The State Power and Its Restraints, by Yongmei Zhou

The Sustainable Development Goals recognize the need to build peaceful, just and inclusive societies with effective rule of law and transparent, effective and accountable institutions. These goals are not only important in their own right but are also relevant for the achievement of economic and social development goals. Given how distant this vision may seem to people living in countries facing civil conflict, high inequality and stagnant growth, two questions are worth asking: 1) given a governance context, sometimes highly imperfect, what does it take to make development progress; and 2) what can drive successful governance reforms. These are the questions taken on by the World Development Report 2017 on Governance and the Law (the WDR).

SDG16 and a new era for civil society, by Richard YOUNGS

While SDG Goal 16 is an important step forward for the global development agenda, its meaning is inevitably imprecise. It opens a Pandora’s box of unresolved questions about what kind of political arrangements best guarantee ‘inclusive’ and ‘accountable’ societies.

Thinking and working politically: A way forward on SDG 16, by Debra Ladner

SDG 16 recognizes that peace, justice and accountable institutions are critical to sustainable, transformative and inclusive development.It sets out ambitious targets on a range of issues from reducing violence and corruption, to combatting trafficking and organized crime, to ensuring legal identity for all.  In doing so, SDG 16 provides a long-awaited and powerful mandate for donors and implementing organizations to develop a coherent focus on these critically important issues. By placing governance problems front and center in the international community’s efforts to end poverty, SDG 16 represents a high-water mark for a trend that has been building steam for years.   This means that issues such as politics, power and institutions cannot be left by donors or their implementing partners for someone else to ‘sort out’.  While this is a positive and welcomed development, we have to acknowledge that achieving significant, transformative results on SDG 16 by 2030 is a tall order.  The mixed track-record of past donor-supported governance and rule of law projects is a sobering reminder of this. Despite their best intentions, historically many grand state-building and institutional strengthening projects have fallen short of their intended goals. If we are to make real progress on SDG 16, this naturally leads us to ask two questions: Why is it so difficult to bring about meaningful change on the issues SDG 16 covers? And, what can we do it about?

Beyond the Limits: Can we Think and Work Politically to achieve the SDGs?, by Heather Marquette

So just as we embark on the most ambitious global development project yet in the form of the new Sustainable Development Goals, some hefty questions are being asked about development assistance. And the answer we keep hearing – in one form or another – is the need for development actors to begin to ‘think and work politically’ (TWP). How realistic is this, though? 

The Limits of the ‘Thinking and Working Politically’ Agenda, by Seth Kaplan

There is an assumption in international aid just now that if only we can build a better donor, every sustainable development goal will be achievable and every program transformational.

Sustainable Development Goal 16: No More Business as Usual, by Alan Whaites

SDG 16 Blog Series: No 1: Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 16 – Supporting Institutions for Inclusive and Peaceful Societies

SDG 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

The international development community rightly saw the agreement of Sustainable Development Goal 16 as a significant break-through, a recognition that institutions matter to development outcomes, that inclusive state-society relations are important, and that fundamentally peace is core to human well-being.   The celebration of the agreement of the Goal has, however, started to fade and now stakeholders are waking up to the morning after the party, perhaps with a few sore heads as the challenges of actually achieving the Goal become clear.  

Media and governance: It’s time for a rethink, by James Deane

The post 2015 Global Goals have been agreed and for the first time in any such agreement, there is a goal focused on improving how societies in the 21^st century are governed. 

It is a major accomplishment and an acknowledgement that the quality of governance will do as much to shape humanity’s prospects as anything else.  A good argument can be made that unless progress is made in this area, investments in the rest of the goals may well be wasted.  This should be an exciting time for those working to support good governance.  That excitement should extend to those, like myself, who have argued for increased support for a free and plural media and to improved public access to information.  The goals include a specific target designed to ensure “public access to information and to protecting fundamental freedoms , in accordance with national legislation and international agreements”.

Managing Risks to Development – Donors agencies and anti-corruption, by Alan Whaites

Donor agencies actively manage numerous risks to programmes (security, political etc), including the mitigation of corruption and fiduciary risks.  The drive towards improvement in managing risks is unsurprising, given very real fears of reputational damage. The desire to be as effective as possible has led to work to identify common learning, potentially leading to new ‘integrity guidelines.’ But the complexity of the problems is often under-appreciated – for donors it is not simply stopping corrupt politicians from pocketing aid funds.  The risks are diverse and the potential for `gaming’ is high.  Addressing corruption is not dissimilar to fighting computer viruses – a cat and mouse game between those evolving mechanisms for fraud, and those working to stop them. 

