Aims and Objectives
This project sought to understand how eight development initiatives achieved success in the extremely difficult conditions found in ‘fragile states’, or what the World Bank calls ‘low income countries under stress (LICUS)’. The project sought to identify common themes in the explanations for the various successes, and explanations for their presence in such diverse settings.
The project was Phase 2 of a 2 part project. Phase 1 sought to understand the factors that contribute to turnaround in fragile states.
Methodology
A detailed methodology was developed and – in order to achieve consistency across case studies – applied in field studies in five countries: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique, Timor-Leste and northern Uganda. All researchers focused on programme design, programme implementation and development results; and all assessed key documents and conducted extensive semi-structured interviews.
Findings
Although problems in fragile states at first appear utterly daunting, our evidence indicates that a great deal can in fact be achieved there. Development programmes need to be based not just on established principles from elsewhere, but also on an assessment at the outset of distinctive conditions at and just above the local level within fragile states. Among these conditions, power dynamics and governance issues proved to be especially important.
Following this assessment, the resulting programmes should be implemented flexibly, in an experimental spirit – with a willingness both to learn from further frequent consultations and to adjust approaches accordingly. This argues, in most cases, for an approach which incorporates lessons learned from trials, errors and successes – and which avoids being too managerial.
This lends itself to the difficult transition from initial, quick-impact, top-down programmes to address dire emergencies to longer-term, bottom-up efforts to promote development and institutional reform. That requires changes in the ways in which both officials and non-officials (including ordinary folk) think about governance, state-society relations and development. It is especially useful to emphasise initiatives which governments that are fearful of change are at least somewhat inclined to undertake, since this increases the chances that officials will acquire a sense of ownership of development programmes.
We found greater potential at and just above the local level than we expected – and than we usually found at higher levels in these political systems. When institutions become seriously incapacitated, greater human and inter-personal resources and bonds often survive at the local level than do the looser, more anonymous relationships that exist at higher levels. These have considerable potential for the establishment of trust, accommodation and a sense of mutuality – on which to mount grassroots efforts at reconstruction. It is thus no accident that almost all of the initiatives that we studied entailed consultative mechanisms to draw local preferences, knowledge and energies into the policy process, and to provide external resources to local communities.
Most governments are reluctant to yield to local preferences. But when they do so, they usually find that this is no zero-sum game – since they make major compensatory gains in popularity and legitimacy. So such generosity is non-threatening and serves their interests. The resulting changes in the thinking and behaviour of government actors can assist in beginning the transition from regimes that rely mainly on coercion and intimidation to developmental states.
This is crucial, since change at the local level is not enough. It is essential to encourage the inclination and the capacity of government actors at higher levels to pursue development in an open, consultative manner. This is often best pursued through pilot projects, within a few small arenas, to demonstrate to insecure governments that such approaches can yield outcomes that benefit both ordinary people and the regimes themselves.
To stress the need for changes within governments is not to dismiss civil society organisations, but governments nearly always reach far more localities than does civil society. And even where regimes are fragile, they command far more resources. It therefore makes sense for donors to concentrate mainly upon influencing governments.
To influence and enable them, and to make development sustainable, donors need to integrate development initiatives at an early stage with mainstream government institutions – at the local and higher levels. This often entails a difficult transition away from initial efforts to tackle emergencies through special parallel agencies which by-pass mainstream institutions. If, over the longer term, initiatives are kept separate from mainstream bureaucratic agencies and elected bodies at the local level, they can prevent them from evolving into elements of a new, constructive order that can make improvements possible and sustainable.
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