The Gap Between What Donors Fund and How Change Happens Jeopardizes Shifts to Locally-Led Development

Recently I was reflecting on different efforts at reforming international development to which I’ve contributed - systems thinking, thinking and working politically, locally-led development, capacity strengthening, and adaptive management - trying to articulate any common threads. Each reform agenda derives from different critiques by informed insiders of shortcomings in how donors pursue development. I consider the nuances and details of each discourse fascinating, but am also often frustrated that each of these agendas holds great appeal for colleagues yet they only seem to shift our practices and behaviors at the margins (our recent review of solicitations for a political economy lens showed limited uptake across almost every sector).

In considering them in depth, it seems to me that the core of the critique of each reform agenda may explain the slow uptake in the discipline. Each reform agenda asserts that we misunderstand how change happens in the societies where we work. In important ways, we imagine ourselves as too essential and don’t see other, more important actors clearly. As a result, we also do not properly understand what we do that contributes to change - a huge blind spot.

At a moment of keen attention to local leadership in international development, we risk squandering a ripe moment for change. We are on course to shift how we work rather than truly transform our understanding of how change happens, and the role we could play in it. The development sector needs to update its beliefs about how change happens and our role in that change so that we can achieve tangible and lasting change.

These transformations are challenging, but also vital. In their absence, the work of development will become less relevant to most countries and partners, and will be increasingly pushed toward humanitarian response in fragile states. Focusing on tangible delivery and sure outcomes, we will slowly disengage from efforts to combat racism or inequality, advance norms of freedom and justice, support more productive market systems, improve equity and productivity of international supply chains, or influence complex policy dynamics around inclusive health finance or proactive climate mitigation. We will draw down presence from large states with complex economies. Seeking certainty, we will find ourselves bigger fish in ever smaller ponds, even as the world’s problems grow more complex and interconnected. 

The Role of International Donors in Development

Here’s the heuristic of how the development community tells itself that the process works: 

1. First, stakeholders (including us at times) identify key problems, and various stakeholders seek to solve them.
2. Then, we provide expert technical assistance to leverage global knowledge and assist stakeholders to better address those problems.
3. Thanks to our intervention, problems are ameliorated or solved.
4. Therefore, our results are also the results - the change in the problem stakeholders identified. What we do directly yields what is accomplished. Our job is best described as “Fixing Problem X”.

Here’s another heuristic, that I think better describes what really goes on:

1. A local system co-produces certain outcomes that some stakeholders define as problems (and others benefit from).
2. We as outsiders, jointly with some stakeholders at times, do some analytic work and define certain support we can and will give, in the form of finance and some technical expertise or reputation, which reaches some of those trying to make change.
3. Those stakeholders we support as well as others make some progress, perhaps informed by our support, in addressing the defined problem.
4. Over time, new issues arise, and stakeholders address those too. Some new stakeholders get involved, some others don't find the work or the problem to be worthy of their efforts anymore so exit.
5. Our results are shifts in the forces addressing the defined problem - ideally, our support positions actors to be more likely to succeed and to continue working on issues they care about, and also more adaptive/resilient when circumstances change. Our job is best described as “Standing with Change Makers”.
6. Their results are the changes to the situation. 

In other words, as outside donors, our job is to matter to change-makers, not to solve development problems.

Reimagining Donor Roles in Development

As outsiders, instead of causing development to happen, we are collaborating to better understand barriers and opportunities, and enable more effective homegrown solutions to emerge through our support. In doing so, we start to understand our roles - and the nature of the work - a bit more clearly. Defining discovery of what matters as core work (as laid out in systems practice) repositions us as contributing to solutions achieved by local leaders, rather than solving problems ourselves, and also acknowledges that the missing elements aren’t our outsider knowledge of “correct answers” or ideal forms. We can help when we properly see ourselves as supporters, not solvers.

These shifts are not easy, because development lacks a lexicon for this work. When we discuss our work as “causing X” or “countering Y” we conflate our work with the broader changes to which it contributes. Also, we have expertise in an issue, say the challenges of high levels of foreign debt, and presume that what we offer is that expertise - that expanding knowledge of debt’s consequences, or of alternative approaches to borrowing, is enough to change behaviors that have led to high debt levels.

Focusing on contribution to locally-driven change instead is scary, because it tends to devalue technical knowledge in favor of contextual understandings, and raise very real possibilities that for all our hard work and good intentions, we cannot be certain that we will contribute to good outcomes. It also reminds us that even if it does, we won’t easily be able to say that it is because of our programming. 

It’s time to develop a more descriptive language around the array of outcomes of our work that matter without solving - such as those embedded in the CSII Hubs work described below, where greater solidarity and more robust networks are seen as our results, which contribute to significant development gains over time by support CSOs, but are distinct from them.

What we fund must change. It is not enough to be agile, we have to invest in meaningful preparation before windows of opportunity so that actors stand ready to capitalize on them. It is not enough to have expertise in the nature of a problem, or the attributes of an ideal situation. Our work must be the joint discovery of viable pathways for change, coupled with supporting local actors to make that change likelier. Only greater clarity about our role in contributing to development can ensure our work remains relevant and catalytic in an ever-changing world.

Here are a couple of examples of what this might mean in practice:

• We might have as a high level objective the existence of a vibrant civil society in a country, which can help citizens organize to address challenges and serve as a counterweight to their existing or potential authoritarian government. Twenty years ago, to support this, we might have funded a few discrete advocacy campaigns - we would figure out the key policy targets, and compete NGOs to receive grants to run such campaigns. Over time, we realized there were negative unintended consequences to this approach. It tended to splinter NGOs from their peers and base, while turning them into mouthpieces for donors rather than letting them flourish in their own right. Meanwhile, what really lasted was the connections groups made, not particular successes of one campaign or another, and their bonds and solidarity are what underpin their ability to act collectively in the future. As reflected in the Local Capacity Strengthening Policy and exemplified in programs like the CSII Hubs, cutting edge programming that fosters civil society now emphasizes building linkages and networks in order to strengthen civil society, with funding to further collective approaches and activities identified by the collective and more attention to topics like culture of philanthropy. As we shifted from funding civil society to act, to funding components that would enable civil society to act, we made ourselves matter and valuable to civil society change makers, rather than trying to directly solve problems with our funding through local actors.
• USAID has also had a longstanding objective to pursue greater inclusion and representation in formal politics, such as by encouraging more women to run for elected office. Once, programming to address this challenge emphasized this challenge globally, with country work seen through the lens of international commitments which “solved” the problem and just needed implementation locally, furthered by training on commitments. Fairly quickly, savvy folks working in the space saw that the challenges manifested quite differently in different countries, even if many of the problems - threats and violence against women who dared to run for office, for example - recurred repeatedly. As a result, more recent programming emphasizes the need to deeply understand the situation of women in particular places in order to tailor programming. Whether by using a social and behavior change methodology or just requiring implementers to use inception phases to more deeply understand the barriers and drivers of participation, this forces us to consider our role more reflexively.

This blog by David Jacobstein, from USAID's Democracy, Rights and Governance Policy, Learning and Integration Office, was initially published on USAID's blog page and is republished here with his permission.