3 fallacies of embracing complexity - Ang, Yuen Yuen (UNDP Blog, 2018)
Global development is seeing an exciting paradigm shift. Increasingly, leaders and practitioners recognize that development is not a “complicated” challenge that can be neatly parsed out into separate problems and siloed departments, like assembling a car. Rather, the various tasks of development—poverty eradication, improving governance, climate action, gender equality, and so on—are all connected, making development a “complex” challenge.

Combining Big Data and Thick Data to Improve Services Delivery - Ang, Yuen Yuen (IBM Center for The Business of Government, 2018)

Complexity & Development 2.0: From Agreeing We Should Adapt to Creating the Conditions that Enable Adaptation - Ang, Yuen Yuen (2018)
The field of global development has reached a critical turning point. Almost gone is the mechanical, one-size-fits-all “good governance” paradigm of the past. In its place is a growing embrace of complexity and systems thinking. While this is an encouraging shift in the right direction, the discussion mostly ends by concluding that we should adapt. Yuen Yuen Ang urges that it’s time to take our conversation on “complexity & development” to the next level: how to enable adaptation. Effective adaptation doesn’t automatically arise just because we desire it—rather, it requires certain enabling conditions. In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016), she introduces a generic complexity 2.0 framework that she terms “directed improvisation.” Effective adaptation, Yuen Yuen argues, requires a paradoxical blend of top-down direction and bottom-up improvisation. Such a system can be created—and produce dramatic results and adaptive solutions—even within a closed political regime like China.

Going Local 2.0: How to Reform Development Agencies to Make Localized Aid More Than Talk - Ang, Yuen Yuen (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2018)
More and more global aid agencies believe they should replace one-size-fits-all best practices with locally tailored solutions, but they must shift from just agreeing to “go local” to preparing development experts for the task by taking on three major problems with their internal practices.

How Beijing Commands: Grey, Black, and Red Directives from Deng to Xi - Ang, Yuen Yuen (The China Quarterly, 2022)

How China Escaped the Poverty Trap - Ang, Yuen Yuen (Cornell University Press, 2016)
Before markets opened in 1978, China was an impoverished planned economy governed by a Maoist bureaucracy. In just three decades it evolved into the world's second-largest economy and is today guided by highly entrepreneurial bureaucrats. In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Yuen Yuen Ang explains this astonishing metamorphosis. Rather than insist that either strong institutions of good governance foster markets or that growth enables good governance, Ang lays out a new, dynamic framework for understanding development broadly. Successful development, she contends, is a coevolutionary process in which markets and governments mutually adapt.By mapping this coevolution, Ang reveals a startling conclusion: poor and weak countries can escape the poverty trap by first harnessing weak institutions―features that defy norms of good governance―to build markets. Further, she stresses that adaptive processes, though essential for development, do not automatically occur. Highlighting three universal roadblocks to adaptation, Ang identifies how Chinese reformers crafted enabling conditions for effective improvisation.How China Escaped the Poverty Trap offers the most complete synthesis to date of the numerous interacting forces that have shaped China’s dramatic makeover and the problems it faces today. Looking beyond China, Ang also traces the coevolutionary sequence of development in late medieval Europe, antebellum United States, and contemporary Nigeria, and finds surprising parallels among these otherwise disparate cases. Indispensable to all who care about development, this groundbreaking book challenges the convention of linear thinking and points to an alternative path out of poverty traps.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Integrating Big Data and Thick Data to Transform Public Services Delivery - Ang, Yuen Yuen (IBM Center for The Business of Government, 2019)
This report explains how public organizations can combine big data and thick data to transform public services delivery—a strategy called mixed analytics. Governments can greatly enhance the value of big data by combining it with “thick” data—rich qualitative information about users, such as their values, goals, and consumption behavior, obtained by observing or interacting with them in their daily lives. Big data holds great promise for improving public services delivery and innovation in government, but they are not a panacea . Having lots of data can be overwhelming or have little utility if the data are “thin”—that is, they lack meaning for users or fail to capture issues that matter most . By yielding insights into what citizens really care about and how they consume services, thick data can inform both the collection and analysis of big data. This report introduces the concept of “mixed analytics,” integrating big data and thick data to transform government decision making, public services delivery, and communication. The report presents three case studies of organizations that employ mixed analytics at the international, federal, and city level, respectively. Together, this research offers a set of transferable lessons for agencies at all levels of government: Lesson 1: Big data is a means to an end, rather than an end. Lesson 2: Thick data can identify unexpected problems or previously unexpressed needs. Lesson 3: Thick data can inform the analysis of big data. Lesson 4: Mixed analytics can offer both scale and depth. Lesson 5: Applying technology is a social activity, not an isolated technical task. Lesson 6: The best solutions are not always high-tech. The report concludes with five actionable recommendations for public managers. Make data and technology relevant to the people who use it. Leverage thick data at appropriate stages of the problem-solving process. Build an interdisciplinary team of quantitative and qualitative experts who work closely with stakeholders. Combine big and thick data to improve communication Improve government agencies’ knowledge of mixed research methods. This report builds on multiple past IBM Center reports about how government can leverage data and analytics to improve decisions, including Data-Driven Government: The Role of Chief Data Officers, by Jane Wiseman; Ten Actions to Implement Big Data Initiatives: A Study of 65 Cities, by Alfred Ho and Bo McCall, and Realizing The Promise of Big Data, by Kevin DeSouza. The report also complements several chapters that assess the past and potential use of data across the public sector in our recent book, Government For The Future: Reflection and Vision For Tomorrow’s Leaders. At a time when the US and other governments continue to enhance their use of data as a strategic asset for transformation, we hope that Professor Ang’s report provides useful insights for government managers and stakeholders.

