A recent workshop set up by The Policy Practice and the IDL Group came about to answer a very practical question; once policymakers accept that development is a political process, primarily locally driven, how should this affect the way they work? The increasing role of donors to think and work more politically in aid-supported interventions is adding a new dynamic in answering what exactly this means for the future role of donors and how they should respond to such a development.
The workshop, organised on the 18th of February 2014 at the October Gallery London, set out to unearth and examine these issues. Both The Policy Practice and the IDL Group examined six cases of aid-supported interventions supported by such external donors that achieved positive and potentially significant lasting impacts, and the factors that had contributed to their success. The case studies were as follows:
i.) The Western Odisha (India) rural livelihoods programme (WORLP)
ii.) The State Accountability and Voice Project (SAVI) in Nigeria
iii.) The Pyoe Pin in Myanmar/Burma
iv.) Land Titling in the Philippines
v.) Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration in DRC
vi.) The Enabling State Programme in Nepal
What constituted their success? The cases were assessed on the basis of whether they had a significant impact in relation to their objectives and resources deployed. Each case study had the following factors enshrined in their modus operandi that earmarked them as successes, which included: local leadership; external support to broker common interests; investment in building relationships; avoiding pressures to spend or achieve short term results; iterative design; a learning culture; and politically informed and astute management.
On the other hand, only a portion of the case studies in question harboured success in other factors, where there was a significant variation between each case study in these factoral implementations. They included: A sense of crisis or "critical juncture"; Arms length intermediaries; Long term engagement; Working below the radar; Continuity of personnel; Selection of partners; Individuals.
Two main challenges were identified: how to assess transformational change and how to scale up very 'hands-on' approaches to building the capacity of civil society partners without loss of quality. Other fundamental questions arose about how effective legitimate public institutions are created and sequencing between collective action to achieve tangible results, and the promotion of broader governance reform: which comes first, does one lead to the other, and in what circumstances and over what time frame?
Other issues that arose were qualitative assessments of perceptions, behaviour and "functionality" of public institutions in comparing and sharing their utility. Fragility was also an issue, where the need to design project approaches with sustainability as an objective from the outset is paramount, along with the necessity for assessment of results to be informed by politically smart, locally led approaches which could help protect interventions, particularly in their early stages of infancy. Devising alternate criteria for project reviews of such case studies aforementioned that take into account the kind of approaches listed under "success factors" above.