TWP CoP January 2023 Newsletter
Dear Friends and fellow travellers on all things TWP,
Very happy new year and best wishes for 2023! Welcome to the January 2023 edition of the TWP CoP Newsletter. This edition is once again filled with exciting content (or so we hope!). In our featured interview, CAFOD’s Dadirai Chikwengo shares with us insights from her TWP journey, including her efforts to make PEA/TWP concepts and language more accessible and relatable to partners on the ground. Emma Kerr and Paula Estrada Tun from DAI give us a first hand account of what it has been like for them to conduct PEA in a challenging environment and draw out lessons from that experience; while Laure-Hélène Piron from The Policy Practice tells us about insights related to TWP that emerged from a recent review of UK support to democracy and human rights that she led for the UK Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI). We are also thrilled to announce the publication of Bruce Byiers’ Reflection Note on ‘Thinking and Working Politically on African Economic Integration’, in collaboration with ECDPM. You may notice too that we have added a Bulletin Board in this edition of the Newsletter so that you can hear about what different people in this community are thinking about and how you can connect with them. Please check the Bulletin Board for details on the next informal ‘What’s up?’ session on Tuesday 7 February at 13:00-14:00 pm GMT and join us if you can! Last but not least, and as always, we bring you the latest publications, events and resources of interest from a TWP perspective.
As a reminder, please open the newsletter directly on your browser (click on the ‘TWP CoP January 2023 Newsletter’ header, at the top of this page) so that you can get full access to all the content.
With all best wishes,
Alina & Graham
Highlight feature
Conversation with CAFOD’s Dadirai Chikwengo
In this interview with Alina, Dadirai Chikwengo tells us about her TWP journey. Dadirai is the Lead Governance Advisor for CAFOD and works in support of CAFOD’s global Governance work across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She is an accomplished and influential civic leader and human rights defender in Zimbabwe, and has over 20 years of experience working to strengthen civil society in both national and international organisations. Dadirai is also a Kings College African Women in Peacebuilding Fellow and is on the board of the John and Elnora Ferguson Centre for African Studies ( JEFCAS) at the University of Bradford.
In the last 7 years Dadirai has been at the forefront of advocating for robust context analysis (political economy analysis) to anchor programming decisions - developing an internal guidance and providing ongoing accompaniment of staff through the analysis. In this podcast, she tells us how she arrived to TWP, how she developed her context analysis guidance, and her experience of landing PEA and TWP principles with partners on the ground in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Watch the interview here:
Or listen to it here:
What we are working on
Synthesizing the Sensitive: Lessons from a PEA in a Closed Environment
Emma Kerr and Paula Estrada Tun
Emma Kerr and Paula Estrada Tun are Senior Technical Specialist in Governance and Program and Communications Specialist at the DAI Head Office and DAI Guatemala respectively. Below they recount their experience undertaking PEA for an anti-corruption project they are working on in a highly sensitive political setting, and they highlight lessons that have emerged for them from the process.
It’s a bright day in Guatemala City and we exit the café where we have been interviewing one of the more left-leaning political analysts in the country. We exchange a look and laugh – we have just been provided with some of the most salacious political gossip about the country’s inner workings – who is in and out of favour, who is (allegedly!) in a relationship with whom to gain power, and who is really behind the recent conviction of investigative journalist and prominent anti-corruption activist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín. Sometimes doing Political Economy Analysis (PEA) feels more like conducting interviews for Heat magazine. Surprisingly, this is not the only interviewee to be so candid – despite the risk. In Guatemala, the crack-down against civil society activists speaking out against corruption and the abuse of power has been intense. Zamora Marroquín is not the only one to face conviction – a number of journalists and activists have told us that they or their colleagues had been threatened, and there has been a wave of anti-corruption prosecutors who have fled to the US to avoid persecution. Given these circumstances, it would be understandable for the experts and analysts we are speaking with as part of our efforts to better understand the political economy context in Guatemala to be guarded in interviews. Instead, we have found that their mounting frustration has led them to speak more openly. By contrast, the people we have interviewed in government are much more hesitant, and it has only been with the help of an excellent local researcher - who is herself a former Minister - that we have gained access to some of the critical players.
