So, development challenges are governance challenges! And now … You might ask: How do we position ourselves within this wide range of governance challenges and why? Additionally to ensuring local ownership, our approach is simple:

1. ​​​Always work on governance as a transversal theme

2. Work on those governance priorities that are relevant to the context and where Switzerland has a proven expertise
   

We are convinced that any kind of development intervention, be it in education, water, health, climate change or else, needs to look at the institutions active in the sector, the quality of the processes that lead to the rules and regulations in this sector and also at the powers and interests of different actors. Please read this two-pager to get an initial understanding of the term >>!<<‘transversal governance’>>!<<. And dive deeper into the topic with this longer guidance paper with examples from the water and health sectors. Or listen to network members on how they have implemented transversal governance in their offices:​

Here, we propose to work on the four >>!<<pillars>>!<< as defined in our Governance guidance​: (1) democratic governance, participation & accountability (2) decentralisation and multi-level governance (3) combatting corruption and (4) governance opportunities, challenges from digitalisation. ​The fifth is transversal governance (see above). Switzerland focuses on these four pillars, as it has either a particular (Swiss) advantage or long-standing knowledge. Each of those pillars is broad in itself and has sub-topics. Throughout the years, the Governance Team has developed specific guidances on these sub-topics to which you find the following links. Additionally, we provide you with videos to either illustrate sub-topics with project examples or explanatory vidoes. 

A. Promoting democratic governance, participation and accountability 

If you work on activities in this area, you find SDC specific support papers/videos online: Media support, Civic and human rights education, Contested space for civil society, Election processes, Parliamentary support.  ​

Interested in a short example of how we support parliaments or how we include participation in projects? Please see here the video on the parliamentary support project in Macedonia and women’s empowerment in the constitution making process in Nepal:

B. Supporting decentralisation and well-functioning multi-level governance​

If you work on activities in this area, you find SDC specific support papers/videos online: Decentralisation and local governance, Socially inclusive and gender responsive budgeting, Local economic development (published in February 2022), Informal local governance actors, Supporting decentralisation processes, Sustainable local government finance.  

Here you can find two videos that introduce you to two long-standing decentralisation projects, one in Albania and the other one in Ukraine.

C. Combating corruption on all levels​  

If you work on activities in this area and want some SDC specific inputs, look at our new Anti-corruption guidance. 

This video below introduces you to the challenges of corruption and media:

​

If you h​ave a free evening and are interested in anti-corruption, we recommend you to watch the film Bahasha by Jordan Riber from Tanzania [see trailer here above] that was supported by Switzerland. It won the price for the best African Language Movie of the Africa Movie Academy Award in 2018. ​​Currently the movie is being streamed on Netflix.

D. Responding to governance opportunities and challenges from digitalisation

Look at the policy note on what we define as key issues in digital governance; review this mapping of possible partners and look into this short note on how you can assess​ proposals for digital governance programs; watch the following video from an example of an e-governance project in Ukraine and a video on how we think digitalisation is affecting good governance. ​​

​

The question is, how do you decide to work on certain priorities? In this video, Dani Radu from the Moldova Office tells you how their governance (with a big G) portfolio looks like and why they have decided to work on these issues. 

Before we go into the detail on what we do when analysing governance with our partners, we have to be so frank to tell you about our assumptions (if you disagree with us on these, we would love to hear from you 😊). Namely, we assume that governance processes lead to good development outcomes when:  

• public officials are well trained, have integrity, and are regularly paid;  
  

• public officials' activities are transparent; 

• people can hold public officials accountable;  

• all concerned people are included in a public decision-making process (what we call multi-stakeholder approach), otherwise a decision is likely not to hold in the long run;  

• rules and regulations are known, and can be referred to;  

• people trust public officials that they apply these rules and regulations to everyone in the same way.
  

This is why we always support these qualities in people and processes when we work on governance.

Governance is cool 😊 and we can and should always work on it – either in sectors (climate change, health, water, education, private sector development) or also on governance priorities, as we call it, like public planning, financing, information, communication, and political processes.

​

​

Where to go next -->​