Making Details Matter: How to Reform Aid Agencies to Generate Contextual Knowledge - Ang, Yuen Yuen (SSRN, 2014)
My essay considers a central problem of reinventing foreign aid in the twenty-first century: how to reform aid agencies to enable a “best-fit” approach to development assistance. For the past decades, the aid community has tried to transplant best practices from the developed world to the developing world. Increasingly, however, it is recognized that copying best practices does not work and may even backfire; rather, aid programs work best when they are tailored to local contexts. Yet while the idea of a best-fit approach is widely embraced in principle, actualizing it is easier said than done. For meaningful changes to take root in practice, we must first identify the obstacles to localizing development assistance and suggest ways to address these problems. To this end, I propose a three-pronged strategy to promote the generation of contextual knowledge among aid professionals, a necessary condition for crafting solutions that can fit various local contexts, namely: (1) build a bank of knowledge about unorthodox practices that work, (2) diversify expertise within aid agencies; and (3) carve experimental pockets. My proposal does not fit neatly into any one of the six themes specified in the GDN competition; rather, it concerns all of the themes. Whether it is to use aid to improve governance, apply information technology, or design financial instruments, the overarching challenge is to empower and incentivize aid professionals to learn and apply contextual knowledge to creatively solve problems in developing societies.
Keywords: Contextual knowledge; Localization; Public policy; foreign aid; international development

PDIA in action - Andrews, Matt; Samji, Salimah (Center for International Development, Harvard University, 2021)
Learning from our experience in 2020, we asked the alumni of our HKS Implementing Public Policy (IPP) Executive Education program, if they wanted to work with our students on their nominated problems. Eight IPP alumni, William Keith Young, Adaeze Oreh, Milzy Carrasco, Kevin Schilling, Artem Shaipov, George Imbenzi, David Wuyep, and Raphael Kenigsberg, who had been trained on PDIA and implementation, signed up to work with our students. Thirty-seven students signed up to take the course beginning January 26th, 2021. The students worked across eight teams and adopted a problem driven approach to foster learning that could help their authorizers develop an action learning strategy to their nominated challenge. This book highlights the students’ work drawing from their blogs as well as the event series. There are 8 sections, one for each of the teams and the problems they worked on during the course. We hope you enjoy reading their stories! Scan the QR Code at the end of each section to learn more.

Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action - Andrews, Matt; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Oxford University Press, 2017)
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Governments play a major role in the development process, and constantly introduce reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but children don't learn, IT systems areintroduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability.This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It starts by providing evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, showing that many governments lack basic capacities even after decades of reforms and capacity building efforts. The book then analyses this evidence, identifying capability traps that hold many governments back - particularly related to isomorphic mimicry (where governments copy best practice solutions from other countries that make them look morecapable even if they are not more capable) and premature load bearing (where governments adopt new mechanisms that they cannot actually make work, given weak extant capacities). The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (problem driveniterative adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. The discussion about this process is structured in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers devise policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Doing Iterative and Adaptive Work - Andrews, Matt; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Center for International Development at Harvard University, 2016)
Many of the challenges in international development are complex in nature. They involve many actors in uncertain contexts and with unclear solutions. Our work has proposed an approach to addressing such challenges, called Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA). This paper is the most recent in a series intended to show how one can do PDIA, building on the first paper, "Doing Problem Driven Work.” The current paper addresses a key part of the approach one moves to once a problem has been identified, performing real-time experimental iterations. This is intended as a practical paper that builds on experience and embeds exercises for readers who are actually involved in this kind of work.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Doing Problem Driven Work - Andrews, Matt; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Harvard University, 2015)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Escaping Capability Traps through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) - Andrews, Matt; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Harvard University, 2012)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Building capability by delivering results: Putting Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) principles into practice - Andrews, Matt; Pritchett, Lant; Samji, Salimah; Woolcock, Michael (A Governance Practitioner’s Notebook: Alternative Ideas and Approaches, 2015)
The Governance Practitioner’s Notebook takes an unusual approach for the OECD-DAC Network on Governance (GovNet). It brings together a collection of specially written notes aimed at those who work as governance practitioners within development agencies. It does so, however, without attempting to offer definitive guidance – instead aiming to stimulate thinking and debate. To aid this process the book is centred on a fictional Governance Adviser. The Notebook’s format provides space for experts to speak on today’s governance issues: politics, public sector reform and stakeholder engagement. It encourages debate, charts the evolution of donor thinking, and highlights future challenges in the age of the Sustainable Development Goals. Each section introduces both technical issues and major areas of debate, providing ideas for future development support to institutional reform.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

