development approaches

Especially welcome are papers that take on a recipient perspective and that analyze the efficiency of given policy instruments for development aid and/or the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.