Going to the source! Identifying a country’s most vulnerable sectors and activities generating IFF, by Manuel Papouschek

Anyone working to detect activities such as corruption, drug trafficking, counterfeit, smuggling and other types of similar activities knows how difficult it is to identify and prove these crimes. These difficulties are compounded by the fact that once a crime is identified, it is usually associated with others hidden further underground: for example, illegal fisheries associated with human trafficking; illicit mining financing criminal groups; corruption associated with money laundering…[1]

At Odds over Ownership, by Tom Carothers

Ownership is one of the mainstream consensus-oriented concepts that have become common in the aid world during recent decades—frequently invoked, widely appealing, hard to disagree with, and applicable to providers and recipients of aid alike. Yet the apparent consensus on ownership masks some deep tensions between aid providers and recipients.

Development responses to Global Bads and Organised Crime, by Lena DIESING

Narcotics, people trafficking and counterfeit medicines: A unique illicit economy sustains and feeds on these global bads that have become the counter-points to our concepts of global public goods.  These global bads also threaten to be major obstacles as the world focuses on the achievement of the new Sustainable Development Goals.  

What are governance advisers missing with ‘Political Economy Analysis’? How can they do better?, by Heather Marquette and David Hudson

What advice would you give to a novice governance advisor working for a bilateral donor going into the field for the first time? Want to know how some of the top governance experts, advisors, researchers and academics would say? Well, wonder no more.

Read this blog on the Oxfam blog site, 'From poverty to power' here

The Governance Practitioner’s Notebook – Sceptics Welcome, by Alan WHAITES

We are at an interesting time in the evolution of thinking on governance practice; academics and economists agree like never before that institutions are crucial to economic and social performance, and yet practitioners often seem riddled with doubt about what really works. Institutions are central to the delivery of the new sustainable development goals, but exactly how you get good institutions remains opaque, contested and often a question of ideological taste.  

Four paradoxes of the long-distance governance advisor, by Graham TESKEY

Starting out in a new job in a new organisation is a daunting task for most people. There is just so much stuff to learn: rules and regulations, systems and structures, people and processes. And usually before you have had time to settle down and understand how things really work (rather than how the operational manual describes it) you actually are given real work to do. This is the situation that Lucy, the heroine of this Governance Practitioner’s Notebook, finds herself; she is told she has to get on a ‘plane and fly off and actually advise.  She feels it’s almost a test – the aim of which is to find her out, to prove that it’s true: “aha, you really don’t know anything about the real world, do you?”

An OECD recommendation for integrity in aid?, by Elizabeth HART

In April, Oskar Karnebäck previewed in this space an initiative by the OECD, partnering with the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, to gather information toward developing a comprehensive recommendation for integrity in aid. The goal of that effort was to bring together the many strands of policy and practice that constitute a comprehensive approach to controlling corruption risks in development agencies. The report, co-funded by U4, has now been issued, and we found strong support and good material for developing a Recommendation proposal.

'Building Confidence: Service Delivery and Political Settlements', by Alan Whaites

There are several dimensions to current work on the relationship between service delivery and politics, particularly in contexts emerging from political conflict.   Much work has been done (often by stabilisation organisations) on service delivery in contexts undergoing some form of `transition.’   These activities can be seen as an important part of demonstrating a `dividend’ from a new political concord.  

Thinking and Working Politically – Enable Add-ons, by Alan Whaites

Programme Managers potentially have a greater stake in Thinking and Working Politically (TWP) than many other development workers.  TWP is driven by three core principles: a) strong political analysis, insight and understanding; b) an iterative engagement with the local context; and,c) flexibility in programme design and also crucially in implementation.  The premise is that development does not happen in a vacuum – success or failure is determined by a host of contextual issues which need to be actively `engaged’ by actors (donors, implementers, partners etc).

Is there a need for a global integrity standard?, by Oskar Karnebäck

How do you make sure that the money you invest in a country prone to corruption is not embezzled but spent according to intent? This discussion is very topical for international development cooperation agencies as they work in most of the countries that score poorly on the available corruption indices, such as the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators or the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. How do we make sure that our funds are used for meaningful investments in health, education and good governance, and do not disappear into private pockets?

Communicating anti-corruption messages in development, by Heather Marquette

Development cooperation partners are increasingly asked by their constituencies to show that they give value for money. The financial crisis has hit public agencies around the world hard, and many countries have cut their development cooperation budgets. Under these circumstances, development practitioners are under strong pressure from government – and ultimately their citizens – to justify what they spend on development assistance.

Do we need more ODA for governance reform?, by Eduardo González Cauhapé-Cazaux

The inclusion of a goal on governance in the post-2015 framework has been one of the most hotly debated issues in the search for a successor to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).  This topic has generated - and will continue to generate - discussions across the development community. Some believe that peace and effective institutions are both development outcomes in their own right as well as vehicles to deliver other development goals. Others are not necessarily contesting this, but fear that including a goal on peace and institutions could detract from other development goals. The final proposal from the Open Working Group includes a goal on the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development. The prospect of keeping this goal in the final agreement now looks more favourable.