Paper short abstract:

This article examines the construction of agency in development projects. I adopt a historical perspective on the cotton sector in Benin, host of many development projects since the 1960s. I conclude that agency within projects depends more on changes occurring outside than within project spaces.

Paper long abstract:

Since the consolidation of aid, the failure of development projects has been justified by its inability to fully comprehend the complexities of the host context. Progressively, practitioners and researchers have successfully transformed the project experience. They made the project space more participatory, flexible, and responsive to the context specificities. Yet, unequal power relations between donor and recipient, project and context remain widespread within development encounters. Local institutions, elites, and underlying interests instrumentalise project mechanisms. Thus, this article challenges the idea that the project framework is the most relevant object of study to understand the construction of host actors’ agency within it. I draw from my doctoral research on the history of development projects in the cotton sector in Benin. I conducted focus groups, participant observations, archive research, and collected oral histories through interviews. In my longitudinal study, projects appear as short-lived and specific interventions, when compared with the lasting temporality and dynamics of the host context. From the perspective of host actors, projects are secondary events in which actors engage based on pressing issues defined by interactions in other domains of action, in which projects have none or little leverage. Therefore, I demonstrate that the understanding of host actors’ agency within projects is better understood by analysing long-term power relations in tangent social spaces. Finally, I contend that instead of focussing on agency within development encounters alone, we shall rather assess projects based on their capacity to empower actors to act outside of project boundaries.

Paper short abstract:

This paper shares the findings of a research project examining 20 years of continuous UK government assistance to four Nigerian States. It examines how successive governance programmes, operating in different political contexts, exercised their power and to what extent they supported local agency.

Paper long abstract:

The Learning, Evidence and Advocacy Partnership (LEAP) project, under a grant to the Overseas Development Institute, has undertaken research on 20 years of UK governance programming in Nigeria.

The research adopted a combination of 'realist synthesis' evaluation methods and process tracing to examine "Whether, how, under what conditions and for whom have UK-funded State level governance programmes in Nigeria contributed to sustained changes in governance and related changes in health and education in the Northern States of Kaduna, Kano, Jigawa and Yobe since 2000".

This very rare time-frame provides a unique opportunity to look back at how aid was provided to assist State actors (governor, legislators, civil servants, civil society at state and local levels, media), how it evolved and how support to policy, planning, budgeting, monitoring and advocacy impacted not only governance but also health and education sectors.

The research critically examines what politically-smart, locally-led programming has meant in practice, and how political economy factors (not only the local context but of the donor itself) shape what local governance, health or education changes can be influenced through external support.

The DSA paper will focus on how these programmes exercised their power (through funding/technical assistance, by 'activating' causal mechanisms (e.g. based on trusted relations), how they conceptualized local agency and locally-led change, and to what extent they did support local agency.

It will also reflect on the research process itself, conducted remotely due to Covid-19, in particular whose voices were heard and how to document changes over 20 years.

Paper short abstract:

This paper builds on the literature underpinning new 'second orthodoxy' aid methods through political-ethnographic analysis of a 'locally led' governance programme in Uganda.

Paper long abstract:

This paper applies and develops a theory of 'intimate governance' to show how the locally led features of a 'politically smart' programme operated in the context of Uganda's decentralisation project. Analysis, based on interviews, document reviews and participant observation, shows how the programme both shaped and was shaped by its institutional environment through mutual interaction. In a context of centralised state authority, the programme aimed to push resources and fiscal autonomy down to the local level through 'embedded' technical assistance for fiscal decentralisation reforms. It did this via a 'brokering', intermediary role: navigating and negotiating the complex set of interests determining the shape and implementation of the reforms.

The mechanisms of 'intimate governance' allowed the programme to influence governance arrangements by directly participating in the daily practices of 'doing the state'. In the context of shifting political constraints, however, the programme's embedded position within Uganda's financial technocracy meant that its capacity to support pro-poor outcomes remained fundamentally constrained by the ongoing politics of regime survival. The paper concludes by discussing its implications on a 'politically smart' model that seeks to create change through forms of contextual alignment. It questions a tendency within the so-called 'second orthodoxy' to view local political realities as largely instrumental, rather than capable of change.

Paper short abstract:

This qualitative paper explores to what extent various development 'experts' can play a meaningful role in resolving the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh. Our evidence suggests a nonchalant non-responsive practice limits the role of 'experts' towards finding a dignified solution to the crisis.

Paper long abstract:

The Rohingya crisis represents one of the major humanitarian concerns of the current time. Bangladesh host almost 90 per cent of the Rohingyas who fled Myanmar to save their lives (UNHCR, 2019; OCHA 2020). Nearly one million Rohingyas live in the congested camps in Cox's Bazar, making it the largest displacement camp in a non-conflicting situation. A great number of international and national NGOs, along with the UN agencies, are providing much-needed basic services to this vulnerable group. The enormity and complex nature of the crisis have also created spaces for researchers, academics, and activists to get involved in the quest for a dignified and sustainable solution and/or secure justice for the crimes against the Rohingyas. Based on 25 qualitative interviews development professionals working on Rohingya issues, this paper explores to what extent the 'experts' (including the academics, researchers, activists, etc.) can play a meaningful role in resolving this crisis. Our evidence suggests a nonchalant non-responsive practice limits the role of 'experts' towards finding a dignified solution to the crisis. Moreover, the space for national development experts (NDEs) is further confined than that of the international experts. Our findings reveal an existing inequality in current humanitarian development practice and recommend an inclusive approach for involving national experts and local actors emphasizing the locally derived expertise and agency to find a durable yet dignified solution to the Rohingya crisis.