Doing Development Differently: Politically Smart, Adaptive Approaches to Address Governance and Accountability

Constraints

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Leni Wild, Head of Politics and Governance, Overseas Development Institute

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What’s at stake?

• As the SDGs replace the MDGs: ‘more of the same’ will leave many without access to even basic services

• Progress in access to clean drinking water but big gaps in sanitation• Improvements in primary school enrolment but lagging progress in

completion and learning outcomes• Growing inequalities within countries

For many service delivery problems, financing or growth alone are not enough and technical solutions are available; problems are complex and often political

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The challenge (I)

Why current approaches often do not work - Pre-planned, pre-designed reforms:

– Tendencies to underestimate uncertainty and overestimate ability to achieve improvements within complex systems

– Too often assumes ready made solutions rather testing and learning in the face of this uncertainty

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The challenge (II)

• Why current approaches often do not work - While problems are often political, grand governance reforms may not be the solution:– Reinforce ready made solutions, rather

than what’s appropriate in the context– Can lead to superficial rather than deep-

seated change– Can be counter productive (reform

overload, capability traps)

Adapting development

Residential land titles issued per year

6 Source: Department of Finance

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

Residential Free Patent

Act (March 2010)

1,400% improvement

with same personnel!

Achieving results in The Philippines

Health-earmarked excise tax revenue from alcohol and tobacco

(billions of 2000 pesos)

7 Source: Department of Finance

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Tobacco

Alcohol

Law passed

(December 2012)

Achieving results in The Philippines

Philippines: Property rights

The Asia Foundation (USAID grant funding)

• Choice of objective: technically sound and political feasible• Entrepreneurial logic: Series of small bets, iterative learning, ‘searching’

for what is feasible• Self-motivated multi-skilled reform teams• Skilled coaching and support• Supportive funding arrangement

• Counter-factual: Large scale technical assistance programme that didn’t deliver

Nigeria: SAVI

State Accountability and Voice Initiative (DFID)

• Achieved a number of reforms (budgeting, access to health and education)

• Initial design to work on ‘demand side’• Implemented in unconventional ways:

rather than grant making, supported multi-stakeholder partnerships

• ‘Learning by doing’ approach

Plan’s community scorecards, Malawi

• Framed as programme for citizen voice and empowerment

• In practice – recognition that underlying problem was a lack of collective interests and action

• Use of politically savvy and connected local facilitators, and ‘learning by doing’

• Localised improvements in education, health and agriculture

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Malawi: Community score cards

Doing accountability differently?

• This requires in-built flexibility to change focus, level of ambition or activities after the programme start, and to learn as you go:

– Critical questioning/testing of assumptions, regular strategy testing– Blending design & implementation (including staffing), mapping ‘the

design space’– Fast feedback loops, ‘good enough’ evidence, making ‘small bets’– Looking for ‘positive deviance’– Funding arrangements that support this

See also: Duncan Green on systems thinking and the role of INGOsMercy Corp on adaptive programme management, Northern Uganda

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Recent BOND/UK NGO Event

https://storify.com/bondngo/adaptive-development, September 2015

An emerging network

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Doing Development Differently network: signatories from more than 60 countries

Interest from: BTC, DFID, DFAT, GIZ, SIDA, USAID, World Bank, as well as implementers

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Future reform efforts

• Emerging examples of attempts to operationalise these principles – Implementers of different shapes and sizes– DFID Better Delivery, USAID, World Bank and others

• But still predominantly “lone rangers” – what will be needed for a ’bandwagon effect’?

• Changes in:– Rules and processes– Management styles, working cultures– Public discourse

ODI is the UK’s leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues. We aim to inspire and inform policy and practice to reduce poverty by locking together high-quality applied research and practical policy advice.

The views presented here are those of the speaker, and do not necessarily represent the views of ODI or our partners.

Overseas Development Institute

203 Blackfriars Road, London, SE1 8NJ

T: +44 207 9220 300

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www.odi.org.uk

L.Wild@odi.org

#AdaptDev