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How Big Things Get Done
Mega projects never seem to get done on time, or on budget. Planners often repeat similar errors due to a lack of data on comparable projects. Fortunately someone has spent a career building a database to provide evidence for understanding them projects and allowing for comparative time and cost comparisons. Summarizing findings, sharing experiences and providing a wide […]
Tags: #Flyvbjerg #How big things get done #Management #Mega projects #Project management
The Seed Is Mine – The Life of Kas Maine
Written in 1997, following what sounds to be an extensive oral history data collection effort, Charles van Onselen wrote “The Seed is Mine”. The book brings to life the experiences of one, and one who might otherwise not have any other record in the written historical documents (exception on legal note). This book is an […]
Tags: #Apartheid #Ethnography #History #Oral History #South Africa
The Politics of Ethnicity in Ethiopia
Part of the Reading Ethiopia series This book was written by Lovise Aalen in 2011 and it is unfortunate that I had not read this book until now, given the geography and topics covered (apologies Dr Aalen if you are out there). The author says this book explores a unique experiment in institutionalizing the politics of […]
Tags: #Ethiopia #Ethnicity #Ethnofederalism #Governance #Politics
The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen
In 1997 Diamond wrote the best-seller, “Guns, Germs and Steel”. Nearly three decades later, a similar sounding book (The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen) by Linda Colley shifts the gaze from environmental determinism to political technology (primarily constitutions). The author is a historian and the book is woven around key individuals, which makes the […]
Tags: #Constitution #History #Linda Colley #Political technology
Redefining Success
Having recently published an article on conceptualizing “success”, when I saw “Redefining Success” in Vietnam (published locally), I picked it up. The book presents brief stories about people who started NGOs, social enterprises and corporations that serve a public good. The book is written by Dinh Duc Hoang, Nguyen Huu Phung Nguyen, Nguyen Ngoc Long, […]
Tags: #public good #Redefining Success #Social enterprise #Success #Vietnam
New Military Strategies in the Gulf
Published by I.B. Tauris, “New Military Strategies in the Gulf: The Mirage of Autonomy in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar” (2023) by Jean-Loup Samaan offers a unique analysis of the changing military directions of the Gulf (focusing on those three nations). There are many books that do a poor job covering the region, this […]
About me
Logan Cochrane
Logan is a Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and an Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last twenty years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Logan acts as a consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.
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