Over the course of two weeks, our PEA team, which, in addition to the two of us, includes another project staff, and a consultant, both based in Guatemala, conducted close to 50 interviews across civil society, the private sector, government, think tanks and universities to better understand Public Financial Management (PFM) and anti-corruption efforts in Guatemala. We triangulated the data across interviews and compared it to findings emerging from desk research. Working hard to ensure our analysis was rigorous, we produced a 50-page draft report based on our (mostly qualitative) research, where we sought to strike a balance between some of the grittier political economy findings on the rules of the game and the technical analysis on what is needed to strengthen the PFM bodies that the project aims to support.
However, much of the material we collected was also highly sensitive in nature, so we had to make difficult choices about what information to incorporate into the report and how to do so, taking into account reputational and political risks as well as project staff guidelines and feedback from our client. After all, Guatemala is a small country, in which all the key political players know each other, so if our analysis were to leak, it would have profound implications for the project and stakeholders involved. In the end, we produced a final report that was much shorter (we cut it in half). While this has made it punchier and more succinct, it is also hard not to mourn the loss of all the juicy information that was shared with us.
That said, undertaking the full exercise was itself very meaningful, and we want to share some of what we have learned from the process of undertaking the PEA in case it is helpful to others conducting PEA in politically sensitive environments, where there may be hesitancy to put sensitive information in writing:
If it is challenging to put things down on paper, presenting findings orally may be one way of sharing some of the more sensitive issues that emerge from your research. It may be worth consulting with relevant partners/stakeholders beforehand to find out in advance who will be attending the meeting, and how frank you can be.
Work closely with the funder commissioning the analysis (and other colleagues as needed) to convey what the nature and substance of PEA are about, and what the research process entails. As TWP specialists, we know that a lot of information gathered will be inherently sensitive – but you can reassure partners and key informants by letting them know, for example, that interviews are anonimysed and data is triangulated.
On the other hand, it is also important to understand the perspectives of other colleagues and where they may be coming from. Often, they are the ones putting themselves on the line. They know the context and risks better than anyone, and they will have to deal with any potential fall-out from sensitive information being leaked.
Make sure that the terms of reference or scope of work and research questions are as clear as possible before you start conducting interviews or writing. In our case, because we had clear research questions, we were able to go back through the findings and decide what was really relevant and what could be cut. In some cases, this will also give you the opportunity to demonstrate why a finding should be included – by indicating that it is crucial to addressing the research questions that have already been agreed, for example.
If the PEA exercise is limiting your flexibility, adapt it! Do not feel constrained by formal PEA frameworks. The framework or structure should be there to guide you, not constrain you, and we found at times that it could be too rigid. If you feel some of the information the PEA framework seeks to capture is not relevant to the questions you are looking at, adapt the structure as you see fit.
Similarly, find the approach and methods that give you the agility you need to embed PEA as an ongoing process into your project or activity. We learned from our experience that, while the initial formal PEA report was critical to set a baseline for the project, we could update our political thinking in ways that did not entail producing another full-on report. With a small project team in a closed political environment that is constantly evolving, a report that is too academic may not be the most practical way to capture information on an ongoing basis, especially considering that the report was written in English while most project staff are not proficient in the language. The project had originally planned to update the PEA annually. Looking ahead, however, we are considering a number of tools and mechanisms to monitor political dynamics with quicker turnarounds and greater flexibility, while remaining mindful of the risks of the information being leaked.
The PEA process is valuable in and of itself. PEA is and should be seen as something that is much more than a deliverable that a project has to fulfil. At its core, it offers a process and a lens that are essential in guiding and informing project staff around the kinds of adaptation that may be needed in project design and implementation to ensure the project is anchored in contextual realities. Our PEA team also regularly consulted with and informed project staff of developments as we went along. Even if not all findings made it into the final version of the report, the staff are aware of them
This also helps to highlight a further lesson: how important it is to train project staff and include them in PEA, so that they can take Thinking and Working Politically forward. Embedding project staff within the PEA team also ensured that the implications for action set forth in the report were reflective of what is feasible and realistic within the scope of the project.
Thinking politically in promoting democracy and human rights? Lessons from an ICAI review
Laure-Hélène Piron
Laure-Hélène Piron is Director of The Policy Practice and a TWP CoP Steering Committee member
I have spent the last year working as team leader of the UK Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) review of the effectiveness, coherence and effectiveness of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) work countering threats to democracy and human rights between 2015 and 2021. Below are some of our main findings, including on thinking and working politically (TWP).
