[Civsoc-mw] FW: [twp.learning] FYI: What We're Reading

[cammack at mweb.co.za]

Perhaps of interest. Some links to Political Economy of health and of education, by the Thinking and Working Politically team at USAID HQ. D

 

 

Hi all,

 

Some daffodils and forsythia is starting to bloom here in Washington, and spring is in the air! If it's spring for you too, and you need an excuse to sit outside for a while, here's some reading that has caught the team's eyes recently:

*        A review from some USAID/Nigeria programming of  <https://www.chemonics.com/blog/working-the-system-what-weve-learned-about-strengthening-accountability/> promising approaches to working differently with civil society by finding linked clusters of actors collectively approaching a related challenge. I've long been a fan of this project, and there are some future learning products on the way, but my broad takeaway is that while some of this seems like old wine in new bottles (we've worked with coalitions for a long time), there are important devils in the details regarding how we work. For those interested in systems thinking, this is a great example of how applying it can lead to practical changes rather than abstractions.

*        A pithy but excellent review of how  <https://issblog.nl/2018/12/18/development-dialogue-2018-who-decides-who-gets-social-protection-by-maria-klara-kuss/amp/?__twitter_impression=true> politics informs social protection, using a case in Zambia where social protection was to change to include people who had not previously been fully seen as "deserving" of such schemes. There has been a lot of research in this area, and if you're looking at questions of self-reliance through government social insurance schemes or domestic revenue mobilization, you absolutely should familiarize yourself with how the power dynamics at play influence the outcomes and sustainability of such approaches. Highlight quote: "People will understand who will be included and who will be excluded from receiving social protection benefits. If these policy ideas are competing with people’s perceptions of social justice, local opposition is likely to emerge."

*        A related article traces how Indonesia's mandate for universal health coverage  <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PgZ1hXLW825bZU_6A0o1ne5MlRFwmsZz/view> grew over time through a political economy lens. By walking through the history over the years, it reveals both how the journey evolved and how central the shifting interests of different actors were over time. If you squint, you can find glimpses of future, more sophisticated donor-driven programming that supports policy experimentation and incentivizing scale in ways that work with the grain of the messy realities of a society.

*        A similar article on perceiving how politics has influenced a sector outcome over time is  <http://www.effective-states.org/understanding-the-politics-of-the-learning-crisis/> Lant Pritchett's review of Brian Levy's book on the politics of education. Through comparative work in South Africa and Kenya, this is suggestive of critical ways that communities can improve learning outcomes, and some of the challenges to doing so at scale depending on the broader incentives affecting the education system.

*        Further on the Thinking and Working Politically front is a  <https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/thinking-and-working-politically-in-economic-development-programmes-some-sprints-and-stumbles-from-a-dfid-programme-in-kyrgyzstan/> review of work in Kyrgyzstan that described how they attempted to work mindfully of power dynamics and incentives in an economic growth program. This is a great example shining light on how the considerations described in the studies above can be brought into our theories of change and our programmatic approach to make donor-supported development programming more nimble, more relevant, and ultimately more effective.

*        Another example of TWP, though more forward looking, is this collaboration between ODI and Gatsby Africa aiming to  <https://www.marketlinks.org/post/transforming-productive-sectors-africa-markets-versus-firms> improve cotton growing in Tanzania. They are specifically understanding this as a problem of incentives and power, and considering how attention to specific firms might enable them to push through a logjam in the political economy.

*        A fascinating stream of work being conducted by R4D is described in this  <https://www.r4d.org/blog/what-can-we-learn-from-participants-in-transparency-and-accountability-interventions/> blog post, which looks in depth at the channels through which community engagement in transparency and accountability efforts aimed at improve maternal and child health does or doesn't work. While most research into these areas only examines the "bottom line" of whether it worked, this stream of research is explicitly shedding light on why or why not by using robust qualitative methods throughout. The resulting findings are more nuanced, and so more useful to those of you working on similar efforts.

*        Speaking of how donor-supported programming can become more nimble and politically savvy, this  <http://www.devpolicy.org/reconciling-local-problem-solving-with-impact-at-scale-in-decentralised-contexts-20190124/> thought-provoking article by Dan Harris asks us to reconcile the increasing support for locally-led problem solving with a desire to have impact at scale. It echoes some of the stories presented in a recent  <https://usaidlearninglab.org/library/political-economy-health-finance-webinar-follow-kampala-workshop> webinar on political economy of health finance, and also some seminal work that I've highlighted before from Yuen Yuen Ang on  <https://www.amazon.com/Escaped-Poverty-Cornell-Studies-Political/dp/1501700200> how China developedthrough a controlled experimentation rather than top-down model. It seems that increasingly, donor-supported programming (particularly that aiming to support local leadership and spur self-reliance) may need to view itself as introducing new experiments and ideas into a society in ways where that society's own incentives and experiences may be shifted to lead to scaling, rather than the traditional "proof of concept through small pilots" or "large replacement institutional framework" pathways of trying to achieve outcomes at scale. 

Happy reading, and as always, please share your thoughts or other articles you find interesting!


Best,


David




David Jacobstein 

DCHA/DRG Cross-Sectoral Programs Team

United States Agency for International Development

T: (202) 712-1469

djacobstein at usaid.gov <mailto:djacobstein at usaid.gov> 

 

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