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Chapter One
Introduction:
Synthesising Case Study Findings
by James Manor
How can development be promoted in less developed countries that have recently experienced complex, devastating emergenciesas a result of extreme misgovernment and/or armed conflict? Their governments are usually beset by severe weaknesses, face daunting challenges,and preside over large numbers of people who are traumatised, displaced and heartily cynical about government and all its works.
How do international development agencies work constructively with governments which exercise limited sovereignty, have little legitimacy, and are severely incapacitated? The main capacity which many possess – often as a legacy of armed conflict – is their ability to deploy coercive force. They need somehow to acquire other types of capacity – those associated with developmental states. They are often grossly over-centralised, since recent conflicts and complex emergencies have impelled them to concentrate power at higher levels in order to pursue struggles for survival.
Governments in fragile states -- or what the World Bank terms ‘Low Income Countries Under Stress” (LICUS),a term often used in these case studies -- must somehow make an excruciatingly difficult transition. They must begin consulting and responding to ordinary people – many of whom they may distrust. This is essential in order to foster some popular legitimacy, so that people will become more willing to engage constructively with government and lend their energies to the task of reconstruction.
Building the developmental capacity of governments, by inculcating new skills and encouraging more open, accountable and responsive processes–is a matter of urgency. So is the need to change the prevailing habits of mind within those governments. Powerful leaders within regimes that only possess what is here called ‘quasi-statehood’ are often deeply insecure about their own authority and legitimacy. They are therefore intensely fearful of change – lest it dilute their grip on society and destabilise delicate situations. They are often especially sceptical of new initiatives which entail power-sharing with groups of people whom they may recently have sought to intimidate, who do not share their commitment to ideas that shaped recent struggles, and who do not possess the skills of whatever technocrats they have around them. Some of those with whom power might be shared are former adversaries. And yet in those countries which have been scarred by war, it is crucial to reintegrate former combatants – on both sides – and to provide them with the means of sustaining their livelihoods.
Donor agencies which work in these environments also face tough challenges. They often need, early on, to adopt emergency measures to ensure the survival of large numbers of people. Since the poor governance has often contributed to these crises, they frequently need to create agencies and structures which by-pass governments, in order to save lives. But this poses a dilemma, since over the medium term, government institutions must be strengthened and equipped to play a developmental role – and agencies which by-pass government institutions may undermine what little legitimacy and capacity the latter possess. So in many cases, donors must also make a difficult transition –from relief to development, from substituting for mainstream government institutions to enabling them to perform key tasks. This is exceedingly difficult, but the studies in this book indicate that donor programmes can make substantial headway on this front. It also demonstrates how they achieved this in a diversity of testing contexts.
When we began our analyses, we expected that approaches widely used by donors in countries that are not fragile states[1]would not all be appropriate in the extremely difficult environments examined here. That turned out to be true – but only to a limited extent. A number of well accepted principles and strategies have proved to their worth in these countries, although they often need some adjustment.
In brief, we found that appropriately designed programmes can indeed produce constructive results where states are fragile. But to achieve them, three things are important.
- A thorough assessment of distinctive conditions and dynamics at and just above the local level should be conducted at the outset, in consultation with groups at those levels.
- The design of initiatives should be strongly influenced by that assessment.
- Programmes should be implemented flexibly, with a willingness both to learn from further frequent consultations and to adjust approaches in the light of such learning.
We also found that successful approaches in one sector, government agency or spatial area often achieve some ‘spillover’ effects -- because some key actors in other sectors, agencies or areas recognise the utility of those approaches and seize upon them. But efforts at ‘scaling up’ –the systematic promotion of the spread of such approaches, horizontally to other development sectors, government agencies or spatial areas, or vertically to higher levels in political systems – is often a difficult, slow process. As Greeley notes in chapter two, much of the ‘scaling up’ agenda has been developed in countries where governments are much stronger than in the fragile states examined in this book.
Nevertheless, when senior government actors perceive that new approaches – instead of threatening their power -- promote development and enhance their legitimacy, their thinking can be changed in ways that make them amenable to similar approaches in other spheres.
Finally, two especially important ideas emerge from our findings. First, we were surprised to discover thatat the local level, much greater constructive potential survives conflicts and other complex emergencies than we had expected or than we found at higher levels in most political systems. The second idea follows from the first. Programmes that promote constructive interaction between government actors, civil society organisations (where they can be found) and people at the local level have unusual promise.