During this period, UK aid totalled £1.37 billion to support democratic participation, elections, political parties, parliaments, media, and human and women’s rights organisations. ICAI awarded an overall green/amber score as it found that the UK’s democracy and human rights work has delivered useful results, including improving the effectiveness and inclusiveness of state, political, civil society and media organisations in several countries, and helping to achieve the realisation of rights for a range of at-risk groups. But recent results have been significantly affected by aid budget reductions and the lack of a strategic framework to guide the implementation of the UK’s commitments. The report warns that, from 2020 onwards, the UK’s democracy and human rights work no longer has the ability to respond to new challenges and deliver on the UK government’s high policy ambitions in this area.
The review identifies how some of the reviewed UK aid programmes were able to think and work politically, and how this contributed to relevance and effectiveness:
The use of political economy analysis enabled FCDO to understand the threats to democracy and human rights at a time of growing democratic backsliding, and to identify politically feasible solutions. Teams balanced changing UK ministerial priorities and country analysis, and a number were able to ‘localise’ their response – that is, translate UK priorities into locally appropriate themes and identify suitable partner organisations. For example, Aawaz in Pakistan framed its work on modern slavery, violence against women, LGBT+ and religious minorities in ways that would be more acceptable, and it worked with the UN agencies which had good access to government, as well as through the British Council and its Pakistani partners to reach local communities. · Some programmes adopted problem-based approaches, such as Institutions for Inclusive Development in Tanzania, Pakistan’s Open Societies Programme and Westminster Foundation for Democracy’s Westerns Balkans democracy initiative. This enabled them to select salient issues around which to build coalitions for change – for example sign language education in Tanzania or youth migration in Serbia – and adapt as both the political context and UK aid opportunities changed.
Out of the sample of reviewed programmes, most of those able to demonstrate achievements had received UK aid for five or more years (often through successive phases). This meant that they could develop a deep understanding of their sector, establish trust with local partners, adapt their approaches and make incremental progress, which over a longer period led to more impressive results.
However, the review also identified three constraints and one missed opportunity:
UK aid programmes were not always able to address the priorities identified through analysis. This was due to a combination of factors which caused some risk aversion, such as at times low appetite for fiduciary risks (such as not providing core funding to civil society organisations or journalists at risk), concern about doing harm to at-risk groups, or not wanting to lose access to partner governments.
UK efforts to support democracy and human rights saw a loss of technical expertise since the creation of FCDO out of the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2020, in particular in terms of governance advisers who have left the organisation or taken up non technical roles. Overall, the UK government’s reputation as a thought leader and reliable global actor on democracy and human rights has declined.
UK aid budget reductions and delayed decision making affected all programmes since 2020. This caused uncertainty, and limited the ability of teams to turn their context analysis into relevant and effective interventions to the same extent as they had been able to do in previous years.
The merger has also been a missed opportunity to date for TWP. In principle, the merged FCDO should be better placed to deploy its development and diplomatic tools together, but this potential has not yet been realised in practice, leading ICAI to award an amber/red score on coherence.
Bulletin Board
Interested in ChatGPT and would like to talk more about it? Please get in touch!
Arnaldo Pellini, Director, Capability
ChatGPT is a language model trained to produce text based on large amounts of data to make predictions about stringing words together in a meaningful way. It was launched on 30 November 2022 by San Francisco-based OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research and deployment company with the mission “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity”.
Within a week of its launch, it had over one million users. Soon after its launch, screenshots of text produced by ChatGPT were posted on Twitter and other social media and went viral. The commentaries described ChatGPT as astonishing. At the same time, people started to raise scary and increasingly panicky questions about the power of AI and whether we will still need journalists, commentators, researchers, podcasters, bloggers, teachers, and so on in a not so remote future.
I was intrigued – I am very interested in understanding how new technologies can help our work and capabilities as researchers, evaluators, political economists, etc. I created my ChatGPT account mid-December 2022 and tested it by asking five development questions. You can see the answers in this blog: Five development questions to ChatGPT.
ChatGPT has a very easy-to-use interface. It responds very quickly. Its answers are fed by millions (probably billions) of web pages and online text. For the time being, the answers are based on a “review” of online material up to the end of 2021. It has some limitations. For example, the answers are sometimes general, and it does not provide sources – but it can provide the names of prominent authors/researchers in specific fields.
