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Vague impact criteria are a blessing in disguise. Researchers who push against criteria that allow considerable autonomy are foolish and should learn from overseas contemporaries that a clearer definition of impact requirements is not dissimiliar from a tightening of the noose, write J. Britt Holbrook and Robert Frodeman.

Patrick Dunleavy reviews a fascinating, but flawed, history of democratic thinking from an American perspective. It throws often unexpected light on democratic innovations through the ages; and if the government’s project to slice the UK electorate up into equal constituencies is your bag, you can get stuck in here.

Alan Renwick explores the proposals for reforming the House of Lords with a view to explaining the specific consequences of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system – arguing that it would be unlikely to bring the party domination seen in Australia.

For most British citizens, the government web domain is their first point of contact with the state – and it can be confusing. The Labour government tried to update it by developing government ‘supersites’. Yet Jane Tinkler finds that recent statistics show that the central government is spending around £130m per year to generate somewhat less than 550 million visits to its sites. And the quality of information facing citizens and business still varies a great deal.

The literature on aid and growth has not found a convincing instrumental variable to identify the causal effects of aid. This paper exploits an instrumental variable based on the fact that since 1987, eligibility for aid from the International Development Association (IDA) has been based partly on whether or not a country is below a certain threshold of per capita income. The paper finds evidence that other donors tend to reinforce rather than compensate for reductions in IDA aid following threshold crossings. Overall, aid as a share of gross national income (GNI) drops about 59 percent on average after countries cross the threshold. Focusing on the 35 countries that have crossed the income threshold from below between 1987 and 2010, a positive, statistically significant, and economically sizable effect of aid on growth is found. A one percentage point increase in the aid to GNI ratio from the sample mean raises annual real per capita growth in gross domestic product by approximately 0.35 percentage points. The analysis shows that the main channel through which aid promotes growth is by increasing physical investment.