The department is a lively community that is recognised internationally as one of the top centres for research and teaching in development studies.

Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
In 1998 Arumeru District, NE Tanzania, erupted in a revolt over taxation. In one of the most remarkable instances of rural political mobilisation since Independence, almost the entire population of the District refused to pay Local Government Development Levy. Consistent with supporters of a donor-inspired 'Governance Agenda', some commentators in Tanzania lauded the revolt as evidence that multi-party democracy was finally leading to a new era of transparency and democratic accountability in development administration.
The present paper provides an account of the revolt and argues that such an interpretation is premature: popular mobilisation was the outcome of a contingent conjuncture in which acute economic hardship coincided with elite interests of a factional nature; the revolt does not demonstrate the ability of peasants to hold leaders accountable on a regularised basis. More generally, the revolt is symptomatic of a process of class de-structuring under which Tanzania's middle class now secures its reproduction not through national organs of the state but through struggle for control of local institutions. This process, dubbed 'districtization', has important implications for political stability and accountability in Tanzania.