A Guide to Peer-to-Peer Learning - Andrews, Matt; Manning, Nick (Effective Institutions Platform, 2016)

Learning to Target for Economic Diversification: PDIA in Sri Lanka - Andrews, Matt; Ariyasinghe, Duminda; Batuwanthudawa, Thamari; Darmasiri, Shivanthika; Silva, Nilupul; Harrington, Peter; Jayasinghe, Prasanna; Jayasinghe, Upul; Jayathilake, Gamini; Karunaratne, Jayani; Katugampala, Lalit; Liyanapathirane, Jeewani; et al. (Center for International Development, Harvard University, 2017)

Explaining positive deviance in public sector reforms in development - Andrews, Matt (World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER), 2013)
Public sector reforms are commonplace in developing countries. Much of the literature about these reforms reflects on their failures. This paper asks about the successes and investigates which of two competing theories best explain why some reforms exhibi
Keywords: Development; Innovation; Reform; case survey; governance; growth; leadership

Getting Real about Unknowns in Complex Policy Work - Andrews, Matt (Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE), 2021)
As with all public policy work, education policies are demanding. Policy workers need to ‘know’ a lot—about the problems they are addressing, the people who need to be engaged, the promises they can make in response, the context they are working in, and the processes they will follow to implement. Most policy workers answer questions about such issues within the structures of plan and control processes used to devise budgets and projects. These structures limit their knowledge gathering, organization and sense-making activities to up-front planning activities, and even though sophisticated tools like Theories of Change suggest planners ‘know’ all that is needed for policy success, they often do not. Policies are often fraught with ‘unknowns’ that cannot be captured in passive planning processes and thus repeatedly undermine even the best laid plans. Through a novel strategy that asks how much one knows about the answers to 25 essential policy questions, and an application to recent education policy interventions in Mozambique, this paper shows that it is possible to get real about unknowns in policy work. Just recognizing these unknowns exist—and understanding why they do and what kind of challenge they pose to policy workers—can help promote a more modest and realistic approach to doing complex policy work.

The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development: Changing Rules for Realistic Solutions - Andrews, Matt (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Institutional reforms are common across the globe. Think of efforts to build new governments in Afghanistan and Iraq; or decades worth of interventions intended to improve fiscal management, reduce corruption or introduce efficient public sector service delivery in African countries.These reforms often have limited results, however. They lead to new laws that are not properly implemented, and new organizations that have poor capacities and fail to function as needed. In this book, Matt Andrews explains why reform results are frequently limited and suggests ways to overcome these limits. In the first half of the book, Andrews argues that reforms fail to make governments better when they are introduced as signals to gain short-term support–from donors and others. Reforms as signals introduce unrealistic best practices that do not fit developing country contexts and are not considered relevant by implementing agents. The result is a set of new forms that do not function properly. Andrews uses examples to prove this point, ranging from efforts to introduce fiscal rules in Argentina to reforms aimed at international accounting standard adoption in many African countries, and anti corruption interventions in Malawi and Uganda. In the second half of the book, Andrews notes that there are instances where reforms are not being introduced as signals, and are having more of an impact on government effectiveness. Examples include local government reforms in Rwanda, anti corruption initiatives in Indonesia, and a variety of initiatives ranging from results based management to civil service modernization and internal control regime adoption in governments like Kenya, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Andrews uses these examples to discuss ways in which reforms can actually provide realistic solutions to governance challenges in developing countries. Lessons from these experiences suggest that reform limits can be overcome by focusing interventions on problem solving, and promoting incremental and localized processes to find solutions, involving multiple agents who can authorize and implement reforms.

LAC MEL Specialists Use Peer Network to Improve Quality and Use of Evidence - Anderson, Todd M; Prevatt, Amy (USAID, 2019)
Based on consultations and stocktakings with LAC Missions, the LAC Bureau identified Mission Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Specialists as influential decision makers regarding data and evidence use. The LAC Bureau aims to improve the quality and use of evidence for decision making, and ultimately to improve development outcomes.

Time to Listen: Hearing People on the Receiving End of International Aid - Anderson, Mary B.; Brown, Dayna; Jean, Isabella (CDA Collaborative Learning Projects, 2012)
Does the way international assistance is organized make sense? Is it working as we mean it to? This book approaches these questions through the experiences of people living on the receiving side of international assistance. It reports on the ideas, insights, and analyses of almost 6,000 people across 20 countries where international aid has been provided. From such a range of locations and people, one might expect vastly different ideas and opinions. However, remarkably consistent patterns and common judgments emerged. In the midst of difference, there was striking unanimity and consistency about the processes and the effects of the international aid system. Using their words, their experiences, and their ideas, this book describes why the cumulative impacts of international aid efforts have not met expectations. It describes a way forward to make changes that, according to those on the receiving end, will lead to more effective and lasting results.