ChatGPT, in its current iteration (a new, improved version is due mid-2023), is not a substitute for researchers, analysts, and experts. But it can help with background documentation, context description, suggest a structure to a paper or a report, and much more. So the question for me is not whether we should work with it – of course we should --. but rather how. This technology is here to stay, and it will continue to evolve and improve very rapidly. We need to adapt to it (pun intended).
If you are interested in ChatGPT and would like to be part of a conversation about its implications for the development field, please get in touch by email at: arnaldo.pellini@capability.fi. I can be reached at email and I will follow up with people directly.
Best,
Arnaldo
PS I have asked ChatGPT to review this text, and it confirmed the information I wrote is correct and added: “However, it [ChatGPT] should not be considered as a substitute for researchers, analysis, and expertise. It's important to understand its capabilities and limitations and use it as an assistant rather than a replacement.
Convening a conversation on the political economy of the energy transition
Neil McCulloch, Director, The Policy Practice and TWP CoP Steering Committee Member
My book on “Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies – the politics of saving the planet”, published by Practical Action Publishing, has just come out. The book explains what fossil fuel subsidies are, how they inflict harm and what steps are being taken to reduce them. It also shows why subsidies persist and why existing efforts have been so ineffective. Drawing lessons from countries which have tried to remove fossil fuel subsidies, it explains that the fundamental challenge to reform is not technical, but political – which will not come as a surprise to many of you in the TWP community. The book lays out a new agenda for action on fossil fuel subsidies, showing how a better understanding of the underlying political incentives can lead to more effective approaches to tackling this major global problem.
I would like to convene a conversation on the political economy of the energy transition that brings together researchers and practitioners working on the political aspects of energy, including the PE of the major energy sector reforms that will be needed to achieve change. With a growing number of externally-funded programmes around the world seeking to support the energy transition, the group will also consider the extent to which these programmes think and work politically and what it might mean for them to do so.
If you would be interested in being part of this discussion, please email Alex Scoines at: Alex.Scoines@thepolicypractice.com.
Also, if you would like to read the book (which I hope you will!), the PDF can be downloaded here (with thanks to TPP for making that possible). Physical copies can be ordered from https://practicalactionpublishing.com/book/2642/ending-fossil-fuel-subsidies.
Many thanks and looking forward to connecting,
Neil
TWP ‘What’s up?’ informal session
Tell us what’s up! The next informal TWP ‘What’s up?’ session will take place on Tuesday 7 February at 13:00-14:00 pm GMT. This is an informal drop-in session over Zoom offering an opportunity for members of our community to meet up with fellow TWP-ers and find out what people are working on. If you would like to join, please register through the link below.
Recent Publications
Books, Journals and Articles
Deese., A. D. (ed.) (2022) A Research Agenda for International Political Economy; New Directions and Promising Paths, Edward Elgar Publishing.
This book collates important trends and emerging research in the field of international political economy (IPE) to map out the new directions and promising paths ahead. Chapters cover IPE in relation to financial crises, One Health, migration, Geotech, cyber economic espionage, local aid, and much more.
Heffer, A., & Schubert, G. (2023). ‘Policy Experimentation under Pressure in Contemporary China’, The China Quarterly, 1-22 (January).
Many studies have argued that local policy experimentation, a key feature of China's policy process in the Hu Jintao era, has come to a halt with Xi Jinping and his (re)centralization of political power. According to this take, local policymakers have become increasingly risk-averse and are therefore unwilling to experiment. In this article, however, the authors suggest that local governments are still expected to innovate with new policy solutions and now will be punished if they do not. So now local cadres ‘have no choice but to experiment as the political risk of shirking the direct command to experiment may be higher than the inherent risk of experimentation itself’ — in other words, it is experiment or perish.
McCulloch, N. (2022) Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies; the politics of saving the planet, Practical Action Publishing.
In this book, Neil argues that fossil fuel subsidies endanger both people and the planet. By encouraging excessive consumption of fossil fuels, subsidies exacerbate pollution and climate change, make violent protests more likely, and waste resources that could be used to support more pressing concerns. Yet for years there has been minimal progress in eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. This book explains what fossil fuel subsidies are, how they inflict harm and what steps are being taken to reduce them. It also shows why subsidies persist and why existing efforts have remained ineffective. Drawing lessons from countries which have tried to remove fossil fuel subsidies, the book explains that the fundamental challenge to reform is not technical, but political. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrate that fossil fuel subsidy reform will only succeed where it supports the achievement of things that really matter politically - energy security, protection from climate change, better air quality, and resources to improve people’s lives. The book lays out a new agenda for action on fossil fuel subsidies, showing how a better understanding of the underlying political incentives can lead to more effective approaches to tackling this major global problem. Please also check out Neil’s post in the Bulletin Board!
