Governance Diaries: An Approach to Researching Marginalized People’s Lived Experiences in Difficult Settings

Abstract

How do chronically poor and marginalized citizens interact with and make claims to the different public authorities that exist in fragile, conflict and violence-affected contexts? In other words, how does governance from below look like in difficult settings? Given the centrality of the ‘leave no one behind’ agenda, an understanding of how such populations meet their governance needs can help identify the constraints to achieving development for all in these challenging settings. We wanted to research these questions comparatively, to see if there were common features of response in different contexts, with the presence of various kinds of non-state actors, diverse histories of colonialism and authoritarianism, and widely different social norms. In this article we describe the governance diaries approach, an iterative alternative to large-n surveys and multi-sited ethnographies we developed in the process of answering these questions. Governance diaries, working as a qualitative panel data, are a suitable approach for researching complex behavior that changes over time as large-n surveys are insufficiently dynamic to trace the processes behind change (lacking sensitivity) and ethnographic studies often have limited generalizability (lacking comparability). We describe here how this approach works and the challenges and opportunities it offers for research.

Everyday governance in areas of contested power: Insights from Mozambique, Myanmar, and Pakistan

“…The second set of research locations was in Punjab. In the more rural of these the major conflict dynamic related to land rights, and in particular the long-standing conflict between the Pakistan military and farmers who were tenants on 3 See Loureiro et al (2020) for a fuller description of the methodology. Although described as "diaries," and taking inspiration from diary-based research methods, participants in this study did not keep their own personal records, instead being interviewed regularly by researchers as keeping such records was not deemed safe or feasible on literacy grounds.…”

“…7 The remainder of this article focuses on three themes where our analysis produced findings that were broadly consistent across both countries and locations, although also detailing the nuances and kinds of differences found. While the findings themselves come from this analysis process we cite evidence from country-based working papers and reports produced as part of the research, which each make context-specific arguments (Chaimite et al, 2021;Loureiro et al, 2020;Myanmar research team, 2021aMyanmar research team, , 2021bPosse et al, 2022;Wazir et al, 2022). 8 5 See Loureiro et al (2020, p. 10) for further elaboration on these selection processes and definitions.…”

“…For more on research protocols and research ethics see Loureiro et al (2020). Although participating households could withdraw at any time, we saw relatively little attrition in the first phase.…”

Citizen action for accountability in challenging contexts: What have we learned?

“…In pursuing these questions, we applied a variety of methods-qualitative and quantitative, participatory and experimental, conventional and more innovative (Mohmand & Anderson, 2023). Of particular note was the "governance diaries" method (Anderson et al, 2023), elaborated further in Loureiro et al (2023), which gives a bottom-up view on how citizens perceive and engage with authorities.…”

Researching governance in difficult times and places: Reflections from Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Pakistan

“…While this article contributes to literature on revisiting research principles in difficult contexts, it draws essentially on the practical experiences of researchers across a number of inter‐linked projects. These include: a qualitative panel study we refer to as the Governance Diaries project, based on monthly interviews with poor and marginalized households and local governance actors that took place over several years in Mozambique, Myanmar, and Pakistan (Loureiro et al, 2020); research on the Bring Back Our Girls movement in Nigeria (Atela et al, 2021); two projects on women's movements and on women's political participation in Pakistan (Cheema et al, 2022; Khan et al, 2021; Khan & Naqvi, 2018); and a study based on “observatory panels” of representatives from civil society organizations (CSOs) exploring how civic space was shifting during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Mozambique, Nigeria, and Pakistan (Anderson et al, 2021). We draw on the reflections and experiences of the researchers directly and actively engaged in this research, gathered through observations during the research process (both authors were involved in the programme and on some of these projects), informal discussions and interviews, and a focus group discussion (FGD), to explore how they navigated contexts that were already fragile but where the space for research, and the perceived value of independent research, are diminishing.…”