How Do Donor-led Empowerment and Accountability Activities Take Scale into Account? Evidence from DFID Programmes in Contexts of Fragility, Conflict and Violence - Anderson, Colin; Fox, Jonathan; Gaventa, John (IDS, 2020)
Development donors invest significantly in governance reform, including in contexts characterised by conflict and fragility. However, there is relatively little comparative study of their change strategies, and little understanding of what works and why. This paper explores the strategies of six recent DFID-funded programmes in Mozambique, Myanmar, and Pakistan with empowerment and accountability aims. Document review and field interviews are used to analyse the application of multi-scalar or multi-level change strategies, since such approaches are hypothesised to potentially generate more leverage for public accountability reforms. Analysis suggests that these strategies can strengthen citizen ability to navigate governance systems to resolve problems and claim accountability, and can bolster pro-accountability coalitions’ internal solidarity and external legitimacy. Multi-level strategies also appear associated with establishing more significant pressure for reform than exclusively local or national approaches. Yet conventional project reporting focuses on counting activities and outputs rather than analysing the dynamic, interactive processes at work in these strategies, and few evaluations are publicly accessible. To fully understand what kinds of action strengthen citizen demands for accountability requires a more transparent and rigorous approach to learning from donor-led governance interventions.

Doing Accountability Differently: A 'Vertically Integrated' Approach - Amakom, Uzochukwu; Fashola, Temitope; Gay, Charles; Shutt, Cathy (Christian Aid, 2018)

Making humanitarian response more flexible: bibliography - ALNAP (2018)

An introduction to systems thinking and tools for systems thinking - Allen, Will; Kilvington, Margaret (Learning fro Sustainability, 2018)
Systems thinking is an approach to integration that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system will act differently when isolated from the system’s environment or other parts of the system. THIS PAGE PROVIDES PLENTY OF RESOURCES ON SYSTEM THINKING

Navigating complexity: adaptive management and organizational learning in a development project in Northern Uganda - Allana, Amir; Sparkman, Timothy (Knowledge Management for Development Journal, 2014)
Adaptive management is a management paradigm for intervening in complex, unpredictable systems where continual learning and adaptation is vital for success. This management approach requires a fundamentally different set of tools, processes, and most importantly, staff behaviors and organizational culture than ‘traditional’ management. A facilitative approach to development, where the goal is creating systemic change that spreads in networks of local businesses, government, and civil society organizations, necessitates an adaptive approach. Mercy Corps Uganda’s Northern Karamoja Growth, Health, and Governance Program (GHG) has been an ongoing experiment in applying the principles of adaptive management and facilitation. This article details two examples from GHG where adaptation has occurred, and provides an analysis of the tools, processes, and organizational culture that exists. Three salient takeaways for effective facilitation are elaborated on: the importance of staff behaviors and underlying beliefs, particularly with regards to ‘failure’, flexibility to experiment, dissent & debate, and curiosity with the subject matter of their work; importance of consistent messaging from senior management with regards to the same; and tools and processes playing a support function to these behaviours, rather than being their source. Lessons and implications are drawn out from the GHG experience for funders and implementing organizations wanting to apply adaptive management in the context of development programming. These include building flexibility into budgeting and contracts, rethinking the structure and content of reports, and utilizing alternative hiring criteria to attract senior managers who are more likely to succeed at adaptive management.

Navigating complexity: Adaptive management in the Northern Karamoja Growth, Health & Governance program - Allana, Amir (MercyCorps, 2014)
Development actors increasing agree that managing programs adaptively – especially complex interventions – can improve their effectiveness. But what does adaptive management look like in practice?
Keywords: IMPORTANT; Practice

Where have we got to on adaptive learning, thinking and working politically, doing development differently etc? Getting beyond the People’s Front of Judea - Algoso, Dave; Hudson, Alan (From Poverty to Power, 2016)
Dave Algoso and Alan Hudson at Global Integrity compare and contrast 9 different initiatives that are all heading in roughly the right direction in aid reform
Keywords: IMPORTANT

How to Build Movements with Cyclical Patterns in Mind - Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly - Algoso, Dave; Guerzovich, Florencia; Gattoni, Soledad (Nonprofit Quarterly, 2023)
The world changes too much for anyone who is invested in social change work to imagine that this work is linear and predictable. Opportunities come and go, whether caused by a pandemic or political shifts. This much most social movement leaders and activists intuitively understand. But what can be done with this realization? How might movement groups better prepare for moments of opportunity? We want to explore how we can create the changes we want to see by responding to the changes that are outside our control.

Adapting Aid: Lessons from six case studies - Algoso, Dave; Beloe, Jon; Hemberger, Alison; Hill, Philippa; Proud, Emma (MercyCorps & IRC, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Eight Practices for Strategic Agility - Algoso, Dave (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2019)
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.

