3
Rights-Based Leadership and Transformational Change
Envision for a moment a director of an area (in-country) affiliate of a bilateral NGO providing a range of health-related programs designed to empower the rural poor. Within a six-month interval, her/his organization confronts the following situations:
1. The “home” bilateral agency (in response to donor complaints) pressures the area organization to become “more transparent” and therefore conditions future budget support on better and more comprehensive reporting protocols.
2. Turnover among grassroots workers in villages has increased at an alarming rate, allegedly due to low-morale and a widespread perception that the area office is indifferent to the day-to-day plight of field workers.
3. Community leaders in a rural village protest that the NGO’s programs fail to address the most pressing health problems and that the workers who implement those programs exhibit demeaning behaviors in their interactions with poor farmers.
Presumably, all of these scenarios would call on the organization to assess the need for “change,” but each suggests change of a different sort. The first might elicit a response to an external demand while the second may require actions to alleviate internal staffing problems. By contrast, the third—as a programmatic concern—directly focuses on the NGO’s potential to empower people, and as such it challenges leadership’s capability to sustain a rights-based culture in the NGO.
True, all of these in one way or another affect how well organizations fulfill their rights-oriented missions. Nonetheless, it is helpful to differentiate among various types of change and to treat them in appropriate chapters. Thus, this chapter is devoted to issues concerning transformative change (like scenario 3 above) that affects program strategies to address particular rights-deprivation, strengthen human capabilities, and extend persons’ agency over their life circumstances as consistent with Sen’s (1999) human capability approach and Uvin’s (2004, 122-166) rights-based development. Rights-oriented strategies evolve within a contextual relationship between funding agencies and organizations wherein respective ideological worldviews and priorities are as apt to differ as converge (Wallace 2006, 19), sometimes pitting Northern donor interests against NGO program logic in the South. Within the agency, leaders need to “make sense” of glaring differences in program foci (between donors and the NGO) as well is in desired management instruments (particularly in the areas of planning and evaluation) to be utilized (Wallace 2006, 32-34). Leaders in rights-based organizations must often cope with donors’ perspectives of “change for the better” as a significant parameter that restricts the NGO’s room to maneuver in affecting programmatic change.
“Change” for Advancing Human Rights
Most people, organizations, communities, nations, etc. either strive to “change things for the better” or “leave well-enough alone” (few purport to “change things for the worse”). Yet disagreements invariably arise over exactly what changes are needed, what is “better” (or “worse”), and who or what can effect those changes. These process issues loom even if consensus can be reached on substance, that is, the nature of “the problem” and goals to address it. So it is within human rights conversation—issues about how to advance human rights (and what they entail) differ among various ideological (that is, political and philosophical) perspectives that are often agenda-driven (i.e., intended to justify favored outcomes).
This section presents four different interpretations on “appropriate” change that unfolds to promote “human rights”—as defined by those sharing the interpretation. Three of these four perspectives are introduced as “narratives,” or stories that characterize the nature of a “problem” as well as the “remedy”—in this case, “change remedy”—to address it, all of which reinforces the ideological stance taken (see Stone 2002, 138-145). As stories, narratives have heroes, villains, story-lines (or plots), all leading up to the (change) remedy for “living happily ever-after.” For example, one (the neo-liberal) narrative presented below casts private investors and entrepreneurs as heroes, central governments as villains, with the story-lines that governments have deprived people of rights and that people can claim rights through the emergence of free markets. In another (the participatory narrative), the people empowering themselves are heroes, the entire “development industry” is the villain with the story-line that a self-serving development industry saps people’s rights-claiming, self-empowerment capabilities.
Since the fourth (focusing on advocacy) appears less ideologically-coherent than the first three, it is presented simply as a “perspective” rather than “narrative” (even though it is tempting to think about human rights advocacy in terms of heroics—see Nelson 2000). Excluded from discussion is a “leave-us-alone,” grassroots stridency that categorically rejects development (we have been developed to death!) and presumably organized rights advocacy as well (see for example, Esteva and Prakash 1998). These four alternative interpretations of change for advancing human rights are intended to represent the predominant thinking in the literature—at the obvious risk of inadvertently omitting other significant ideas. The section to follow explores the opportunities and challenges of rights-based NGO leadership within each of these interpretations.
