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About Michael Edwards

Michael Edwards is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos in New York, the author of Civil Society, and the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Civil Society; which is published in September. His website is futurepositive.org.

Articles by Michael Edwards

Michael Edwards

Michael Edwards

Looking back from 2050, it seems strange to think that personal change and politics were once seen as separate worlds. Who knows exactly when the tipping point occurred, but around 2025, and spurred on by spiraling inequalities, rising corporate influence, civil society action and the imperatives of climate change, large numbers of people began to place solidarity at the heart of their decision-making instead of competition, and to see democracy as a way to use and share power in liberating ways. One hundred years after the birth of the Civil Rights movement in the USA, Martin Luther King’s “beloved community” finally started to shape itself in deep democracy’s embrace.

What can the ‘Big Society’ learn from history?

Michael Edwards 14 March 2011
Governments can do little to build civil society directly but much more to strengthen the conditions in which civil society can build itself.

Don’t sell out British aid to business

Michael Edwards 28 February 2011
This week, the government will unveil its review of Britain’s international development budget. The Coalition’s vision for the future of British aid lies in partnerships with business. But to privatize the fulfillment of our international responsibilities would be dangerous, misguided and a waste of public money.

'Know-How', 'Know-What' and the politics of knowledge for social change

Michael Edwards 1 October 2010
In an age when wealth and power present a more diffuse and benign face to the world, the soft authority of knowledge is ever more important as a force for social change. The politics of knowledge – how ideas are created, used and disseminated – represents a key issue for the social change community

Could more women transform politics?

Michael Edwards 1 October 2010
It's radical equality that matters to the transformation of politics, not diversity as such - we continue our debate between men about achieving gender parity.

Will the poor always be with us?

Michael Edwards 10 September 2010
Well, that’s it for the Manchester conference and this is the last blog I’m going to write. The last soggy vegetables have been cleared away from the tables, and I’m not referring to the academics who took part. British institutional food is a wonder to behold and a nightmare to digest, as a leading Indian poverty researcher complained to me over lunch earlier today: “rice - this is rice?” Or it could have been the carrot cake, or even mashed potato... Read on

Reducing Global Poverty - Back to the Future?

Michael Edwards 10 September 2010
When I was a PhD student in the late 1970s I was taught that there was no one route to poverty-reduction, but that since some countries had already reduced poverty pretty well we should learn from their experience. Not exactly rocket science is it? Read on...

Policies or politics for the poorest?

Michael Edwards 9 September 2010
It’s day two of the Manchester conference, and yes, it is still gray and rainy, the natural camouflage of this city that it wears to disguise its charms. The focus has turned to how poverty can be reduced, especially what the academics call “chronic” poverty which affects at least half-a-billion of the world’s poorest people on an “enduring and persistent basis.” Read on...

Is world poverty declining and if so why?

Michael Edwards 8 September 2010
Is world poverty declining and if so why? It’s a deceptively simple question with no straightforward answers, as keynote presenters Joe Stiglitz and David Hulme confirmed at this morning’s opening session (well, it is an academic conference so what did you expect?) Read on...

Ten Years of War Against Poverty: What Have We Learned?

Michael Edwards 7 September 2010
Michael Edwards says welcome to Manchester

Ten years of war against poverty - what have we learned? That’s the question that brings 500-or-so scholars and activists to Manchester this week to debate the causes of, and remedies for, global poverty, and I’ll be blogging from the conference on openDemocracy for the next three days. Coming just a fortnight before the UN General Assembly meets for its own review of the Millennium Development Goals, the Manchester conference provides a less official, and hopefully more self-critical, opportunity to discuss what has gone well and not-so-well in the first decade of concerted efforts to eradicate extreme poverty worldwide.

Read on

Four immediate responses to Phil Vernon

Michael Edwards, Alison Evans, Tina Wallace, and Gideon Rabinowitz 9 November 2009
Phil Vernon asks if overseas development aid is working. This is a good moment, he argues, to take a step back and ask ourselves whether we would call today’s aid policy and practise successful in providing sufficient impetus to overcome the strong forces worldwide that keep people poor. Four immediate replies…

Philanthrocapitalism: old myths, new realities

Michael Edwards

"Light the blue touch-paper and wait for the fireworks": that just about sums up the response to my book Just Another Emperor? The Myths and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism since its publication in March 2008. Not that I'm complaining.

Philanthrocapitalism: after the goldrush

Michael Edwards

It's indisputable that something genuinely important is stirring in the world of philanthropy - a movement to harness the power of business and the market to the goals of social change, what Matthew Bishop calls "philanthrocapitalism".

This week's editor

Heather McRobie


Niki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist and co-editor of OurKingdom.

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European Union stars in Paris. Flickr/notarim. Some rights reserved.

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