How INGOs are Doing Development Differently - Algoso, Dave (Care, IRC, Mercy Corps, Oxfam & World Vision, 2017)

More books on complexity than you can shake a stick at—plus a mea culpa - Algoso, Dave (Praxis, 2016)
Last month, Duncan Green was kind enough to post my overly ambitious multi-book review on complexity thinking in development on his From Poverty to Power blog. It covered three books: Ben Ramalingam’s Aid on the Edge of Chaos; Jean Boulton, Peter Allen, and Cliff Bowman’s Embracing Complexity; and Danny Burns and Stuart Worsley’s Navigating Complexity in International Development. It...

Data-powered positive deviance: Combining traditional and non-traditional data to identify and characterise development-related outperformers - Albanna, Basma; Heeks, Richard; Pawelke, Andreas; Boy, Jeremy; Handl, Julia; Gluecker, Andreas (Development Engineering, 2022)
The positive deviance approach in international development scales practices and strategies of positively-deviant individuals and groups: those who are able to achieve significantly better development outcomes than their peers despite having similar resources and challenges. This approach relies mainly on traditional data sources (e.g. surveys and interviews) for identifying those positive deviants and for discovering their successful solutions. The growing availability of non-traditional digital data (e.g. from remote sensing and mobile phones) relating to individuals, communities and spaces enables data innovation opportunities for positive deviance. Such datasets can identify deviance at geographic and temporal scales that were not possible before. But guidance is needed on how this new data can be employed in the positive deviance approach, and how it can be combined with more traditional data to gain deeper, more meaningful, and context-aware insights. This paper presents such guidance through a data-powered method that combines both traditional and non-traditional data to identify and understand positive deviance in new ways and domains. This method has been developed iteratively through six development projects covering five different domains – sustainable cattle ranching, agricultural productivity, rangeland management, research performance, crime control – with global and local development partners in six countries. The projects combine different types of non-traditional data with official statistics, administrative data and interviews. Here, we describe a structured method for data-powered positive deviance developed from the experience of these projects, and we reflect on lessons learned. We hope to encourage and guide greater use of this new method; enabling development practitioners to make more effective use of the non-traditional digital datasets that are increasingly available.

Positive deviance, big data, and development: A systematic literature review - Albanna, Basma; Heeks, Richard (The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 2019)
Positive deviance is a growing approach in international development that identifies those within a population who are outperforming their peers in some way, eg, children in low-income families who are well nourished when those around them are not. Analysing and then disseminating the behaviours and other factors underpinning positive deviance are demonstrably effective in delivering development results. However, positive deviance faces a number of challenges that are restricting its diffusion. In this paper, using a systematic literature review, we analyse the current state of positive deviance and the potential for big data to address the challenges facing positive deviance. From this, we evaluate the promise of “big data-based positive deviance”: This would analyse typical sources of big data in developing countries—mobile phone records, social media, remote sensing data, etc—to identify both positive deviants and the factors underpinning their superior performance. While big data cannot solve all the challenges facing positive deviance as a development tool, they could reduce time, cost, and effort; identify positive deviants in new or better ways; and enable positive deviance to break out of its current preoccupation with public health into domains such as agriculture, education, and urban planning. In turn, positive deviance could provide a new and systematic basis for extracting real-world development impacts from big data.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/isd2.12063
Keywords: big data; developing countries; machine learning; mobile data; positive deviance; systematic literature review

Politics matters, so what? Time for bigger bets (and more learning) on adaptive programming - Alan (www.globalintegrity.org, 2016)
By Alan Hudson, Executive Director, Global Integrity, July 26, 2016 Politics matters. Context too. And blueprints have limited value. Our strategy is based on these insights, so we’re totally on board. A World Development Report (WDR) that puts power and politics...

Try, learn, adapt, repeat: T/A Learn reflections - Alan (www.globalintegrity.org, 2015)
By Alan Hudson — November 16, 2015. I spent last week in Rio de Janeiro (tough assignment, I know), participating in the Transparency and Accountability Initiative’s third T/A Learn Annual Workshop. As the report of the second Annual Workshop, held...

Afterword: Alabert Hirschman observed - Alacevich, Michele (Development Projects Observed, 2015)
Albert Hirschman considered Development Projects Observed a natural sequel to his earlier work. As Hirschman put it to an old acquaintance at the World Bank, his previous books identified the inner and often hidden mechanisms of development sequences: “Having worked out a few basic hypotheses …, I could perhaps test them (and hit on some new ones) by looking at Bank-financed projects that have had enough time to give rise to such sequences.”¹ But as much as it appeared as the logical evolution of Hirschman’s intellectual trajectory, this new research was also the offshoot of an important crisis in development