Tsofa, B., Waweru, E., Munywoki, J., Soe, K., Rodriguez, D., Koon, A. (2023) ‘Political economy analysis of sub-national health sector planning and budgeting: A case study of three counties in Kenya’, PLOS Global Public Health, 3(1).
This study involved a problem-driven PEA to better understand how planning and budgeting processes in the health sector are structured, enacted, and subject to change at the local level in Kenya. Focusing on three counties, the authors found that, while devolution has greatly transformed sub-national health management in Kenya with longer-term potential for greater accountability and health equity, short-to-medium term challenges persist in developing efficient systems for engaging a diverse array of stakeholders in planning and budgeting processes.
Reports, Briefs and Working Papers
Byiers, B. (2022). ‘Thinking and Working Politically on African Economic Integration’, TWP CoP and ECDPM.
Given the need for regional cooperation to achieve common goals like fostering green industrialisation and post-COVID economic recovery, the ambition to promote regional economic cooperation and integration in Africa is as pressing as ever. But integrating markets and applying common rules comes with political costs and trade-offs for different groups, and regional organisations often have limited power to enforce implementation of regional agreements. As such, formal commitments to implement common regional trade rules and regulations are often not (fully) implemented, undermining the goals initially sought through cooperation. This note, which builds on an online event that ECDPM convened as part of the TWP Community of Practice Global Webinar Series in June 2022, argues that it is essential to go beyond formal regional strategies and blueprints and to ‘think and work politically’ (TWP) to promote regional cooperation and integration more effectively.
Christensen, M-B. at al. (2023) Survival of the Richest, Oxfam International Inequality Report, Oxfam International.
Arguing that nearly two-thirds of all new wealth created since 2020 is concentrated in the richest 1 percent of the world’s population, this Report calls for increasing taxes on the super rich and large corporations, especially against a backdrop of decades of tax cuts for the richest.
Domingo, E., and Shiferaw, L. T., (2022) ‘Digitalisation and democracy: Is Africa’s governance charter fir for the digital era?’, Working Paper, ECDPM.
This paper analyses the links between digital transformation, political activism and governance. It argues that Africa’s governance charter, the ACDEG - which was adopted in 2007 to improve the quality of democracy and electoral processes across Africa and promote human rights and governance - should be adapted to keep up with the rapid adoption of digital technologies and their impacts on democratic processes.
FairSquare (2021) From protest to reform: a study of social movements’ success, Report commissioned by Luminate
This report explores four protest movements -- Armenia’s 2018 ‘Velvet Revolution’, Brazil’s 2015-2016 pro-impeachment demonstrations, the 2019 ‘October Revolution’ in Lebanon, and Nigeria’s #EndSARS protests of 2020 -- to better understand why some succeed and others fail. It finds that (as we know well!) context matters, and strategies and tactics that work in one setting may not work in another. The report concludes that meaningful political change involves long-term processes and institution-building, including deep cultural and societal shifts.
Kantelberg, R., Swift-Morgan, J., and Watson, B. (2022) ‘How and Why Practitioners Think and Work Politically: Evidence from Chemonics Programming Across Sectors’, Research report, Chemonics.
This report addresses the question of ‘what explains practitioners' particular interest in TWP as more than just "doing good development"?’. Through an analysis of Chemonics-implemented projects that have used various forms of TWP in nine countries, the report offers new insight into the various forms that TWP may take in practice. It finds that TWP has a beneficial impact on project activities, increasing their sustainability — potentially beyond the life of the project.
Page, M. T and Vittori, J. (2023) Kleptocratic Adaptation: Anticipating the Next Stage in the Battle Against Transnational Kleptocracy, National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has focused the world’s’ attention on the overarching threat posed by kleptocratic networks. But despite growing recognition that kleptocracy poses a fundamental threat to the quality and nature of democratic governance, accountability, and security, the authors of this report argue that this issue is often treated as a niche concern rather than as a national security threat. They make the case for ensuring that transnational kleptocracy, which is highly adaptable and resilient, figures more prominently in democracies’ foreign and domestic policymaking calculus.
