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United States Institutional Context Database

The United States humanitarian sector has been historically dominated by the market. This case study has explored the privatization of US development aid from the 1970s until 2021 through a case study of the USAID. A database on the privatization of USAID was constructed and used as the basis of the study. 

Find the database used for this study as well as relevant publications below.

Database contributors:

Maha Rafi Atal is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Global Economy at the School of Social and
Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. Maha’s research takes a political economy
approach to the study of corporate power, examining the ways that corporations exercise
political authority and the mechanisms by which states and communities can challenge that
authority. Currently, Maha is writing a book on corporate social responsibility as a governance
regime, while also conducting research on corporate power in the media and technology
sectors and on corporate accountability under international law.

Emilie Kronhjem is a research assistant in the Commodifying Compassion project. She holds an MSc in Business Administration and E-business from Copenhagen Business School. 

Janette Kotivirta is a research assistant in the Commodifying Compassion project.She holds an MSc in Environment and Development at the University of Copenhagen and is currently she is a PhD student at the University of Helsinki. Her research explores questions of global environmental justice through a political economy lense, examining the shifting North-South relations through nordic forestry operations and their resistance in Latin America. 

To cite this database:

Atal, Maha Rafi; Janette Kotivirta; Emilie Kronhjem, 2023, "Commodifying Compassion: United States Institutional Context Database", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NMKZFP, Harvard Dataverse, V1

How to use this database?

The database gathers documentation across USAID's history that make reference to the “private sector”. The database can be used in the qualitative data analysis software Nvivo allowing for searches for over 500 codes (see "Codes" document) across a sub-sample of 74 documents which and can shed light on USAID’s view of the private sector’s role in development.

To learn more on the use of Nvivo you can refer to their website.

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