Non-Violent Communication in everyday life - Aktar, Afrin; Goon, Swmaranika; Pal, Ujjal; Zaman, Thahina (CLARISSA, 2021)
In March, members of the team in Bangladesh (Community Mobilisers and Lead Community Mobilisers) participated in a training course in non-violent communication (NVC). NVC is a communication technique that prioritises listening over speaking. It aims to improve communication by achieving a deeper understanding of our emotions and values and what we observe in the behaviour of others. The training was facilitated by Paul Kahawatte, a UK-based mediator, facilitator and trainer, Roufun Naher, a lecturer at the University of Dhaka and NVC practitioner in Bangladesh, Neil Howard, co-lead of Social Protection for CLARISSA and Jiniya Afroze, CLARISSA Country Coordinator in Bangladesh. The aim of the training was to support the community mobilisers to explore and practice different ways of communicating and facilitating. This will help them support communities to come together and build their collective power for the social protection ‘cash plus’ pilot. Lemon Roy, a community mobiliser was grateful for the experience; “I had little knowledge about Non-Violent Communication before participating in the training. I didn’t know that passive listening and the communication gap between two people could lead to conflict. I have learned about tools and techniques in conflict mediation and the importance of understanding the feelings and needs of other people.”.

Unconditional cash support sparks transformation: A story from CLARISSA Social Protection Intervention in Dhaka - Aktar, Afrin; Debnath, Raj; Kashfi, Sharmin (CLARISSA, 2023)
The CLARISSA Social Protection (SP) intervention provided six months of unconditional cash transfers to every household in the Gojmohol neighbourhood,...

Is (Web) Science Ready for Empowerment? - Akkermans, Hans; Gyan, Nana Baah; Bon, Anna; Tuyp, Wendelien; Grewal, Aman; Boyera, Stéphane; Allen, Mary (2011)

Creative Activities for Work Teams and Communities of Practice. A guide for designing participatory, productive, and engaging sessions - AKF (2023)
This free guide aims to build the skills and confidence of people designing and facilitating participatory, productive, and engaging workshop sessions for work teams and communities of practice by providing them with a series of creative activities that can be run in-person or virtually. By the time they have gone through this guide, session leads will be able to: Describe ways in which creative activities can be of value to teams and communities of practice, Design both in-person and virtual workshop sessions that incorporate creative activities, Facilitate participatory, productive and engaging workshop sessions that incorporate one or several creative activities, and Lead an effective debrief following a creative activity. This toolkit was developed by the Aga Khan Foundation.

Virtual Facilitation Techniques for Work Teams and Communities of Practice. A guide for designing and running dynamic and engaging remote sessions and meetings - AKF (2023)
This free guide aims to build the skills and confidence of people designing and facilitating virtual meetings, including online community of practice sessions. By the time they have gone through this guide, community of practice facilitators will be able to: Design an engaging and participatory virtual session, Develop an effective, varied and realistic agenda for a virtual session, Apply a wide range of virtual facilitation techniques, and Using technology to facilitate virtual sessions. This toolkit was developed by the Aga Khan Foundation.

Supply Chains, the Informal Economy, and the Worst Forms of Child Labour - Aked, Jody (Institute of Development Studies, 2021)
As a cohort of people, ‘children in work’ have become critical to the everyday functioning of diverse supply chain systems. This Working Paper considers diverse commodity chains (leather, waste, recycling and sex) to explore the business realities that generate child labour in its worst forms. A review of the literature finds that occurrence of the worst forms of child labour (WFCL) in supply chain systems is contingent on the organising logics and strategies adopted by actors in both the formal and informal economies. Piecing together the available evidence, the paper hypothesises that a supply chain system is sensitive to the use of WFCL when downward pressure to take on business risk cannot be matched by the economic resilience to absorb that risk. Emergencies and persistent stressors may increase risk and reduce resilience, shifting norms and behaviour. There is a need for further work to learn from business owners and workers in the informal economy.
Accepted: 2021-07-26T11:16:44Z Publisher: Institute of Development Studies

Beyond Tweets and Screams: Action for Empowerment and Accountability in Nigeria – The Case of the #BBOG Movement - Aina, Tade Akin; Atela, Martin; Ojebode, Ayo; Dayil, Plangsat; Aremu, Fatai (IDS, 2019)
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 fragile, conflict- and violence-affected settings; (2) whether the conditions in which new forms of social and political action applicable to fragile, conflict- and violence-affected settings – the settings most dominant in African countries – emerge as currently projected in the literature; and (3) whether these social and political actions necessarily produce accountability and empowerment in fragile, conflict- and violence-affected settings. Although often expressed as contentious and/or unruly politics, experiences from the BBOG movement suggest that the new forms of social and political action possess a wide range of implications for citizen action and governance, including leading to multiple forms of empowerment in fragile settings.

’Adaptive Authoritarianism’ in Contemporary China: Identifying Zones of Legitimacy Building - Ahlers, Anna Lisa; Schubert, Gunter (Reviving Legitimacy: Lessons for and from China, 2011)
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),

Agile Glossary and Terminology - Agile Alliance (Agile Alliance, 2015)
Learn the unique terminology used in Agile development from the experts at Agile Alliance.