Sinpeng, A., and Savirani, A. (2022) Women’s political leadership in the ASEAN region, Research report, Westminster Foundation for Democracy.
This research report outlines the barriers women face in their pursuit of political leadership in Southeast Asia. It considers the structural, institutional, economic, and cultural factors that hinder or stop women from fully participating in political participation, leadership and governance.
Sjöberg, A-K, Dudouet, V., Papesch, T., and Schmitz, K. (2022) ‘Observe and Opportunities and challenges for the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda in areas controlled by armed and political movements’, Policy Brief, Berghof Foundation.
This Brief explores the role that armed groups can play in supporting the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, especially in terms of ensuring the participation and protection of women and girls in peace processes. With a focus on movements in Myanmar but broader relevance to policy debates in this area, the Brief also draws out lessons and implications for more effective international engagement on WPS.
Blogs, Podcasts and other opinion pieces
Adams, L. (2022) ‘How can Behavioural Science help build Democracy, Human Rights and Good Governance?’, From Poverty to Power Blog, 6 December.
This post looks at how insights from social and behavioural science can be applied to the democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) sector, drawing on two recent publications from McRaney (2021) and Centola (2022). Analysing implications from this work for DRG programmes, Adams draws two main conclusions: 1) that social change interventions should target networks, not individuals; and 2) that meaningful change is often incremental and depends on interpersonal interactions. As a result, it may take just a few targeted conversations within a particular network to trigger a cascade effect across the network.
Evans, P. (2013) ‘How I think when I talk about anti-corruption: porridge and berries, priors and biases’ U4 Anti-Corruption Centre blog
In this personal reflection, U4 Director Peter Evans argues that ‘[t]he anti-corruption field, the language we use, and the way we think about the subject, is often a 'porridge' of well-intentioned but uninspiring generalities. If we add some complexity and nuance – and question some orthodoxies – we can add some “berries” to that porridge and push [the] whole practice on to greater things’.
Global Evaluation Initiative (n.d.) Transforming M&E for Uncertain and Complex Contexts: The UNDP’s Innovation Sandbox Approach, GEI Powered by Evidence podcast.
This podcast features GEI Program Manager, Dugan Fraser, and his guest, Søren Haldrup from UNDP's Strategic Innovation Unit, where he manages UNDP's innovation facility and leads a new initiative called the M&E Sandbox. The podcast explores how monitoring and evaluation (M&E) can be transformed into a more adaptive, emergent process to address uncertainty and complexity and how M&E can shift from a focus on compliance and upward accountability towards learning.
Loveridge, D. (2022) ‘Systems change frameworks’, Medium, 3 November.
This blog post synthesises an analysis of 28 systems change frameworks to understand their similarities and differences. The author finds that there is no ‘best’ or ‘right’ framework. Rather, the effectiveness of a conceptual framework will depend on the degree to which it helps us to think and learn more about systems change. Loveridge recommends that organisations take the time to build their own framework(s), as there is a lot of value in going through the process.
Pellini, A. (2023) ‘Five development questions to ChatGPT’, Knowledge Counts', 9 January.
This blog post opens a conversation about the implications of ChatGPT - a powerful language processing tool developed by OpenAI which uses artificial intelligence to produce text - for development research and consultancy. In the blog, the author cites examples of the text produced by ChatGPT, and suggests that, rather than being afraid of the implications of this tool, we should embrace it as it can improve how we explore, research, and analyse contexts and social development problems. Please also check out Arnaldo’s post in the Bulleting Board!
Salib, M., and Ziegler, J. (2022) ‘Introducing the CLA Maturity Tool for Implementing Partners!’, USAID Learning Lab Blog, 17 November.
This blog gives an overview, and examples of USAID’s new ‘CLA [Collaborating, Learning and Adapting] Maturity Tool for implementing partners’ - designed to give a clear picture of what systematic, intentional, and resourced integration of CLA can look like on a series of physical cards.
Samji, S. (2022) ‘Practicing the Art of Implementation’, Building State Capability Blog, Center for International Development, Harvard University. 29 November.
This blog reviews the book Results: Getting Beyond Politics to Get Important Work Done, written by Governor Charlie Baker and Steve Kadish, which explores tips, tools and tactics - or the ‘how to‘ - of policy implementation, through an approach similar to PDIA.
