Paper short abstract:

"Making the most of development research", notably through improved communication, has become a major concern for development organizations. The presentation will examine how this concern responds to a double need—to have and to show an impact on development—and some of the associated stakes.

Paper long abstract:

Between 1998 and 2002, several development organizations (such as the Overseas Development Institute and the International Development Research Centre) launched research programmes on the use of scientific research in so-called "developing" countries. These programmes led to various publications from 2000 onwards that emphasize the key role of communication in research utilization and define "best practices" in research communication for development.

While these best practices, and the works from which they stem, are overtly aimed at "bridging research and policy" (Court & Young, 2003) in developing countries, they also emerged precisely at a time when development agencies were urged to "demonstrate a significant positive impact on development" (Carden, 2004).

Thus, over the last years, "making the most of development research" (Carden, 2009) has infused development policy and practice as a response to a double need: to have an impact on development and to justify international aid to scientific research.

The presentation will show that this situation is affecting the politics of development communication. It will be established that the proposed collaboration-oriented communication practices kindle an interplay of competing conceptions of accountability in research and are structurally restrained by three main factors: a) the politics of development research production and utilization, b) the dominant conception of development and c) the limits of communication systems in developing countries.

The identification of these stakes is based on fieldwork and on an in-depth literature analysis conducted as part of a doctoral dissertation, which consisted in a long-term ethnographic study of a large-scale research project led in Senegal by an international governmental organization.