Peter Blunt

Peter Blunt is Honorary Professor, School of Business, UNSW (Canberra); a former full professor of management in Australia, Norway, and the UK; a consultant for UN and other development agencies (40 countries); and an editorial board member of several international journals. His commissioned publications on governance and public sector management informed UNDP policy on these matters and his books include the standard works on management in Africa and, most recently, (with Cecilia Escobar and Vlassis Missos) The Political Economy of Bilateral Aid: Implications for Global Development (Routledge, 2023) and The Political Economy of Dissent: A Research Companion (Routledge, forthcoming 2026).

Peter Blunt's recent articles

Where have all the flowers gone?

Where have all the flowers gone?

One of my most memorable interspecies encounters was many years ago with an orangutan in a nature reserve in Sabah on the island of Borneo.

After the genocide in Gaza

After the genocide in Gaza

So what happens next, sports fans, fellow Australian citizens? Now that Israel is starting to run out of Palestinian children and women to kill, hospitals to smash, and people to starve.

The shabby and ludicrous politics of provocation, self-defence and divine right

The shabby and ludicrous politics of provocation, self-defence and divine right

As with other wars, questions of provocation, self-defence and divine right or entitlement are central themes of what the Western mainstream media have had to say about the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, and the attacks on Iran by the US and Israel in June 2025.

Orientalism and casus belli in the Middle East

Orientalism and casus belli in the Middle East

There can surely have been few times in recent history when Edward Said’s seminal notion of Orientalism has had more tragic and pointed immediacy and relevance than now.

The devil's dance with Iran

The devil's dance with Iran

Iran has been on a hit list of seven countries in a geostrategic plan for the reconfiguration of the Middle East first drawn up by the US in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks.

Dangers and conveniences of combining great power with egomania

Dangers and conveniences of combining great power with egomania

To take just one possible indicator, if the worldwide stampede to safe haven investments is anything to go by, there is a general sense of foreboding out there regarding President Trump’s election to a second term in office and the deleterious effects of this on the global economy, the stability of international relations and the likelihood of war with China, the genocide in Gaza, the gathering pace of global warming, authoritarian rule, and the suppression of dissent.