While there are certain priorities of governance where we think we have a specific added value, as indicated in Session 1, you know better than we do that governance challenges are context sensitive. This is also why in our support documents / guidances and policy notes we do not promote a blue-print model of what countries should be doing to improve governance. Rather, we adapt our approaches to target the key challenges in a governance system or sector.
Governance Analysis
Any given governance system or sector is complex and unique. In order to simplify this complexity and start to understand the specifics of governance challenges, we propose to distinguish three aspects of governance:
Governance structures (laws, regulations, financing arrangements, decentralisation status),
Governance processes (formal and informal rules that guide and determine the quality of decision-making processes) and finally Key actors or stakeholders (their interests and ideas, motivation and behaviour, and their visible and hidden power).
Take a look at the introduction to the >>!<<governance analysis>>!<< to understand this in more detail.
In order to assess the second aspect, governance processes, the good governance principles will help you guide the analysis. Better governance is associated with six overarching principles: accountability, transparency, rule of law, non-discrimination, participation and effectiveness/efficiency.
For example, if equal access to health services is an issue, ask yourself: "Is the underlying problem associated with a lack of accountability, or transparency or rule of law?” Taking the governance principles as a starting point, strengths and weaknesses in the governance processes of a health system can be identified and direct your attention to entry points for change: From raising awareness of citizens' rights, to promoting health in free media. From ensuring citizens’ access, to supporting independent sources of information.
Thinking and Working Politically
While the governance analysis is a general approach that helps to identify challenges in all sectors and contexts, you might be interested to go deeper and get into the “politics” of what you are trying to change. We are convinced that there are no technical fixes to development (and thus governance) challenges – everything we do is political. Please read >>!<<Thinking and working politically>>!<<. This is also why since some years there is a community of practice in international cooperation called “thinking and working politically” (join us there!).
Apart from conducting a Governance Analysis, there are specific methods that help you to understand the “power game of change” that you aim to support. In the Governance Analysis reading, we introduce you briefly to four of them.
Political Economy Analysis (PEA): Please read this >>!<<short introduction to PEA>>!<< and if you get hooked. Look at this cool
policy note on PEA and if you still don’t have enough, you find here an interesting online library on the topic.
Problem Driven Iterative Approach (PDIA): The
toolkit from our colleagues at Harvard is very helpful. Power Cube: Learn to understand the
power for social change.
Political Settlements:
here you find the latest news on a large international research project on political settlements.
Not yet convinced? Please have a look at this super-short video of two experts that explain why it is important to engage in this kind of analysis:
Now other consultants might use other analysis tools in order to understand the powers and interests of the actors. That is perfectly fine. For example, there is the well known
Power Analysis.
We asked Nimo from Nairobi to describe to us how understanding the details of her context has facilitated Political Economy Analysis and has informed her governance program decisions:
It is fair to say that even the best governance or political analysis won’t guarantee you that its insights are transferred into practice. Paper is patient, goes the saying here in Switzerland. This is why we have done an event on “PEA - So what?” and you can find the visualised insights of three colleagues here:
Particularly with governance challenges that are political, the transfer to practice and everyday management of programs is difficult.
Chapter 5 of the Policy Note on PEA summarises some of these challenges when conducting a PEA and identifies possible solutions. An important aspect, which is highly relevant for any kind of analysis, is that all aspects of governance (structures, processes and actors) can be both formal and informal. If you are not including powers and interests of an informal actor, for example because this actor is not mentioned in the law, or is not generally associated with a specific sector, it might be very difficult to achieve the desired change. We have developed a short guidance (download
PDF or use the interactive graphic here below) what this would mean for local governance programs. The graph below is part of the guidance and helps you understand what Informal Local Governance Institutions (ILGIs) could be and what aspects would need to be taken into account.
Governance in authoritarian contexts
We are also aware that governance challenges might be different given different contexts, like authoritarian countries or fragile situations. In the past year we have looked at how to work on governance in authoritarian contexts. You can read the short
policy brief, read the
synthesis report or lean back and watch our 30 min webinar video below. Additional material on the link between
authoritarianism and fragility,
authoritarianism and gender and
authoritarianism and economic development can be found online. A practice note will be published in in the first half of 2022, so stay tuned.
Governance in fragile contexts
We have established working papers on Governance in fragile contexts which might be particularly interesting for our humanitarian colleagues. Interestingly, there is very little academic literature on what works and what doesn’t in regard to governance in fragile contexts, as Patricia Justino tells us:
At our network’s face to face in 2018, we have had intense discussions on this topic. The following videos are a restitution of the main discussion points. They help you to grasp the complexity our colleagues deal with when working in fragile contexts:
First, don’t get overwhelmed – there are simple ways to analyse governance challenges, and
Second, get overwhelmed: don’t assume that there are technical solutions to developmental challenges! The better you understand the financial, reputational, political, weapon-based or whatever power of the key actors you engage in – the better you can navigate the context and manage your programs within it.
But don’t worry 😊! Here too, we have for you several tools to help you decipher what could be at stake.
Where to go next -->
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