Manifesto for Agile Software Development - Agile Alliance (Agile Alliance, 2001)

Subway Map to Agile Practices - Agile Alliance (Agile Alliance, 2015)
AGILE 101

Can policy-makers think like designers? - Adler, Natalia (2014)
This is the poster used by Natalia Adler, from Unicef, at the Doing Development Differently workshop in 2014. Can policy-makers think like designers? Since 2012, UNICEF has been supporting two autonomous governments in Nicaragua to develop empathy-driven policies for children. While policies are the final product, the goal of the Designing for Children Initiative is to make government officials think like designers. A good policy or service is nothing without active and engaged frontline workers. From the onset, our objective was to transform public employees into ‘public entrepreneurs.’ In doing so, we have disrupted the traditional assumptions about participatory governance, where it normally suffices to hold a meeting and have people talk about their needs and aspirations. For participation to work, government officials have to relearn how to listen. They have to let go of pre-determined assumptions and their expert status, and put themselves in the shoes of the people they are trying to reach. This is the process of empathy-driven policy-making. For the past two years, we have used a Human Centered Design (HCD) approach to make this happen. While HCD is often seen as an innovation in itself, for us, it’s just a means to an end: common-sense development.

+Acumen MOOC: Adaptive Leadership: Mobilizing for Change and Disrupting the Status Quo - +Acumen (NovoEd, 2017)
This four-module course by +Acumen and Adaptive Change Advisors on adaptive leadership, which is a practical leadership framework developed at Harvard Kennedy School for driving systemic change, particularly during times of uncertainty or when there are no easy answers.

Lean Data Approaches to Measure Social Impact - ACUMEN (NovoEd, 2018)

Accountability Learning and Planning System - ActionAid (ActionAid International, 2000)

Alps - Accountability, Learning and Planning System - ActionAid (ActionAid International, 2006)
Alps is ActionAid’s over arching accountability framework, containing within it our programme planning system. Alps is distinctive in that it is strongly driven by principles, and sets out necessary personal attitudes and behaviours alongside organisational processes for planning, strategy formulation, learning, monitoring reviews/evaluations and audit. Alps defines our standards, not only about what we do but also how we do it. Alps is part of ActionAid’s human rights-based work.

Alps - Accountability, Learning and Planning System - 2011 Update - ActionAid (ActionAid International, 2011)
Alps is ActionAid’s over arching accountability framework, containing within it our programme planning system. Alps is distinctive in that it is strongly driven by principles, and sets out necessary personal attitudes and behaviours alongside organisational processes for planning, strategy formulation, learning, monitoring reviews/evaluations and audit. Alps defines our standards, not only about what we do but also how we do it. Alps is part of ActionAid’s human rights-based work.

Notes to Accompany ALPS - ActionAid (ActionAid International, 2001)

Reflect Action Methods - ActionAid (2009)
Reflect is an innovative approach to adult learning and social change, which fuses the theories of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire with participatory methodologies. It was developed in the 1990s through pilot projects in Bangladesh, Uganda and El Salvador and is now used by over 500 organisations in over 70 countries worldwide. Organisations working with Reflect won UNESCO literacy prizes in 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2010. This site is aimed at Reflect practitioners and others who want to know more about the approach. We want it to be truly interactive and the more stories, graphics and photos are submitted, the better the site will be. Please add your comments to tell us about the work you are doing with Reflect and join the discussion forum to share your ideas and experiences of working with the approach.

Appreciative Inquiry: An approach for learning and change based on our own best practices​ - Acosta, Anne; Douthwaite, Boru (Institute of Learning and Change, 2005)
Since it was conceptualized in the late 1980s as a research methodology and change paradigm, the technique of ‘appreciative inquiry’ (AI) has proved to be highly effective for capturing the positive features of an organization or social system and energizing the members to strive for higher levels of performance. This Brief outlines the basic principles and methods of AI, describes various domains in which it has been undertaken and provides a recent example of its use in a centre affiliated with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

A new pathway: how can funders support meaningful monitoring, evaluation, and learning practice in the field? - Blog post on Better Evaluation - Acevedo, Andrea; Colnar, Megan (2023)
How can donors and grantees work together to create effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) practices that drive field-wide transformation?

Getting strategic: vertically integrated approaches - Aceron, Joy; Isaac, Francis (Institute of Development Studies, 2016)
Holding power to account requires understanding where power lies and how it is exercised. It entails understanding how decisions are made, who makes them and what decision criteria are used to make them. Vertically integrated civil society action takes into account how power is exercised and how decisions are made in a given policy, programme or process.

Going vertical: citizen-led reform campaigns in the Philippines - Aceron, Joy; Isaac, Francis (IDS, 2016)
The Philippines has a long history of state–society engagement to introduce reforms in government and politics. Forces from civil society and social movements have interfaced with reform-oriented leaders in government on a range of social accountability initiatives – to make governance more responsive, to introduce policy reforms, and to make government more accountable. Several theoretical propositions on which strategic approaches work best for social accountability initiatives have been put forward – including the idea of vertically integrated civil society monitoring and advocacy. This multi-authored research report uses vertical integration as a framework for examining seven successful civil society social accountability initiatives in the Philippines, looking at what made them successful, and how the gains they realised can be deepened and sustained.