Our approach in the case studies is set out in great detail by Martin Greeley in Chapter Two – which was written before field work began. It is thus unnecessary here to offer more than a few brief comments by way of summary. Each case study examined a specific programme undertaken in countries which qualify (or nearly qualify) as fragile states – that is, in LICUS conditions (or something very close to them). In assessing programmes, researchers focused on three issues.
First, they identified and sought to explain ‘development results’ – by considering ‘delivered outcomes’ in general and, more specifically, ‘governance outcomes’. The latter were singled out because improvements in governance were presumed to be (and, in these studies, were shown to be) an urgent priority, since poor governance is one of the distinguishing features of fragile states. Not incidentally, these studies also show improvements in governance to be more feasible than we had anticipated in such conditions, as is explained in detail below.
The second and third issues that were examined were, respectively, ‘design considerations’ and ‘implementation processes’ – which again, are discussed at length below. Our analyses of these three topics yielded numerous insights on a number of other important themes, many of which have been noted above and all of which are set out below.
What follows is a synthesis of findings from eightstudies of development initiatives in fivelessdevelopedcountries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, conducted in late 2004. Most of these countries qualify as fragile states – where conditions are exceedingly difficult. The others were either countries which had recently achieved sufficient ‘turnaround’ to move out of the ‘fragile’ category but where conditions that we associate with fragile statespersisted to a degree, or countries containingregions where severe problems approximating those found in fragile statesexisted. Let us briefly identify these eight cases studies.
Chapterthreeis the first of two to consider programmes that were macro-systemic in character. It discusses the Transition Support Programme in Timor-Leste which was an attempt (unique among our cases) to create the structures of a new state and to enable them to acquire developmental capacity. It provided funding which was essential until expected revenues from oil and gas resources came on stream – indeed, without it the very viability of the state would have been at risk. It enabled improvements in governance, and the promotion of service delivery and other development policies, which addressed poverty and encouraged the beginnings of economic growth. It was implemented in a flexible, consultative manner which fostered a sense of ownership among the government and – since people’s preferences influenced decisions – among ordinary people.
Chapter four examines the Seila programme in Cambodia is a programme that channels funds through provincial governments to small infrastructural projects that have been designed with input from local residents. Crucial to its success has been a willingness to proceed incrementally, and to make frequent (and cumulatively, quite substantial) adjustments in its approach as a result of lessons learned from experience. When it began, the provincial level was in severe disarray, but the programme has enabled it to function reasonably well – by providing funds and promoting reform and capacity development. One key type of capacity is the ability to work responsively with people at the grassroots. For both donors and the government, it has become a favoured mechanism for delivering resources to the rural areas. It has also persuaded a formerly over-centralised government of the utility of decentralisation.
Chapter five is the first of two that analyse initiatives focused on single developmental sectors, with system-wide implications. It assesses two successive rehabilitation and development projects in the health sector in Timor-Leste. The first of these dealt with immediate and quite urgent basic health needs while developing a new national health policy and an institutional framework to implement it. A pharmaceutical logistics system had to be created, health facilities needed to be rebuilt, etc. It initially relied heavily (and inevitably) on international NGOs for personnel and expertise, but in the interests of long-term government provision, they were coordinated by the government. The second, subsequent project increasingly drew Timorese into roles as managers and health professionals (some of whom returned from overseas), plus practitioners from other less developed countries.
Chapter six deals with another initiative within a single sector that had a system-wide impact, the Direct Support to School Programme in Mozambique. By decentralising resources and discretionary powers across the entire country through government agencies at intermediate and local levels, to local schools and communities, it began to build constructive partnerships between all of these actors – who had exercised little or (at the local level) no power under the previous over-centralised system. The results are improved governance, greater participation from below, increased enrolments, and more effective education.
Chapter seven the first of four to consider programmes focused not at the macro-level or one single sectors country-wide, but on specific sub-regions or localities. However, these sometimes had very wide-ranging impacts. That was clearly the case with the Decentralised District Planning and Finance programme in one Mozambican province, analysed in this chapter. Powers and resources were devolved to the district level where the political and planning processes were made more open and participatory. These changes yielded improved state-society relations at this crucial intermediate level, and a substantial enhancement of the developmental capacities of government there. Mozambique’s leaders were at first fearful that this initiative might lead to instability, and insisted that it be tried in just a few districts. But when stability was unaffected and governance improved, they were persuaded to extend the reform across the entire country.