Vines, A. (2023) ‘Africa in 2023: Continuing political and economic volatility’, Chatham House, 9 January.
In this expert comment, Vines argues that, even if African trade and financial links with Russia and Ukraine are limited, the war in Ukraine will cause civil strife in Africa due to food and energy inflation.
Events
Recent Events:
29 November 2022: ‘The Long Game: the principles of shifting systems’, System Innovation Initiative.
5 December 2022: ‘Political Economy Analysis and TWP: Learning from Ten Years of USAID Experience’, TWP CoP, in collaboration with the TWP CoP DC-based working group, Adapt Consulting and RTI International.
15-16 December 2022: ‘Thinking and working politically Learning and Futures Symposium’, Chemonics International.
26-27 January 2023: ‘Rethinking Regimes’, CEDAR Workshop, Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation, University of Birmingham.
Upcoming Events:
31 January 2023: ‘EU´s external democracy action in a new geopolitical reality’, Sweden and International IDEA.
1 February 2023: ‘Passing the Buck: The Economics of Localizing International Assistance’, Center for Global Development.
14 February 2023: ‘The Dynamic Side of Accountability: A People-Driven Approach’, GPSA webinar, Global Partnership for Social Accountability.
15 February 2023, 13:30pm - 14:30pm GMT: ‘Collaborating, Learning & Adapting (CLA) Community of Practice's first quarterly knowledge sharing meeting’ - Build your CLA skills and network through this new community for the CLA-curious, experts, and everyone in-between. Join via this Zoom link and join the CLA CoP LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12734352/
Training, Learning Opportunities and other Resources
ODI and The Policy Practice regularly run a Political Economy Analysis in action online training course, which covers adaptive management and other ways to ‘think and work politically’. The next course starts in February 2023 and is comprised of 10 online sessions. The deadline to apply for the next course is 31 January 2023.
The USAID Learning Lab has put together a useful ‘Guide to Distinguishing Tools Used for Local Capacity Strengthening’, designed to help USAID staff and partners select which tool categories are most useful for performance measurement, capacity action planning, and risk mitigation.
Interesting in sharpening your virtual facilitation skills and widening your repertoire to keep people engaged and connected in webinars and other gatherings online? Then head here and sign up to The Quest newsletter. You will receive tips and resources on a weekly basis — and the newsletter is free!
The Accountability Research Center is leading a research project on the Sandwich Strategy, which describes efforts to make governments more publicly accountable through mutually-reinforcing collaboration between reformers and broad-based citizen action. ARC is undertaking a comparative study of whether and how sandwich strategy initiatives can drive pro-accountability institutional change in Nigeria, and in the global South more broadly.
Don’t forget that the TWP Community Podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Google Podcasts, or you can search for us through your usual podcast directory/app. Please do subscribe and share — and email Katherine at k.hellier@bham.ac.uk if you have ideas for future topics the podcasts can cover, or if you would like to feature in an upcoming episode.
Lastly, it’s been a busy time for the Developmental Leadership Programme, led by Prof. David Hudson (who is also a TWP CoP Steering Committee member) at the University of Birmingham. The DLP has released five new research briefs.
Supporting women’s leadership during COVID-19: Women leading and influencing in the Pacific, exploring the experiences of Pacific women leaders who received small grants to help support their communities through the pandemic. It examines Pacific views of leadership, how the women engaged with these and the projects they developed. The executive summary gives a shorter version.
They also have two papers looking at leadership development for WASH in rural Cambodia, through WaterSHED’s successful and innovative Civic Champions program. This offered locally-elected commune councillors training to develop their leadership skills. Paper 1 looks at the motivations and leadership skills of these councillors, and paper 2 looks at how they engaged with different groups of people in their communes and adapted their sanitation promotion strategies.
Inclusive development in Solomon Islands: Unlocking the potential of developmental leadership considers the developmental challenges of Solomon Islands in the Pacific, with its “political economy of uneven development”. It argues it is vital to understand cases where community leaders worked together to create goods and services that are beneficial for all, as much can be learned from this.
The DLP’s final report, with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, asks what political leaders can do about the problem of single-use plastics. Petra Alderman looks at single-use plastic bans in 32 countries, with a focus on Barbados, Kenya and Thailand. The report argues legislatures can play an important role in environmental policymaking, but there are several barriers they face. It recommends various approaches to dismantling these barriers.
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