Thinking big: How to use theory of change for systems change - Abercrombie, Rob; Boswell, Katie; Thomasoo, Rosanna (NPC, 2018)
We think that, applied well, theory of change can support charities and funders to take a systemic approach to their work. This report identifies five common pitfalls that organisations fall into when using theory of change, and walks through five rules of thumb that will help organisations to use the approach to tackle complex problems. We think that, applied well, theory of change can support charities and funders to take a systemic approach to their work. This report identifies five common pitfalls that organisations fall into when using theory of change, and walks through five rules of thumb that will help organisations to use the approach to tackle complex problems.

Historical roots of Agile Methods: Where did “Agile Thinking” come from? - Abbas, Noura; Gravell, Andrew M.; Wills, Gary B. (Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming, 2008)
The appearance of Agile methods has been the most noticeable change to software process thinking in the last fifteen years [16], but in fact many of the “Agile ideas” have been around since 70’s or even before. Many studies and reviews have been conducted about Agile methods which ascribe their emergence as a reaction against traditional methods. In this paper, we argue that although Agile methods are new as a whole, they have strong roots in the history of software engineering. In addition to the iterative and incremental approaches that have been in use since 1957 [21], people who criticised the traditional methods suggested alternative approaches which were actually Agile ideas such as the response to change, customer involvement, and working software over documentation. The authors of this paper believe that education about the history of Agile thinking will help to develop better understanding as well as promoting the use of Agile methods. We therefore present and discuss the reasons behind the development and introduction of Agile methods, as a reaction to traditional methods, as a result of people’s experience, and in particular focusing on reusing ideas from history.
Keywords: Agile methods; Software Development

18F Method Cards - A collection of tools to bring human-centered design into your project - 18F-GSA (18F-GSA, US Governement, 2017)
18F’s method cards describe how our organization puts human-centered design into practice.

About the BEAM Exchange (BEAM Exchange, 2018)

Adaptive management in aid programmes (BEAM Exchange, 2014)
Aid works better – especially in complex and conflict-affected environments – when there is scope to trial and adapt programme strategies. So argues Amir Allana in Navigating Complexity, a case study of Northern Karamoja's Growth, Health and Governance (GHG) Programme that is adopting an 'adaptive management' approach. This BEAM Exchange webinar invited Amir, Tim Sparkman and Peter Roggekamp to discuss lessons from their work in Uganda and Cambodia. What does adaptive management look like in practice? And what does it require of managers and funders to make it happen? Tim and Peter share their experiences of applying adaptive management techniques to the Growth, Health and Governance Programme and the Cambodia Agricultural Value Chain Program (CAVAC). Amir highlight insights from the Navigating Complexity report, including the importance of office culture, consistent management signals, and the role of supportive tools and processes.

Book Review: Branko Milanovic's brilliant take on Global Inequality (From Poverty to Power, 2016)
Some of my favourite development economists are nomads, people with feet in different regions, which seems to make them better able to identify interesting patterns and similarities/differences bet...

Busan Outcome Document (2011)

Collaboration for Impact (2018)
The site seeks to accelerate the adoption of system collaboration and Collective Impact in Australia. It does so by creating knowledge, network and tools; shining a light on successful Collective Impact initiatives; and building an Australian community of practice.

Conflict and Human Rights Shareweb (2019)

Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED, 2018)
The DCED is a forum for learning about the most effective ways to fulfil the SDGs – based on practical experience in Private Sector Development (PSD).

Feedback Commons (Keystone Accountability, 2018)

Fostering Learning and Effectiveness through Collaboration: A New Collaborative on Transparency, Accountability, and Participation (TAI, 2018)
What are the features, values, and practices of effective learning organizations? How do learning practices contribute to more effective programming? And, how can collaborations between academics, researchers and practitioners better support learning organizations in the global South? These are just a few of the questions that a new global learning collaborative seeks to explore. In …

Making All Voices Count's Research & Evidence Strategy (2014)
Building an evidence-base on what works in technology for voice, transparency and accountability, how, and why.

mHero and the Principles for Digital Development: Development Done Right | iHRIS (2016)

MIRADI: Adaptive Management Software for Conservation Projects (2018)

Monitoring and Measuring Results in Private Sector Development (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC, 2016)

Nairobi Outcome Document (2016)

NetworkWeaver (NetworkWeaver, 2018)
Weaving Smart Networks

Positive Deviance Initiative (2016)

Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d programme) - NFP [Nr.] (2018)
Research and innovation are decisive factors for sustainable global development. With their knowledge, skills, experience and worldwide network of partners, researchers can make an important contribution towards the solution of global problems.

Transparency, Participation, & Accountability Grantmaking Strategy (THE WILLIAM AND FLORA HEWLETT FOUNDATION, 2015)

TWP CoP (Thinking and Working Politically - Community of Practice, 2016)

Women and power: overcoming barriers to leadership ODI women and power coverand influence (ODI, 2016)
ODI have just wrapped up an excellent two year project on ‘Women and power: overcoming barriers to leadership and influence’ with a final synthesis report that is well worth reading. It’s an intell...