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 More examples are needed of aid programming that works by being responsive to country realities: politically smart, problem-driven and locally led  DFID’s SAVI programme has revealed a hitherto untapped potential for change leading to better development results at state level in Nigeria  SAVI provides low-profile support to state-level organisations and partnerships, building their capacity to engage constructively with government  It avoid the pitfalls of a donor-driven approach by...

Development assistance programmes that start from careful analysis of what works and what does not in country contexts are still remarkably rare. One reason for this is the lack of well documented examples of ‘politically’ smart aid programming. To this end, this film outlines the experience of the State Accountability and Voice Initiative (SAVI), a DFID-funded programme in Nigeria providing support to civil society, media and governmental organisations.

On 18 December 2013, the Indonesian House of Representatives passed the new Village Law, a vote that was the culmination of a journey that had started in 2007. This Story of Change takes the passing of the Village Law as its starting point and describes the relative influence that research-based evidence, produced by the Institute for Research and Empowerment (IRE), has had at critical junctions of the legislative process. This Story of Change concludes that good quality, research-based...

The RAIN program experience affirms the importance of multi-year and flexible funding as key program design features if progress in resilience building is to be supported in areas with high levels of structural and temporal vulnerability. These features enable management to respond effectively to changing circumstances in order to better meet the needs of communities and to create the necessary conditions for relief-to-development strategies to take hold. Finally, this study found that...

How have local governments in China been able to break through central policy restrictions in a unitary and authoritarian political system? Why is China's official discourse in the reform era often so conservative and unfavorable to reform? The author argues the two issues are components of a signaling game between China's central government and local officials, in which local officials know that the center may be reformist, but the reformist center imitates the rhetoric of a conservative...

Introduction to the Overview: Tiny Tools Why “Tiny Tools” for assessing change? Currently, change is mostly assessed by NGO staff or external experts. The vision of this paper is that communities assess and reflect change themselves and make use of that reflection with appropriate tools. All the tools presented here are relatively quick and easy to learn (therefore “tiny”). With Tiny Tools we can assess change in one session. They can therefore be used where there are not baselines. They are...

Anna L. Ahlers and Gunter Schubert, ’Adaptive Authoritarianism’ in Contemporary China: Identifying Zones of Legitimacy Building, in: Deng Zhenglai and Guo Sujian (eds), Reviving Legitimacy: Lessons for and from China, Lanham: Lexington Books (2011),

NGO-IDEAs (NGO – Impact on Development, Empowerment and Actions) NGO-IDEAs is a cooperation of about 40 non-govermental organisations (NGOs) from South Asia, East Africa and the Philippines and 14 German NGOs working in the field of development cooperation. It identifies and develops jointly with all partners, concepts and tools for NGOs in the areas of Outcome and Impact Assessment and Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E). NGO-IDEAs is further being supported by VENRO, the umbrella organisation of...

With oversight from the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, Yarbrough, Schulha, Hopson, and Caruthers have revised and illustrated this new edition of the Program Evaluation Standards. These thirty standards support the core attributes of evaluation quality: utility, feasibility, propriety, accuracy, and accountability, and provide guidance to anyone interested in planning, implementing, or using program evaluations. The book is an invaluable resource for practicing...

In this sequel to "Rural Development: Putting the last first" Robert Chambers argues that central issues in development have been overlooked, and that many past errors have flowed from domination by those with power.Development professionals now need new approaches and methods forinteracting, learning and knowing. Through analyzing experience - of past mistakes and myths, and of the continuing methodological revolution of PRA (participatory rural appraisal) - the author points towards...

Development, it is generally assumed, is good and necessary, and in its name the West has intervened, implementing all manner of projects in the impoverished regions of the world. When these projects fail, as they do with astonishing regularity, they nonetheless produce a host of regular and unacknowledged effects, including the expansion of bureaucratic state power and the translation of the political realities of poverty and powerlessness into "technical" problems awaiting solution by...

The theme of learning from experience as a means of improving the effectiveness of rural development projects and programmers has been common in recent years. Considerable effort has been put into refining, monitoring and evaluation systems to enhance organizational learning processes. However, an emphasis on normative approaches to evaluation and learning from experience has led to the neglect of research into the actual processes by which rural development agencies utilize experience. The...

"Weapons of the Weak" challenges conventional understandings of peasant resistance by focusing on the subtle, often overlooked ways that peasants resist domination. Rather than focusing on dramatic uprisings, Scott examines the everyday acts of resistance that occur in the shadows of power. Key Arguments Resistance is not always visible: Scott argues that resistance is not limited to organized rebellions. Everyday acts like foot-dragging, gossip, feigned ignorance, and petty theft can be...

Dr Joseph Needham's account of the Chinese achievement in science and technology will stand as one of the great works of our time. It has been acclaimed by specialists in both East and West and also by readers with wider and more general interests. The text, based on research of a high critical quality, is supported by many hundreds of illustrations and is imbued with a warm appreciation of China. Volume I is an introductory volume, in which Dr Needham prepares his readers for the study of a...