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Democratic innovations are proliferating in politics, governance, policy, and public administration. These new processes of public participation are reimagining the relationship between citizens and institutions. This Handbook advances understanding of democratic innovations, in theory and practice, by critically reviewing their importance throughout the world. The overarching themes are a focus on citizens and their relationship to these innovations, and the resulting effects on political...

In a complex, globalised and rapidly changing world, power dynamics are multidimensional, constantly evolving, and full of complexity. The ‘powercube’ (Gaventa, 2006) is an approach to power analysis which can be used to examine the multiple forms, levels and spaces of power, and their interactions. Building on earlier work on power, and elaborated and popularised in collaboration with other colleagues through the web site powercube.net and numerous other resources, the powercube has been...

This book uncovers how power operates around the world, and how it can be resisted or transformed through empowered collective action and social leadership. The stakes have never been higher. Recent years have seen a rapid escalation of inequalities, the rise of new global powers and corporate interests, increasing impunity of human rights violations, suppression of civil society, and a re-shaping of democratic processes by post-truth, populist and nationalist politics. Rather than looking...

In this landmark collection, the voices of pathMakers and innovators in peacebuilding evaluation are assembled to provide new direction for the field.

The recent rapid evolution of digital technologies has been changing behaviors and expectations in countries around the world. These shifts make it the right time to pose the key question this paper explores: Will digital technologies, both those that are already widespread and those that are still emerging, have substantial impacts on the way citizens engage and the ways through which power is sought, used, or contested? The authors address this question both to mitigate some of the World...

15 Shares In practice the way in which research impacts and influences policy and society is often thought to be a rational, ordered and linear process. Whilst this might represent a ‘common sense’ understanding of research impact, in this cross-post John Burgoyne reflects on how upending the primacy of data and embracing complexity can lead to a more nuanced and effective understanding of research impact.

Research on the Information Society, the Digital Divide and Information and Communication Technologies for development

This paper analyses the award-winning e-participation initiative of the city council of Madrid, Decide Madrid, to discover the critical success factors at contextual, organizational and individual level. This analysis is carried out with desk research and semi-structured interviews. Results show that the most relevant success factors are the socio-economic context, the commitment of the city council, the method used to recruit the workers and the knowledge of senior managers about citizen...

CARE's Failing Forward initiative is sparking opportunities to showcase the ideas that don't work so we can spend more time implementing the ones that do. It's changing the conversation inside the organization, and leading to changes in the way we design and implement programs.

Adaptive Management involves a dynamic interaction between three elements: delivery, programming and governance. This case study focuses on a large DfID governance project, the Institutions for Inclusive Development (I4ID), a five-year initiative in Tanzania. The study forms part of a research project to examine whether and how adaptive approaches can strengthen aid projects promoting empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings (FCVAS). The research...

Donor-funded policy reform has a long history in Mozambique, with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) efforts dating to the mid-1990s. Many laws and regulations adopted during the past quarter century are the consequence of these efforts. And yet, even with several years of robust economic growth, Mozambique has not experienced the broad economic transformation that policy reforms can trigger: per capita income in 2017 was $519 and more than 80 percent of the country...

This paper explores the nature, role and dynamics of new forms of social and political action as pathways to empowerment and accountability in fragile conflict- and violence-affected settings in Africa. Through an in-depth analysis of the case of the Bring Back Our Girls (#BBOG) movement in Nigeria and a multi-methods approach, the paper provides new knowledge that addresses evidence gaps in the following areas: (1) the multiple ways through which social and political action play out in...

The world is complex. If we want to contribute to creating positive social outcomes, we must learn to embrace this complexity. This is the New World that funders and commissioners are discovering: • People are complex: everyone’s life is different, everyone’s strengths and needs are different. • The issues we care about are complex: issues – like homelessness – are tangled and interdependent. • The systems that respond to these issues are complex: the range of people and organisations...

Fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings (FCVAS) are messy and ambiguous contexts in which to plan and implement development initiatives. To work there, external actors are increasingly adopting an adaptive approach to empowerment and accountability (E&A) programming, whatever the setting. This means using a compass rather than map, where real-time political economy analysis (PEA) in relation to context and programme monitoring and evidence-informed learning in relation to...

Rather than a glossy brochure that no one reads, your strategy should be an ongoing practice that informs your decisions and adapts as circumstances change. A Viewpoint from the Summer 2019 issue.

This BAA allows USAID Operating Units (OUs) to co-create, co-design, co-invest, and collaborate in the research, development, piloting, testing, and scaling of innovative, practical, and cost-effective interventions to catalyze locally led development. The BAA aligns with a number of Agency priorities and policies, including the Journey to Self-Reliance, resilience, procurement innovation, and expanding and diversifying the partner base - as well as the New Partnerships Initiative and...

The Laboratory of Collective Intelligence for Participatory Democracy (2016-2019) is a project that arose out of Medialab Prado in coordination with the Government Area of Citizen Participation, Transparency and Open Government of the city of Madrid. Its work has been very connected with the analysis, reflection and innovation found on the digital participation platform Decide Madrid. The project has also organised many workshops and conferences that have brought together hundreds of people...

Accountability is rightly at the center of the conversation regarding how to improve governance systems, particularly health and education systems. But efforts to address accountability deficits often focus primarily on improving what can be counted and verified—what we term “accountingbased accountability.” We argue that introducing greater accounting-based accountability will only very rarely be the appropriate solution for addressing accountability problems. We illustrate this by...

Scaling Impact introduces a new and practical approach to scaling the positive impacts of research and innovation. Inspired by leading scientific and entrepreneurial innovators from across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East, this book presents a synthesis of unrivalled diversity and grounded ingenuity. The result is a different perspective on how to achieve impact that matters, and an important challenge to the predominant more-is-better paradigm of scaling. For...

The Scale Up Sourcebook is informed and inspired by the September 2018 conference, Innovations in Agriculture: Scaling Up to Reach Millions, organized by Purdue University, in partnership with the African Development Bank. The Sourcebook consolidates, extends, and disseminates some of the scaling insights presented at the Purdue conference. It is intended as an easy-to-use guidebook targeted to a broad and diverse audience of stakeholders associated with scaling agricultural technologies and...