Salvatore Babones
Well ... everywhere. But it won't come from everywhere. Pressure for good policy should come from experts -- academics, but also unions, NGOs, and all the other people who are active in organized civil society. Few academics actively promote good public policy. I wish many more would. In democratic societies, ordinary voters who are not experts need to have the evidence placed before them. When academic experts don't do this, they cede the field to the paid mouthpieces of industry and the wealthy. I really wish that more academic experts would write for popular audiences. We often blame universities for discouraging academics from popular publishing, but that is a poor excuse.
In my experience, most academics -- even most academics doing policy-relevant research -- simply don't want to talk to the public. That's a sad reality, very sad. We academics hold a public trust, most of us supported at public expense. We have a responsibility to educate the public, even if that means a little extra work now and then. We have a responsibility to positively work to educate the public, not simply place our academic research in the public domain with an invitation for the public to "come and get it."
Catherine Boone
With respect to the international financial institutions, and those based in the United States, there have been civil society actors that have raised voices for more pro-development, macro-economic and social policies for many years that have not been very strong voices. They have played a role over time but it took them many decades to have an impact, and when they were heard it was because partially because the powerful actors realised that their radical and harmful programmes had failed.