Chapter eight analyses the community foraprocess in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif inAfghanistan. The fora in question were established through the efforts of UN-Habitat, beginning in 1995, and became arenas in which women (and less often, men) could discuss and then tackle common problems through collaborative efforts. The fora were sustained in the teeth of appalling difficulties during and after the Taliban era. They produced concrete gains for those involved, and even enabled women to renegotiate their roles in a hostile patriarchal society. This was possible because flexible, consultation-driven processes were used in both design and implementation. They were grounded in a sophisticated understanding of local power dynamics -- both within communities and between communities and government agencies. Synergies developed, to a surprising extent, between technical engineering and community processes, between small scale community development efforts and larger scale infrastructure processes, and between local authorities and civil society.
Chapter nine assesses microfinance initiatives in post-Taliban Afghanistan. It demonstrates that microfinance is a valuable tool and a priority for investment in conflict-affected contexts, even though it does not provide the instant resource transfers and service delivery that emergency conditions require. The techniques used in microfinance systems in other countries proved adaptable here, and crucial technical assistance was in some cases provided by foreign specialists who had worked in those systems – notably in Bangladesh. Effective coordination among donors ensured that a single, proven set of standards would apply. Here as in many of our other projects, efforts to develop congenial, consultative ties between donors, civic associations and government officials paid dividends – and this was facilitated by the decision to deliver funds through the national budget, which won the appreciation of officials.
Chapter Ten analyses the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF) Project, a Community Driven Development initiative in that war-torn region. It enables local communities to identify, plan and implement local projects to promote livelihood opportunities – in ways that ease conflict. The programme developed after an earlier, top-down initiative had proved unsatisfactory – and substantially succeeded, partly because local demand was considerable, and partly because it worked with elected local councils.
1 Defining ThreeKey Terms
In the interests of clarity, we need to define three terms used repeatedly in these studies. Since this book focuses on successful programmes in fragile states, it is first essential to explain what we mean by ‘success’. As Greeley explains in chapter two, it is defined as:
- bringing about sustainable change in governance,
- catalysing change outside the area/sector/theme of the original intervention (positive ‘spillover’),
- delivering poverty reduction and/or improved service delivery, and
- stemming the negative ‘spillover’ effects from one country into the wider region or a neighbouring country – and more often in our cases, from one sector, agency or level to others within a single country.
We need also need to clarify the meaning of two other words that appear in these studies: ‘local’ and ‘community’. They are frequently used together. When levels within political systems are discussed here, the words ‘local’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘national’ are used. Their meanings may seem obvious, but in some analyses (not in this collection), the word ‘local’ is used to refer to all levels below the national level. Here, the term is used in a narrower sense, to refer to villages, towns and cities. Higher, sub-national levels such as districts, counties or provinces are referred to as ‘intermediate’ levels.
This is an important distinction because the logic of politics and public affairs at ‘intermediate’ levels differs in important ways from that found at the ‘local’ level. At ‘intermediate’ levels, we are dealing with larger and more complex aggregations of interests. Face-to-face relationships have less importance there than in villages and towns. (Note, however, that in cities, we also often encounter large aggregations of interests and face-to-face relationships tend to loom less large than in villages and towns.) Transparency and accountability tend to be harder to achieve at ‘intermediate’ levels (and in cities) than in villages and towns where face-to-face relationships facilitate those things.
What of the word ‘community’? It appears often here – when we speak of ‘Community Driven Development’ or when we use the term with a small ‘c’. The use of this word should not be taken to imply a belief in the existence of a spirit of harmony, mutuality and solidarity within ‘communities’. These things are sometimes present, but not always. In many cases, significant cleavages exist within ‘communities’, and powerful minorities dominate decision-making and public affairs.
This is worth stressing because among our key findings are (i) that initiatives which engage with local ‘communities’ are especially promising, and (ii) that local ‘communities’ tend to possess substantial constructive potential even when they have suffered serious misgovernment, deprivation and even brutalisation. In saying these things, we are not assuming that such local ‘communities’ have achieved great harmony and solidarity.