Technical Narratives of Change
The technical narrative regarding change has little to do with the “technical” or scientific nature of a service or benefit provided but rather with presumptions of how “changes” occur and who the “change agents” are. Take, for example, the areas of agro-forestry and aquaculture (fish or shellfish farming)—perhaps “technical” in a scientific, biological sense but the concern here deals with the logic that drives how NGO leaders and staffs conceptualize “desirable” change and organize their resources to implement it. NGOs embracing the technical narrative generally presume that experts (either within the organization or available from affiliate organizations) act as the principal agents who can improve forestry practices or expand prawn-farming as a viable occupation through formalized, rational processes. (By stark contrast, other NGOs might focus on the rural-poor participant as the intended change agent.) Alternatively, NGO personnel, apart from their own personal or professional opinions, might find themselves obliged to follow the will of donors (or other influential stakeholders) who understand change as a primarily technical undertaking of imparting expertise. The balance of this section assumes a descriptive (rather than critical) tone as it identifies some key development issues as they relate to technical narrative, or presumptions about how “change” comes about.
Change as “needs-based” intervention by “expert” outsider. Those guided by the technical narrative presume that professionalized “experts” command the skills and wherewithal to intervene to address significant needs and deficits affecting people and communities within divergent settings. Capacity-building or empowerment (to the extent they resonate as issues) are generally limited to training individual recipients, local community organizations, or area-based NGO personnel in acquiring particular skills, for example, reforestation projects (see Anyonge et al. 2001) or use of inorganic fertilizers in prawn ponds (see Kusakabe, 2003). In essence, the intervening expert in this mode of development takes on the role of outside consultant—in fact, some authors devote articles to the predicament of flying into a development locale for brief stays (perhaps one or two weeks) in which time they must channel their expertise to meet particular needs, generally through training sessions…Then, off to a different site.
Change as project-focused. In common parlance, it may sound quite normal to hear of development efforts as projects—for example, an agro-forestry project in Kenya. Yet the term “project” places significant time limitations on that effort as it specifies points of a beginning and an end—in contrast to the term program that implies a longer-term, ongoing relationship between a development organization and a local community. As David Korten (1984) points out, the project focus aligns with traditional management assumptions that experts can bring about change by “solving” difficult problems through appropriate planning and programming procedures. The limited time frame implied in the project also sits well with Northern donors wishing to leverage (or maximize) their investments by “accelerating change”—in essence, achieving maximum efficiency for their development dollar rather than committing to an open-ended undertaking. Korten and some others explain that donor motivations to accelerate change reflect differing change ideologies and temporal perspective between Northern funding NGOs and Southern grassroots organizations (also see Chambers 1997)—both Korten and Chambers attribute the Northern yearning for accelerated change to a cultural impatience on the part of Northern modernity.
Change as outcome of project-planning. Among the change narratives reviewed here, the technical discourse most closely parallels classical management ideas that “appropriate change” can be rationally defined and implemented through sound structures and processes. This orientation emphasizes the need for strong planning and strategic management techniques as important in prescribing desired outcomes and in designing apt implementation procedures. These modern management ideas resonate among donors expecting tangible accountability linkages between their investments and durable development outcomes—in other words, NGOs competing for donor dollars need to document the validity of project objectives as well as the methods and procedures for achieving them. Thus, the presumed capability to “pre-program” “appropriate change” complements the notions of change as expert (outsider) “intervention” and as “project-focused” product (as explained above).
