The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development

Eyben, Rosalind; Guijt, Irene; Roche, Chris; Shutt, Cathy

doi:10.3362/9781780448855

Cited by 78 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…Second, the 'picking winners' approach imposes strong informational requirements, with the risks of both 'false positives' -choosing inappropriate country counterparts -and 'false negatives' -not providing help to local leaders who could use it. Third, the financial spending constraints mentioned above remain difficult for the second orthodoxy, because trying to spend money via these adaptive processes requires significant changes in monitoring and accountability frameworks (Eyben et al, 2015;Yanguas, 2018;Ramalingam et al, 2019).…”

Section: Donor Constraintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why does local agency matter? Ownership, partnership, and decision spaces in foreign aid

King¹

2020

Preprint

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The importance of local agency and leadership has long been emphasised in aid reform agendas, under the heading of 'ownership'. But in practice, this focus has often fallen victim to 'agency creep', as donors strive to retain control over the policy choices of aid-receiving countries. Even the ‘second orthodoxy’ risks being locally informed without being locally led. More recently, many factors have been reducing donors’ previous leverage over aid recipients’ policies. Given their previous difficulties with local agency, how can donors find new ways to support, enable and embrace it, and to navigate this new world of changing hierarchies? This paper explores the potential benefits of prioritising local agency, as well as the risks and constraints which make it difficult. The analysis suggests a possible way forward for donors: to create an enabling environment, by providing meaningful policy space for local leaders in aid-receiving countries to make their own policy choices. This change in emphasis could enhance the accountability and responsiveness of aid-receiving governments, while managing risks and delivering results. It would involve a shift in donor focus, away from being the protagonist and trying to influence the outputs of policymaking - the policy choices that countries make - and instead, towards trying to support the process of making those choices. In short, the remedy for a perceived misuse of power may not be to usurp it, but rather to support and enable its use for good.

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Section: Donor Constraintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why does local agency matter? Ownership, partnership, and decision spaces in foreign aid

King¹

2020

Preprint

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“…Interviewees considered the challenges involved in translating development discourse and buzzwords as part of a number of wider structural issues of the aid industry that led to unequal power relationships, many of which have been problematized extensively in the development literature (Eyben et al 2015;Mawdsley et al 2002;Wallace, Bornstein & Chapman 2007). Interviewees argued that projects tend to be designed and delivered according to donors' own agendas, which were sometimes inappropriate for the local context or not understood by local communities.…”

Section: Perceived Effect On Project Implementation and Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘These are all outside words’: Translating development discourse in NGOs’ projects in Kyrgyzstan and Malawi

Tesseur

Crack

2020

JTSA

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This article discusses the challenges encountered by NGO staff when translating the discourse of international development into the local languages of low-income countries as part of their efforts to communicate with the communities with which they work and to deliver successful projects. Development discourse is characterised by the use of vague and complex English buzzwords, which are not directly translatable into other languages and carry culturally specific connotations. This issue has rarely been problematized in Development Studies or in Translation Studies. We address this gap by drawing on data from 69 semi-structured interviews with staff from international and Southern NGOs in Kyrgyzstan and Malawi. Participants were asked to explain how they translated development discourse when designing, delivering or evaluating development projects and to describe the linguistic and cultural challenges they encountered when doing so. They were also asked to evaluate the impact of translation and interpreting issues on project outcomes. Our findings indicate that poor translation of buzzwords can seriously compromise the ability of communities to understand the purpose of projects and to participate in them in a meaningful way. The findings also underline the value of using local interpreters to build understanding and trust between NGOs and communities.

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“…In CHAT, methods, data, information, knowledge, evidence, and results have more diverse genesis than in technical evaluation or DIKW. Therefore, the CHAT analysis speaks to concerns about the politics of evaluation (Norris, 2015: 136;Picciotto, 2015: 152-153), evidence (Eyben et al, 2015) and knowledge production (Gardner & Lewis, 2015: 179). The two impacts and systemic contradictions are part and parcel FIGURE 9 Submerging and elevating along the temporal activity chain of a data/knowledge-intensive development 2.0 in which NGOs compete for funding and are under pressure to submerge or elevate different data/knowledge.…”

Section: Temporal Activity Chains Submerging and Elevatingmentioning

confidence: 99%

An activity theory study of data, knowledge, and power in the design of an international development NGO impact evaluation

Kelly

2018

Information Systems Journal

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International development is now a data-, information-, and knowledge-intensive industry, which some have characterised as "development 2.0." Power relations are rarely foregrounded in this landscape, even though they shape what data and knowledge is constructed or discarded. Impact evaluation is one example of this intensive work, yet evaluation models seldom make power relations explicit or actionable. Furthermore, implicit models of data and knowledge on which impact evaluation processes rely also neglect power and social practice.The resulting problem is that power remains silent in development impact evaluation practice. In response, this article articulates an alternative, using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to analyse impact evaluation activities conducted by a UK-based philanthropic donor and their grantee in India, a small non-government organisation (NGO) doing rural development work. The analysis uses CHAT to illustrate how impact data, knowledge, and power are simultaneously generated during professional evaluation activities. The study broadens our view of impact and offers two contributions. Firstly, for researchers in information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) and knowledge management for development (KM4D), it contributes the application of a perspective on social practice, CHAT, to development evaluation. A novel extension to CHAT, the concept of "temporal activity chains," is put forward to complement the established activity system frame. Secondly, the article demonstrates a practice-based view of development impact evaluation for researchers and practitioners who wish to acknowledge and respond to the generation of unequal power dynamics during evaluation processes. KEYWORDScultural historical activity theory (CHAT), data, knowledge, power, international development, impact evaluationThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development

Cited by 78 publications

References 0 publications

Why does local agency matter? Ownership, partnership, and decision spaces in foreign aid

Why does local agency matter? Ownership, partnership, and decision spaces in foreign aid

‘These are all outside words’: Translating development discourse in NGOs’ projects in Kyrgyzstan and Malawi

An activity theory study of data, knowledge, and power in the design of an international development NGO impact evaluation

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