In development NGOs, the Logical Framework (or “logframe”) typically embodies the methodological nexus between programming and planning and subsequently offers the evaluative criteria for monitoring project success. For example, a project to improve children’s health in a rural (poor) local village might link various development objectives (e.g., “Children or estate laborers in X district enjoy better health than earlier”), indicators (e.g., “frequency of treatment of relevant diseases; health personnel’s statements; mothers’ statements”), and indicators for evaluation (e.g., “height, weight/age; frequency of diarrhea.” (Dale 2003, 63) Thus, it appears that stakeholders (such as donors) furthest removed from grassroots development work highly value the logframe, while those closest to the change efforts generally discredit (if not despise) it. In this vein, an author of a published article illustrates the controversial nature of the logframe as blueprint for pre-planning change in his title “The logical framework: an easy escape, a straitjacket, or a useful planning tool?” (Dale 2003)
Needs-based change as apolitical. Although perhaps not frequently stated as such, the technical narrative elevates the good works of expert intervention above and apart from the political motives of some stakeholders such as governments or bilateral donor organizations. (It is worth noting the parallel between this presumed distance from politics in the technical narrative and classical thinking in my own field—public management—the techniques of good administration are or should be separable from the political process.) By this logic it follows that physicians, agronomists, nutritionists, et cetera depend upon technical expertise to support their credibility as change agents—thus, they ought not wander into the “corrupting clutches” of politics. While it might appear that nongovernmental organizations serve to “do good” as apolitical humanitarians, such thinking is especially dubious in the pursuit of rights-based NGO leadership.
Neo-liberal (or Structural Adjustment) Narratives of Change
Neo-liberal narratives explain “development” as structural and policy changes that enhance economic opportunities and promote civil and political rights consistent with those usually found in Western democracies. (Readers should take care not to associate neo-liberal economics with ”liberal politics”—more often those who espouse neo-liberal policies engage in conservative politics with preferences toward limited government.) Reflecting classical economists’ views of the ideal society, this orientation is also known as “structural adjustment,” a term referring to its imperative to restructure power, typically away from central government and toward local organizations and market actors, and to clear the obstacles that governments (are assumed to impose) pose that encumber a market economy. This perspective on change stems from an ideology of “globalism” (as opposed to the phenomenon of “globalization”) that devalues nationalism and strong states and elevates the merits of foreign trade and international investment (Malešević 1999).
Guided by its confidence in classical economics as a science for engineering “developed societies” (see Kelly 2008, 329), the neo-liberal narrative is advanced by multi- and bilateral institutions that fund international aid—such as the World Trade Organization, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and multinational corporations (see Korten 1995; Fowler 1999). The structural adjustment strategies evoke strong negative reactions, especially from the South, due (among other reasons) to its close philosophical alignment with U.S. foreign policy (Kelly 2008, 329). As will become apparent, neo-liberal change narratives can exert profound impacts on the nature of NGOs’ goals and organization as they push those agencies to take on different societal roles, and in so doing, pressure NGO leaders to “bureaucratize and professionalize” (see Feldman 2003)—these demands, although perhaps not unreasonable from the standpoint of accountability, may in fact result in compromising or displacing traditional NGO missions.
For purposes of clarity, it is helpful to understand the neo-liberal change narrative both in terms of its ends (that is, desired change as particular results) and the means for achieving those results. Ends relate to three levels of change: First, at the personal level, success involves poverty-reduction and/or income growth through individualism, entrepreneurship, and self-reliance on the part of the individual. (In reference to Sen’s discussion of “include and excluded information”—or the informational biases of particular approaches to evaluation—1999, 56-58; it should be noted that these economic successes are often assessed in terms of aggregate measures.) Consistent with Western democracies, the narrative showcases civil and political (CP)—but typically not economic, social, or cultural (ESC)—rights as desired results of structural adjustment programs. Second, at the national level, the neo-liberal narrative values a minimalist central government (referred to as a “night watchman” role—see Kelly 2008)—at least to the extent it articulates economic and social policy—as an essential goal. Third and correspondingly, the neo-liberal narrative calls for power to be dispersed at local levels among a multitude of community and civil society organizations (including NGOs). The balance of this section elaborates on principal means by which these ends can be realized in the neo-liberal change narrative. It should be noted that advocates of neo-liberal economic reforms often use the term “good governance” as encompassing the ends that lead to “development” (as discussed above) and the means to achieve them.
Change as decentralizing power to autonomous organizations. Consistent with the logic of structural adjustment, funding institutions advance the neo-liberal change agenda through specific programs that call on governments—either through legislation or other means—devolve policy authority as a condition for development aid. In this regard, Erik Bryld quotes a discussion of decentralization in the World Bank’s World Development Report of 1997 as follows: