KNOWLEDGE TO POLICY

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KNOWLEDGE TO POLICY

MAKING THE MOST OF DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH

FRED CARDEN

Copyright © International Development Research Centre, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carden, F. (Fred)

Knowledge to policy: making the most of development research/Fred Carden.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Economic development—Research—Evaluation. 2. Economic policy—Evaluation. I. Title.

HD77.C37  338.9—dc22  2009  2009007156
ISBN: 978-81-7829-930-3 (PB)

The SAGE Team: Rekha Natarajan, Meena Chakravorty, Rajib Chatterjee and Trinankur Banerjee

Contents

List of Tables and Boxes

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Foreword

For almost 200 years investigators have been amassing systematic information in an effort to influence public policy. One of the early efforts was a study by Guerry in 1833 that attempted to show that education did not reduce crime (Cullen 1975: 139). Other statisticians analyzed different data with different methods to disprove such a contention. Another early effort was a French study in 1844 that measured the value of a canal project by calculating the maximum tolls that users would pay (Toulemonde and Rochaix 1994). The idea that good data should influence policy has a long pedigree. Social scientists have been hopeful that once accurate research tools and statistics are available, policymakers will pay attention to them and do something different from what they were apt to do in the absence of such knowledge.

In recent times, the production of what used to be called ‘applied research’ and what is now commonly known as policy research became a big enterprise in the United States and elsewhere. Government began funding studies to find out what the conditions were like on the ground and how well current policy interventions succeeded in remedying social ills. Investigators in the field of natural and biological sciences continued to seek knowledge that would lead to social and economic innovations and improvements in the lot of humankind. In addition a large number of social scientists became engaged in the effort to study economic and social processes, and especially to evaluate the effects of policy interventions.

What became obvious fairly rapidly was that natural and biological research was likely to be put to use fairly readily when it made a profit for its implementers. New household products and new pharmaceuticals based on new research were often put into production. Another type of research that was likely to be adopted was that needed by the government for national defence or other well accepted and uncontested public functions. Economic research, too, was often influential for purposes like tracking economic conditions, such as the cost of living, unemployment, money supply, and making forecasts. But the kinds of research apt to be done by social scientists, including the new speciality of programme evaluation, were not likely to have direct and immediate effects on public policy. Equally in the doldrums were those studies that pointed to agricultural, biological, or technological changes that were in contention in the society.

Nevertheless, for a long time it was assumed that knowledge is power. Good research would lead to better policy. The accepted theory was that valid knowledge would drive out error and imprint itself on public policies across domains. No one in the policy world, it was thought, would want to pursue a course that ran counter to the best knowledge that the sciences produce. However, by the 1970s even the less perceptive observers had to admit that research findings did not always prevail. Neglecting research findings was a common recreation in arenas of action.

What was going wrong? Was it a matter of communication? Did not policymakers hear about the new research findings? Was it a matter of denseness? Did not policymakers understand the import of the research? Could it be that old bugaboo of politics? Were preoccupations with partisan issues and personal ambitions sidetracking the knowledge that research produced? Was it a matter of values? Did policymakers slough off findings that were inconsistent with their beliefs and ideologies? Maybe it was simply a matter of time. Researchers were expecting quick adoption of findings into policy when it might take years for research to have an effect. Many other hypotheses were offered to account for the spotty record of research influence.

In the mid-1970s, social scientists began doing empirical investigations of the extent to which policymakers and government officials were ‘using’ the findings of research. One of the early findings was that ‘use’ was a slippery concept. Policymakers would rarely sit around waiting for the chunk of evidence that would settle an issue. Much more often they had a lot of experience of their own on the issue. They had other sources of information and advice. They had concerns that research did not address—issues such as the preferences of constituents or of campaign donors. Research was only one input into the complexities of policy making.

Nor was research often the dominant influence. Decision makers worked in organizations that had their own traditional modes of work and rules of the game. In an organization there were political interests at play, ideological convictions, countervailing information from other sources, concerns about the ability of staff to implement new activities however promising, considerations of cost, political reception of budgetary requests, jockeying for advantage in the bureaucracy, and the accumulated weight of tradition. It seemed that an expectation of policy responsive to research findings was in many cases unrealistic.

But the new set of empirical studies that began to analyze what was going on showed that the situation was not as bleak as some had thought it was. Research findings were not always lightly tossed aside. They might not have immediate and direct influence on decisions, but over a period of time they did seem to have consequences. Policymakers said that they valued research. They wanted to know what good studies said. Research, it seemed, was a source of news. It provided new concepts and ideas. It offered a new angle of vision on old dilemmas. The release of a research report was an occasion for collective discussion and perhaps rethinking. It gave decision makers an opportunity to reconsider what they were doing and not doing. For those in authoritative positions, research had manifold values.

The field of international development is a vital arena in which these kinds of elements play out. International development has been the site of a number of important investigations (Yin et al. 1988; Reimers and McGinn 1988; Court et al. 2005; Stone and Maxwell 2005; Livny et al. 2006). Two features tend to distinguish international development from other sites where empirical investigations of the effects of research have been conducted. One is that the key decision makers in developing societies often lack well developed institutions to seek out and absorb research findings, review them critically, and consider their implications for local issues. There is no straightforward and clear-cut place in the government structure to undertake such functions. Furthermore, the individuals who staff the top positions in government may not have had much individual experience with home-grown research and evaluation designed to fit their purposes. Second and collaterally, most of what decision makers in these countries know about research has usually come from international agencies such as the World Bank, and the Bank usually has its own agenda to pursue. The agenda is meant for the benefit of the developing world, but it is not built from their own experience. The consequent stance of domestic decision makers has often been initial resistance to the research message and/or a buckling under the demands of the international agency irrespective of the cogency of the findings. The World Bank not only comes bearing findings; it is also the source of important funding.

In newer investigations of the influence of research and evaluation, further insights begin to emerge. Some conditions seem to predispose policymakers to take research findings seriously. Analysis of these conditions suggests that there is something in the larger surround that makes a difference. It is not only the competence and interest of the specific decision makers who handle an issue that matters, or even the conditions in the organization in which they work. Features of the larger environment—such as the number of points of access through which research findings can flow, the openness of the system to the entry of new ideas, the democratic nature of decision making—seem to make a system more or less responsive. It is these kinds of characteristics that cross-national comparisons begin to highlight.

The current study from IDRC (International Development Research Centre) adds a great deal to our understanding of what happens. In this book, Fred Carden discusses a range of issues that determine how much effect research studies have on the bureaus, legislatures, and administration of governments in developing countries. One of the great advantages of this study is that it builds on earlier research and does not start from the supposition that research will shift a decision from A to B by the power of its data and analysis. It looks for subtler effects, it takes a longer time horizon, and it is alert to the many unexpected ways in which research findings seep into public debates. It also realizes that one good channel of communication is people—the movement of people from one place to another. A researcher becomes the head of a government bureau and brings his research knowledge with him. The head of a government agency serves on the advisory committee to a research study and absorbs the findings in situ, putting them to use back at the agency when a relevant situation arises.

A study like this opens many avenues for further research. If this study is replicated, it would provide the opportunity to answer many more questions. In a sense, each situation is sui generis, and generalizing is a tempting but risky business. But with more data on more places, from IDRC and other agencies, we are likely to know even more than we do now. One possibility, a bit blue-sky at present, is to be able to compare different fields of government activity. As international development research encompasses the full range of technological, biological, and social research, empirical investigations about the fate of the research might be able to go on and compare outcomes across domains. Does agriculture have a better chance of putting research findings to use than education or health services? Does research that deals with issues in which participants have unequal status, like labour and management, have a harder time making its way into policy than research where participants share similar status? What is it about the structure of telecommunications or social services or other areas of government activity that make them more or less receptive to research inputs? Although these are extraordinarily complex issues, and furthermore, things have the untidy habit of changing over time, it would be wonderful to make progress in addressing them.

As research moves to identify the social environment and institutional structures that underlie successful development and the on-the-ground activities and leadership strategies that move development along, the policymakers should take advantage of the emerging knowledge. There is no sense in doing useful research if policy ignores it. A movement has been building to encourage decision makers at all levels to attend to the findings of research. The first advocates were researchers who were promoting the use of their work. More recently some political officials have joined the movement. The health field has been particularly active in encouraging the use of research findings in policy making. Health policy sees the model of biological and clinical research and its adoption by health professionals, and health services policy is a natural analogue. The push to give research a central role in policy was probably given its greatest impetus by Tony Blair’s government and its promotion of ‘evidence-based policy’.

The message of evidence-based policy was: Decision makers at every level should attend to the findings that emerge from research, data series, evaluation, and analysis. They should discard hoary old shibboleths when evidence demonstrates that they are misguided. They should undertake the kinds of activities that, according to research, yield positive outcomes. They need to pay attention to the evidence that researchers produce in order to improve the calibre of the policies they enact. Those are the taken-for-granted assumptions.

As we have already noted, such assumptions are overly optimistic, particularly in developing countries without a tradition of analyzing the consequences of research. But if one could not expect policymakers to base policy on evidence, one could at least take account of the facts in the situation. Some of the original proponents of evidence-based policy backed off to ‘evidence-influenced policy’, and later to acknowledge the value of the even less ambitious ‘evidence-informed policy’. To many people, research seems an eminently worthy endeavour. It brings the fresh wind of reality into the councils of policy. It shows new relationships and concepts at work. But there is virtue in setting expectations at a reasonable level.

The study described in this book is one of the most recent studies to look four-square at the effects of research in international development. Fred Carden has undertaken an investigation to examine the consequences of 23 research projects funded by the IDRC. As with all IDRC research grants, the research projects were conducted by nationals of the developing nations they were studying. Their subject matter ranged from information technology to health and from international trade to agriculture. Fred’s investigation began with 25 studies that IDRC staff identified as having been successful in influencing policy. He and his staff developed a common data collection instrument that field investigators would use to find out about events surrounding each study, and several training sessions were held to be sure that all the field investigators had the same understanding. The use of a common framework enhanced the opportunity to collect comparable information on each case. After intensive fieldwork, 23 cases were completed. It was a heroic job.

The study started from a sophisticated understanding about how research percolates into policy making. The investigators did not expect the research to have direct and immediate effects on policy in the nations studied. Rather they were sensitive to the subtle and diverse ways in which knowledge gleaned from research can seep into the ideas of policymakers over time. They sought the channels of communication and identified the communicators, intended and unintended, who brought the message into arenas of decision. They were alert to the different kinds of effects that can emerge from confrontation with research evidence.

I have to own that I am not a neutral observer of this study or of the manuscript. I was deeply involved, although not until after the initial planning and instrument development had been completed. I attended one of the training discussions with the field investigators, interacted with them over the course of the fieldwork, attended meetings with IDRC staff and board, and I undertook an analysis of the completed data. With two of my advanced doctoral students, Svetlana Karuskina-Drivdale and Shahram Paksima, I spent months analyzing the case reports, writing abstracts of the cases, categorizing processes and events, identifying themes, and writing a report. We could not hope to attain Fred Carden’s detailed knowledge of the cases or of IDRC, but Svetlana, Shahram, and I contributed to the enterprise.

Having owned up to my involvement, I still have to say that I think this was a formidable investigation. I have participated in other studies of the consequences of research for policy, and I have not seen one that drew on the expertise of all the parties to the research–policy interaction with the same depth and rigour. Fred Carden has made a distinguished contribution to the literature on the influence of research on policy. He has combined a sophisticated understanding of the research field and the international development field. What he has to say is well worth hearing.

If I were to pick a bone with him, and this is probably not the task of a foreword, it would be to question his apparent assumptions about the virtues of research. He seems to believe that research is always good and right and that policy that follows its conclusions is always an advance over what came before. Would that it were so. But researchers are fallible too, and for all the golden glow that surrounds words like research, evidence, and learning, we do not always know what the outcomes might have been had policymakers chosen to ignore the research.

Still, we have learned a great deal from this study. It gives us concrete examples of the kinds of direct and indirect effects that research has had in different policy domains. Importantly, it identifies the conditions that have to be in place before research is taken seriously in the policy arena. It outlines circumstances that affect the degree to which research is heeded, a formulation that owes much to Svetlana’s analysis. Nor should we ignore the methodological contributions that this investigation makes. Other investigators of this topic would be well advised to examine the methodology carefully and to take advantage of some of the innovations that IDRC introduced into the study.

One of the happy pieces of news that comes trailing along at the fringes of the study is that it is being ‘used’. IDRC has been paying careful attention to its findings. The moral of the story is that influence can come to good research done with rigorous design and method, relevant to the interests and concerns of an agency, communicated frequently and with formidable opportunities for feedback from its audiences, and with something important to say. That is a very hopeful message indeed.

Carol H. Weiss
Professor Emerita,
Harvard University

Preface

No single factor more powerfully affects the course of a country’s development than the quality of its governance. Where governance is open, accountable and effective, and where public policy promotes innovation and equity in a lively economy, development is more likely to serve the interests of the people. Informing good governance describes this urgent purpose of development research—to discover, assemble, and communicate the knowledge needed for development that is sustainable and democratic.

To improve lives, especially the lives of poor people, development research will almost always have to influence policy in order to influence development. But how? That question and some illuminating answers are the subject of this volume. The exploration recorded here—extraordinary in scope and methodology—has uncovered critical variables in the interaction of development research and policymaking. More than that, it presents evidence-based strategies that researchers and policymakers can deploy to bring timely knowledge to bear on public policy and action.

The research evaluation outlined in these pages has already had effect in our own organization, Canada’s IDRC. IDRC’s support for research is now more than ever directed to drawing together researchers from developing countries, citizens, and members of the policy community in the design, conduct, and application of research. In development research, getting a new discovery into policy and practice is just as important as the discovery itself. Increasing the productivity of our investments in development research has been one of the immediate rewards of this evaluation project, but not the only one.

The more extensive significance of the findings is simply put. Research, done right, can fortify the elements of democratic governance essential to sustainable development. By strengthening a country’s capacities for discovering, sharing, and using knowledge, development research helps governments become more transparent, responsive, and successful.

As many of the cases profiled here suggest, research can contribute to better governance in at least three ways. First, research encourages open inquiry and debate. Second, it empowers people with the knowledge to hold governments accountable. And third, research enlarges the array of policy options and solutions available to the policy process.

Open inquiry and debate—real freedom of thought and expression—are basic to sound democratic governance. Public and tolerant arguments, without fear of reprisal, along with a readiness for change are all marks of a society that encourages innovation. Research also generates the evidence, and the habits of fair-minded analysis, that can help resolve disputes peacefully and accommodate differences.

As a practical matter, open government simply yields better solutions to a society’s problems. As a matter of principle, moreover, people have a right to participate in the decisions that will govern their future. But this consent of the governed is only meaningful if it is an informed consent. Research—especially when it involves the participation of people in their own homes and communities—equips citizens with the knowledge to take part in public policy deliberations and to judge the performance of governments. Research, thereby reinforces democratic accountability.

By expanding the choices available to citizens and policymakers, research can reframe old problems and social divisions with new solutions and compromises. Trustworthy evidence can counteract partisan prejudice and dispel suspicion. Moreover, research can inspire the technical, social, and commercial invention that creates new options for development progress. These remarkable effects are not inevitable or effortless as each section of this volume makes plain.

The first section sets out key findings in a format helpful to researchers, policymakers, and the institutions that support research for development. These chapters underline a fundamental point: to influence policy decisions and actions, researchers need to devise and carry out their work according to their country’s own political, social, and economic circumstances.

The second section of the volume sketches each of the research cases examined in the evaluation. All of them speak of the defining question: How can researchers maximize the influence of their research on public policy? The particulars of experience emerge in revealing outline, and again the pattern is clear. Research influences policy best when researchers adjust to the prevailing realities of place and time—doing research that explicitly answers specific policy problems, engaging the policy community, and activating political interest in their endeavours.

The third section of the book tells the story of the evaluation itself—its origins, challenges, methodology, and outcomes. Professionals in policy and project evaluation will obviously be attracted to the details. But this is a story for a much broader readership. The issues addressed during the five years of the evaluation cast fresh perspective on the day-to-day decisions that confront policymakers, researchers, and funding agencies in developing countries.

All in all, the evidence and arguments presented in this pioneering work are both valuable and persuasive. The findings and pragmatic recommendations are already fostering development research that is more efficient and productive. And they strengthen the promising proposition that research, well designed and executed, can improve the democratic governance that sustainable development demands.

Maureen O’Neil
President & CEO
Canadian Health Services Research Foundation
Past-President
International Development Research Centre

Acknowledgements

This study was a truly participatory undertaking. The preparation of this final report benefits from interactions with a great number of people. First and foremost, the partners and staff of the IDRC who freely gave their time and skills over the course of the study. It was their interests and needs that drove it. I would particularly like to thank all those—more than 100 people—who participated to comment on and conduct preliminary analysis of cases, at workshops in Johannesburg, Bangkok, Montevideo, Montebello, and Ottawa. The advisory group in Ottawa gave much thought and care in their suggestions and recommendations: Rohinton Medhora, John Hardie (replaced by Lauchlan Munro), Terry Smutylo, Ronnie Vernooy, Linda Waverley, with important external inputs from Diane Stone and Carlos Vergara. The ongoing support of Maureen O’Neil, Past-President of IDRC, gave us much encouragement.

The active involvement of Carol Weiss in the design of the study was invaluable; we benefited enormously from her long experience in policy evaluation. The involvement of her research team—Svetlana Karuskina-Drivdale and Shahram Paksima, in the analysis was central to the structure of the findings. Under Professor Weiss’ guidance, these two researchers combed several thousand pages of qualitative data and did so diligently and thoroughly. The insights of this team were invaluable.

Without the evaluators who conducted the case studies, we would not have had the rich data-set we worked with. Their energy and care in ensuring that they followed a common term of reference and their responsiveness to modifications along the way made the cases both rich in data and a wonderful set of stories for the use of research: Bienvenido Argueta, Chris Ackello-Ogutu, David Brooks, Leanne Burton, Sarah Earl, Bryon Gillespie, Fernando Loayza, Luis Macadar, Zenda Ofir, Kirit Parikh, María Pía Riggirozzi, André Saumier, Terry Smutylo, Eman Surani, Iryna Lyzogub, Bob Pomeroy, Khamate Sene, Ramata Thioune, Tracy Tuplin, and Diana Tussie.

Evert Lindquist provided much intellectual encouragement in the design and development of this study and early synthesis work. The framework he developed in collaboration with IDRC sparked many useful avenues of inquiry and debate, and enriched the case studies significantly.

As this study unfolded, similar work began in other agencies. The privilege to work with John Young and his team in the Research and Policy in Development programme at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) contributed tremendously to our learning and thinking on issues of policy influence. Diane Stone introduced us to the Global Development Network’s project on Bridging Research to Policy and she later made substantive contributions to our own discussions.

Through her full-time engagement with this study for two years, Stephanie Nielson was my main partner in this endeavour; her thorough preparation of a literature review and ongoing care in ensuring consistency in the case studies through active work with the case study authors, and patience and forbearance with both me and them, were central to the development of a set of case studies that could be analyzed together. Working with this many people in several phases of the study would not have been possible without her constant collaboration and enthusiasm.

John Hay was an invaluable colleague who helped me put the ideas together in a clear and accessible manner. His constant push for clarity puts the findings of this study into practice. Any errors remain mine.

Completion of the manuscript was made possible through a Fellowship in Sustainability Science at Harvard University’s Center for International Development, a fellowship generously supported by the International Development Research Centre and the Sustainability Science Programme at Harvard University. Their support is gratefully acknowledged.

Finally, my colleagues in the Evaluation Unit, many of whom are mentioned elsewhere in these acknowledgements, generously gave me the time and space to carry out this study and supported it in many ways. Without their support this work would not have been possible.

Fred Carden

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SECTION I
The Findings

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1 Making Research Count

From African schoolrooms to Southeast Asian fishing villages, from Latin American trade policy to Middle East water management, hard evidence proves the point that development research, done right, can improve public policy and help accelerate development progress. When research is well designed and executed—and skilfully communicated—it can inform policy that is more effective, more efficient, and more equitable. But experience proves another point just as certainly; in all the confusions and frustrations of making policy in developing countries, development research frequently fails to register any apparent influence whatsoever. What explains those successes and the failures? And to put the question more directly, how best can researchers and policymakers bring timely, relevant, and reliable new knowledge to bear on policy decisions in developing countries?

The urgency of that question is plain to see. For researchers—and the organizations that fund researchers—the overarching objective of development research is to improve the lives of people in developing countries. More often than not, public policy is an indispensable instrument for converting new knowledge into better lives and better futures. And the urgency is equally pressing for the policy community. After all, systematic access to evidence-based research advice can dramatically improve the chances of deciding and carrying out policy that achieves intended results and attracts durable public support. Researchers and policymakers do not always speak the same language. But they can find a common cause in the pursuit of development policy that is just and sustainable.

Agreement on such a common cause is not effortless or inevitable, of course. Just and sustainable governance is not a priority for bad governments, and good governments struggle every day to balance diverse and seemingly conflicting policy objectives; at most, research will only count as one among many influences in the policy process. Researchers, for their part, do not all commit themselves to policy relevance; some believe, quite fairly, that research accomplishes more when it is unconstrained by policy goals and free to follow in its own directions. For present purposes, however, let us assume at least a latent willingness among policymakers to hear some potentially helpful research advice—and a willingness among researchers to give it.

To work at making research count is to act on the powerful logic that propels and justifies development research anywhere. This is research that informs stronger policy, that engages citizen participation in accountable government, that releases a country’s economic energies and inventions, that fosters the capacity of marginalized people in poor countries to discover new choices for growth and change. This is research for better governance.

Governing in the South is Different and Harder

To maximize the influence of development research on public policy and action, the best first step is to assess how that policy is actually made. Many volumes of public-administration literature have been devoted to that subject—almost all of it focused on policymaking in the industrialized democracies of the North. The underlying themes and ideological preferences shaping this literature have varied, but the key assumptions have remained remarkably uniform. Mainly, these models assume that citizens and groups outside government can and do influence policy decisions; researchers therefore constitute one of the many interest groups competing for a government’s attention. The models also assume reasonably stable and predictable institutional arrangements for reaching governmental decisions and carrying them out—legislatures, cabinets, government departments and agencies, and so on. Furthermore they assume an array of lively and critical academic, journalistic, and think-tank communities busily trying to inform and influence government decisions. These conventional policy-process models are typically represented graphically as a set of overlapping or interpermeable spheres of interest and influence.

Nobody familiar with the difficult uncertainties and scarcities that characterize governance in a developing country gives great weight to these Northern-based schemes, and for good reason. Whatever their strengths are in explaining government in rich countries, they seldom yield a very convincing portrayal of decision making in poor countries. On the contrary, Southern countries generally display a mix of distinguishing features markedly different from those of the North, features that help determine whether and how development research can ever influence policy. In short, affecting policy with good research is challenging anywhere, and especially difficult in developing countries.

Among distinctive features of governance in developing countries, the following commonly stand out.

Democratic institutions and customs are often precarious

Most of the policy-process frameworks shaping Northern analyses presume the operation of democratic institutions, and the popular exercise of the usual democratic rights and freedoms; they presume free speech, and specifically the freedom to speak frankly to the government. Where democratic government is absent, or frail and undependable, these presumptions cannot apply. Violence, corruption, and incapacity within government institutions, all militate against the safe assumptions of democratic policymaking, and against any orderly influence of research on policy.

Policymakers have less autonomy

International financial institutions and major aid donors often deploy considerable influence in Southern countries’ policymaking. Politicians and officials in these countries need to anticipate the responses of these external influences as they prepare and adopt public policy. But lack of autonomy can also translate into a strategic escape from responsibility, as authorities blame outsiders for specific government action or inaction. Irresponsibly or not, political leaders with their hands tied may not give consideration to research advice even when it is available.

Staff turnovers, in research organizations and in government, weaken both research and policy influence

Personnel turnover can challenge institutions anywhere, but it tests Southern institutions more severely. Turnover tends to be higher where the work is unrewarding, both financially and professionally. In research organizations, that tends to encourage emigration to better jobs and prospects. In government departments, it can lead to insufficient understanding of the insights that research can bring to policy problems.

Developing countries often lack the intermediary institutions that carry research to policy

Rich countries display an abundance of research institutes, think tanks, university departments, and independent media, all engaged in the noisy explorations and arguments of democratic governance. These are the knowledge brokers often absent in developing countries—the transactors who connect research findings to policy issues and political controversies. Typically the local business sector in developing countries is similarly weak in research capacity, and transnational corporations rarely invest in local developing-country research. As a result, the mechanisms of policy influence are missing.

Implementation challenges are greater

In any country there are gaps between the stated aims of a policy and its outcomes, because design and implementation can never fully anticipate all contingencies. But the gaps open more deeply in developing countries for three reasons. First, policy design capabilities may be weak, and policy designed by international agencies may fail to reflect local conditions and government priorities. Second, good policy can be defeated by inadequate administrative, legal, or management capacity in execution. And third, implementation can be undercut by graft or incompetence unchecked by sufficient monitoring and accountability.

‘Personal’ relationships can lead to misgovernment

Cronyism undermines good governance anywhere. It is a special threat where democratic institutions, civil service professionalism, and the conventions of countervailing power are all weak. Fostering personal relationships between research and policy communities is good for government—a point that has been addressed in the pages that follow. But rule by insiderism and influence-peddling is a vice in any country, and it diminishes the prospects for research to influence policy. Researchers can compete in a policy contest of ideas, but not when the game is rigged by string pullers and special favours.

Policymakers lack confidence in their own researchers

Policymakers around the world are inclined sometimes to dismiss researchers as naive to worldly realities. That attitude can be amplified in developing countries where policymakers are unfamiliar with current scientific or scholarly approaches, or view universities as troublemaking sites of opposition to government. When policymakers see a need for research, they often turn to expatriates, either because foreigners are considered more reliable or because canvassing foreigners might attract favour from aid donors. But relying on foreign researchers cannot, by itself, add to domestic research capacity.

Researchers in development often lack hard data

Advocates of increasing research for development policy make a mistake when they take for granted the availability of hard data as the foundation for policy advice. In fact, developing countries often suffer a shortage of basic statistical and other data fundamental to drawing reliable conclusions. Without an agreed fact base, policy arguments are more likely to turn on issues of power and prejudice than on evidence. Verifiable evidence is the researcher’s stock-in-trade; without it, researchers have little claim to policy influence.

Southern countries too seldom share research among themselves

Research findings and methods usually travel North to South. As a consequence, research experiences in the South are neglected, and valuable opportunities for information exchange among Southern researchers are lost. Northerners lose out as well; consider, for example, what could be learned from the South about development planning for North American aboriginal communities. No poor country can afford this missed potential for research collaboration with others in the South.

Demand for research can be missing

Much of the Northern-based knowledge-to-policy literature assumes an active demand among policymakers for the knowledge that research can supply. To truth to tell, hard-pressed decision makers in governments of developing countries often know little about the help that research can offer them, and are therefore indifferent to the value of building local research capacity in the long run. Research activity is discouraged accordingly, even where the country’s objective needs are intense and growing.

Researchers sometimes must construct their own research-to-action machinery

Northern writers on the use of research for policy influence usually presume the existence of functioning policy networks or decision regimes, that is, institutionalized interactions of researchers and policymakers by which policymaker interests are conveyed to the research community, and research findings are relayed back into the policy community. In the first place, no such networks or regimes necessarily exist in a developing country. And in the second place, commissioned research in a poor country might well be directed less to government authorities than to local farmers, say, or miners, or urban market women. This is a bottom-up dynamic of research for change, in which official government policies might operate more as obstacles than as instruments of action. It is a research approach that has proved to be productive in many different settings, but it places added obligations on researchers to imagine and assemble new relationships with the people who can put research discoveries to work in their own lives.

Bringing Research to Policy-making Connections in Difficult Conditions

Fortunately, these undeniably discouraging impediments to research-based policy-making do not all occur at once in every developing country. They ordinarily emerge in different combinations in different countries, and the combinations shift over time.

Better still, circumstances arise even in the most unpromising conditions that can suddenly create new opportunities for researchers to influence policy and achieve real development progress. History points to three critical moments when research can become exceptionally influential.

First, economic crisis, unambiguous policy failure or radical political change can inspire policymakers to seek research advice that they would previously have ignored or dismissed. These abrupt attitudinal swings reward researchers who are already prepared to present specific and practical solutions to policymakers’ problems.

Second, societies and political systems undergoing transition have generated new and unexpected opportunities for researchers to influence fresh policy in the making. Settings as different as South Africa and Vietnam have proven hospitable to evidence-based policy guidance in the midst of turbulent change.

Third, the advent of new and pervasive technologies encourages policymakers to explore new questions, and to try new answers. The revolutions in information and communication technologies—from cellular phones to web-based commerce and education—have caused policymakers to search out knowledgeable advice. When a problem or solution is so obviously unprecedented, policymakers can more safely admit ignorance. Again, researchers who already have helpful findings in hand are best placed to answer policymakers’ questions with prompt and reliable advice.

The well prepared researcher can, in other words, seize the moment for influence when it occurs. Obstacles and defects in policymaking processes can be overcome when development research is devised and executed well, and communicated to policymakers in a form that contributes to timely and pragmatic decisions.

More than that, effective research can serve to correct the very conditions that block the easy transmission of new knowledge into policy. In Tanzania, community-based research in rural public health helped improve the design and funding of health services. In the Philippines and Bangladesh, systematic analyses of household poverty have improved economic policy processes. In Jordan, neighbourhood studies of wastewater reuse have altered government approaches to conservation of water supplies. Research can make for better governance—and better governance encourages more research.

Box 1.1: Risks and Rewards—The Mozambique Case

The interaction of development research and public policy is the subject of this book. Drawing on the observations and conclusions of an extensive evaluation of some 23 case studies (see Table 1.1)—covering more than 60 projects in over 20 countries, and described in Section II—these pages report practical strategies for better research and better policy. This work is therefore addressed both to the research community and the policy community, as well as to national and international organizations that invest in development research.

But first, as a fair warning, it has to be understood that there is no list of ‘best practices’ when it comes to research influencing public policy. Influence is more process than product, a current of activities and relationships interacting with each other. Influence, moreover, is a means to an end and not an end in itself. The purpose of development research is not to culminate in a briefing book or a cabinet minister’s speech; the aim is to improve the lives of poor people in poor countries. This takes time. And it requires the building of relationships

Table 1.1: The Cases at a Glance

between members of the research and the policy communities—relationships of trust, strengthened by reliable, helpful work on both sides of the research-policy partnership.

The premise here is that development research, where it is well designed, conducted, and communicated, can improve public policy in ways that advance sustainable democratic development. The evidence, and the examples, show how that influence is achieved.

The inquiry begins with a simple, yet necessary question: What is influence? This is the starting point for the next chapter.

2 Policy Matters

New knowledge achieves influence in a dynamic interaction of research and policy. On one side of that interaction, the policy or the political setting shapes constraints and opportunities for researchers to do their work and to try to influence public policy. On the other side, research activity and discovery can alter the policy environment by creating new choices, framing new policy questions, and introducing new solutions to policy problems. Ultimately, research can affect the way government decisions are made. This is an interaction that benefits researchers and policymakers alike. For researchers, it means doing and disseminating development research that has real effects on public policy and action. For the policy community, it means having a ready supply of evidence-based options for timelier, stronger, and more responsive policy decisions.

At best, research is only one element in the fiercely complicated mix of factors and forces behind any significant governmental policy decision. Policies in most governments, most of the time, are the outcomes of all the bargains and compromises, beliefs and aspirations, and cross-purposes and double meanings of ordinary governmental decision making. This is why it is usually a mistake to adopt a model that imagines policymaking as a rational, orderly, or unitary and linear progression from problem to decision and solution. Close observation of how public policies are actually made and executed leads to a more complicated—but more realistic—picture of outcomes affected by personality, chance, imperfect understanding, and negotiation. To say that research has exerted an influence in a particular case is only to say that the influence of research has counted as one of numerous influences. The thread between cause and effect in a policy decision invariably gets tangled in the coalitions and contradictions of policy processes in any country. This is transparently true of democratic governments, and less transparently, but no less true, of dictatorships and oligarchies.

Furthermore, it is best to acknowledge that research itself is far from monolithic or single-minded. On the contrary, pure and applied research is conducted everywhere with very diverse intentions, motives, and expectations. These differences—along with the surprises that so often divert research into new directions—customarily carry researchers to inconsistent, and even contradictory findings and advice for policy. As a rule, these inconsistencies and contradictions in advice are not well received by policymakers. The dynamism of this research and policy interaction explains why influence is so hard to track and measure.

But what is influence? IDRC’s evaluation of development research projects around the world, in very different political contexts, confirmed three overall categories that describe how research can affect policy.

First, research can expand policy capacities. Research can strengthen the institutional framework supporting policymaking by enhancing the policy community’s own collective ability to assess and communicate innovative ideas, and by cultivating new talents for analyzing and applying incoming research advice.

Second, research can broaden policy horizons. Policy is often frustrated by a scarcity of choices. Research can improve the intellectual framework surrounding policymaking by introducing new ideas to the policy agenda, by ensuring that information comes to policymakers in a form and language they can quickly grasp and use, and by fostering helpful dialogue between researchers and decision makers. Researchers win the respect and gratitude of policymakers by providing new insight or information that can unlock those zero-sum, ‘either-or’ policy dichotomies that so often seem to constrict debate and decision.

Box 2.1: Three Kinds of Influence in Vietnam

Third, research can affect decision regimes. The quality of a policy can be determined as much by the procedures of deliberation and decision as by its content. Research findings can improve the policy-process framework by helping to open and rationalize the procedures of legislating, administering, and evaluating government policies and programmes. Skills and attitudes characteristic of good research—not least, a spirit of curiosity and fact-based argument—can improve the operations of government.

The crucial point about these three categories of influence is that they go well beyond changing particular policies. The most meaningful and lasting influence is less about specific policy change than about building capacity—among researchers and policy people—to produce and apply knowledge for better development results. This kind of influence can take years, or even decades, to take effect or become apparent. But it is no less important for that.

How do we know if a policy or decision has been influenced by research? It is never easy to tell with certainty. For all the reasons mentioned above, research is invariably only one of the forces affecting policy outcomes; attribution of causes to effects is likely to be conjectural except in rare cases. (This is one realm where it is usually easier to ‘prove’ the negative as there can be no visible influence by a given body of research on a given policy or action.) Still, as the evidence offered in the following pages will show, it is sometimes possible to trace the effects of research on policy debates and outcomes. Sometimes the evidence is remarkably straightforward: an affirmation from the policy community itself that research findings, that were well communicated, have seemed to open minds—if not change them—in favour of better decisions.

Regimes and Receptivity

Scholars of public administration and policy processes have invented an imposing diversity of types and classifications to describe how government decisions are made and enforced. For the practical purposes of getting research to policy, a three-part analytical scheme that has proved useful to researchers and policymakers is discussed below.

Routine decision regimes focus on matching and adapting existing programmes and policy repertoires to emerging demands. There is scant debate on overall policy design, and none on fundamental underlying principles or objectives.

Incremental decision regimes will debate options and values on selected issues as they emerge onto the policy agenda. But these regimes seldom engage in deeper questioning of choices when they can avoid it. And they evade, whenever possible, comprehensive re-examination of issues spanning the whole policy horizon. They advance carefully, in small steps.

Fundamental decision regimes embrace thorough-going and even radical reconsiderations of policies and strategies, not least when authorities want to give expression to revolutionary political change. South Africa’s first freely elected post-apartheid government is a case in point. Such regimes are relatively rare, but they present unique opportunities to researchers ready with timely and convincing advice.

This is not, of course, the only possible categorical scheme available. Another common and similar taxonomy divides government performance according to its overarching style: transactional, transitional, or transformational. In all these schemes, however, the truth to recall is that no government represents any such category in its pure state—or at least, not for long. Over time, most governments display more than one style as demands, personalities, and priorities arise and recede. Fundamental decision regimes, for instance, are often followed by quieter phases of incrementalist consolidation and implementation. Styles can merge and mutate, occasionally with surprising speed.

What matters, for policy research, is that the dominant style of government—the decision regime features that prevail at the relevant moment—will carry implications for the research to policy dynamic.

Routine decision regimes will be attracted to data, analysis, and prescriptions that reinforce or only slightly modify pre-existing policy preferences and routines. They are usually resistant to research that explicitly challenges their foundational assumptions and beliefs.

Incremental decision regimes will entertain policy propositions that identify alternatives and compromises for solving selected issues already on the policy agenda. They will not usually invite or welcome wholesale rethinking of existing policy or conventional wisdom. They want to address any big ideas in small pieces.

Fundamental decision regimes will be far more open to research and debate that challenges the logic and value assumptions of existing policy—especially if the regime is already committed to overturning existing policy. They are also typically readier to re-examine the whole policy agenda, not merely to repair parts of it.

If these characterizations are realistic, a daunting conclusion necessarily follows. As policy-making in most countries is generally routine or incremental and rarely fundamental, most policy regimes will show an inbuilt bias against adopting innovative research findings. Routinists prefer information that reinforces preformed opinions and expectations; incrementalists only want to know what will get them through another day or controversy. So we should not be shocked when policymakers profess—as they often do—that in the normal course of their duties they do not find ‘big question’ research all that helpful. Generally, these are not the questions they want answered—or even asked.

Corollaries follow from this conclusion. First, development researchers can usually expect resistance among policymakers to research advice that threatens to undermine long held assumptions. Second, researchers should nonetheless organize and communicate new knowledge so as to influence even routine and incremental decisions, because those are the decisions that policymakers normally prefer to make. And third, researchers should assign themselves the long-term work of building capacity, expanding horizon, and regime improvement. Slowly percolating good and helpful policy approaches through the policy community will test researchers’ patience, but it can pay off as minds open and attitudes change.

Context Counts

For the most part, researchers seeking to influence policy can expect to encounter a measure of institutional reluctance among policymakers. Except when they are attempting to manage a political transition or some crisis, especially an economic crisis, government leaderships usually do not spontaneously invite innovative advice from the research community; on the whole, they do not avidly search out fresh problems—or welcome unsettling solutions. To achieve influence, researchers, and their policymaking allies, need to devise strategies suited to the political context in which they work.

Strategy making starts with a closer study of governmental receptivity to proffered research. And here IDRC’s 23 case studies of research-for-policy have yielded helpful guidance. The study uncovered five different policy/political contexts—each summoning a specific strategic approach by researchers intending to move knowledge into policy. In summary, governments and policy communities tend to sort themselves into these five recognizable categories of research and policy interaction.

Clear government demand

In this welcoming context, policymakers want knowledge, and are prepared to act on it. Also, policymakers enjoy a capacity to receive and understand research-based policy advice when it is presented, and to apply it practically to the policy problems before them. The policy window is wide open to researchers. To make their most effective contribution, researchers need to build relationships of trust with decision makers, and establish a reputation for providing knowledge that is timely and dependable.

The likelihood of exercising influence in such a context is high. Habits and patterns of communication are in place, policy capacity is sufficient, and policymakers show a healthy appetite for research information and recommendations.

Government interest in research, but leadership absent

The window of influence is only partially open in this context. The salient policy issue is well known to government authorities, and is considered important. But the structures to implement recommendations from research are missing. Policymakers have not yet taken the lead in deciding what to do, and no clear decision making process is evident.

Circumstances like these call for leadership from researchers themselves—beginning with careful attention to communication between research and policy communities. Experience shows that researchers, by actively engaging policymakers, can propel the transmission of relevant research into the policy discourse. But these circumstances also demonstrate that governmental interest by itself does not guarantee that research will actually influence policy decisions or action. To have influence, research needs a plan of implementation, or a champion among policymakers willing to put the research to work.

Government interest in research, but with a capacity shortfall

Again, the window for research influence appears half-open. Leaders in the policy community acknowledge the significance of the issue; they might already have addressed it in preliminary stages. They may also have affirmed the potential value of research. But they have not invested the necessary resources in capacity for adoption or implementation—either because no such resources are available, or because other policy priorities have been judged more pressing, and are fully occupying all available capacity. Links between research and decision processes under these conditions are generally weak. Researchers therefore face a twofold challenge. They have to help build capacity for the conversion of research knowledge into policy and action. And they have to try to move the issue up the ranks of decision-making priorities. Case studies have identified effective strategies to meet both these challenges.

A new or emerging issue activates research, but leaves policymakers uninterested

For researchers, this scenario has proven both familiar and frustrating. Galvanized by an intriguing new question, or by the promising appearance of new answers, researchers achieve significant advances in solving some development problem. Yet policymakers remain either indifferent or averse to the research or its promise. The issue may simply have failed to register with the policy community as a matter worth pursuing. Or it might incite unwelcome controversy, or jeopardize some vested interest. And if potential beneficiaries of the research— people who would be well served by its implementation—never know of its existence, the research itself will probably lack political support.

This turns out to constitute a high-risk policy environment for researchers and their work, and it is a context that recurs throughout the research world. A considerable number of our 23 cases fell into this class of governmental receptivity, particularly in their early phases. In some of these cases, researchers managed to open the policy window, and engage the attention of decision makers; in other cases they failed, and the window slammed shut. Chances of success are improved when researchers and their supporters apply adroit strategies of advocacy, communication, and education—within and beyond the policy community itself.

Government treats research with disinterest, or hostility

Here the window of influence is tightly closed. Policymakers are preoccupied by other priorities, or may even be hostile to the issues, or to the contributions made available from research. (We found no explicit governmental hostility to research in our cases. But the line between deliberate, methodical indifference and overt hostility amounts to a distinction without a difference.) Where policymakers demonstrate no receptivity whatsoever to research, it could be said that the researchers themselves are ahead of their time. Nor should it be wholly surprising if innovative (or lucky) research occasionally surges to a conclusion well before policymakers are ready for its implications. In any event, anyone involved in development research should arm themselves with patience, determination, and a clear-eyed recognition that attracting the interest of policymakers can demand long and systematic persuasion. It is also worth noting that in policy, as in science, things change. Attitudes evolve; preferences shift; needs arise; priorities are realigned; governments acquire new leadership. Windows open.

To summarize, research and policy influence each other in a dynamic interaction. That creates opportunities and constraints for researchers, and for policymakers. The meaning of influence itself is variable and context specific. Besides affecting particular policies, research can expand policy capacities, broaden policy horizons, and alter the nature of policy making regimes. In fact, influence often emerges only after years have passed; the most lasting effects of research may have more to do with improving the quality of governance than evaluating with the outcomes of individual policy arguments or government decisions.

Research influence will be determined only partly by the strength of the research findings, or the power of the researcher’s logic. Much will be determined by the character of the decision regime in which the research is conducted and disseminated—whether the policymaking is pre-eminently routine or incremental (which is to say, cautiously conservative), or more radically fundamental in its approaches to conventional wisdom and novel ideas.

And there is finally the issue of receptivity—whether the policy community actively invites research advice, or is indifferent or oblivious, or effectively closed to all research-based interventions in policy discussions.

What experience does demonstrate, however, is that each of these classes of receptivity calls for definable strategies by which researchers and research advocates can maximize their prospects of influencing public policy and development action. Policy influence is undeniably a complicated phenomenon. But all is not chance and circumstance. Researchers can design, conduct, and report their work for best effect on policy and action. That is the subject of the following chapter—an account of what works, and what does not—based on an evaluation of almost two dozen cases in more than 20 developing countries.

3 What Works, What Doesn’t

Development research interacts over time with its policy/political context, and each can affect the other. Nevertheless, researchers and their supporters must work within the context that presents itself. Even if they aim ambitiously to alter the ways public policy is decided and carried out, researchers will represent at most a modest measure of all the forces working on a country’s policy process. The nature of the economy and the society, the characteristics of governmental leaders, the pressures and tensions of political continuity and change—all have powerful influences on the conduct and outcomes of policymaking.

All of which is to say that development researchers are likely to maximize their influence on policy by designing and conducting research, and communicating results to the policy community, so as to fit the policy/political context that surrounds them. But there are no simple tactics to accomplish this, no all-purpose directions to influence. Contexts are too complicated for any such easy approaches, and too changeable.

In particular, the policy community’s receptivity to research advice frequently changes as the research unfolds. Sometimes policymakers who were once dismissive of research grow more responsive, or leave office. Sometimes the currents of change flow against research, and an early prospect of influence goes unfulfilled. And sometimes research itself affects receptivity, convincing doubting decision makers that research has provided helpful answers after all.

The preceding chapter set out five recognizable categories of research and policy interaction. The discussion now turns to the evidence of cases, and some of the strategies that have enhanced the influence that research exerts on development policy and action.

Clear Government Demand

The researcher enjoys a unique advantage whenever decision makers express a real and specific interest in receiving research information or guidance. Policymakers in these cases usually sense a particular need for advice, command an ability to apply that advice, and exercise the authority to arrange its implementation. Researchers in these situations are spared the necessity of elaborate advocacy or details of presentation. If decision makers need an expansive policy brief they will ask for it; if they simply want new data they will say so. Policymakers have already concluded that the issue is important, the time for decision is right, and that the advice of the researcher is trustworthy.

Box 3.1: Engaging with Policymakers in Senegal

Trust—this is the most critical strategic asset of the researcher where government demand for research knowledge is strong. The very existence of that demand nearly always signals that researchers have built enduring relationships in the policy community. By the time senior decision makers call on researchers for advice, those researchers have usually established their own reputation for reliability; they are known to policymakers as people who can bring results of high quality research to the policy table in a timely and comprehensible fashion. This strategic investment in building trust among policymakers typically contributes to creating the demand for research that leads to influence.

Curiously, political demand for research can arise in two apparently opposed conditions; when the research issue is old and familiar, and when the questions are new and not yet understood.

Familiar and recurring issues tend to be institutionalized in the government; the course to implementation is clear, the implementing departments or agencies have been designated, and the high policy decisions to proceed have often been taken. The question now is mostly about how to act, not whether to act.

Case in point: when the government of Senegal decided to produce a comprehensive PRSP, it turned to a Senegalese economic research organization for help. This was a crucial move; drafting the PRSP was an urgent requirement for winning debt relief through multilateral development banks. And as it happened, the research group, supported by IDRC, had already embarked on a wide-scale analysis of poverty in Senegal, and was well placed to integrate its own research into the PRSP policy process. Better still, the research team had earned a reputation for quality, enhanced by the team leader’s own relationship with the government officials. The work of preparing the PRSP document reinforced both the reputation and the relationship. Trust developed and influence followed.

On the other hand, the sudden hurdle of an unfamiliar and even alarming policy challenge can generate demand for research advice just as powerfully. The riddles of regulating and fostering ICTs have inspired governments almost everywhere to seek advice on how to realize the benefits of these new systems. In places as dissimilar as Nepal and Mozambique, government authorities have acknowledged how little they understood about the implications of ICTs for development, and called on researchers for guidance. In Nepal and across Africa, the novelty of ICTs induced a close and enduring collaboration between researchers and governments.

Government Interest in Research, but Leadership Absent

Here we are dealing with an issue well known, at least superficially, to decision makers in government, who recognize that it carries public policy implications. But when there is no clear decision process in play, and the government does not take the lead in determining what to do, there is a need and an opportunity for members of the research project to take a leadership role. The research team faces two primary strategic considerations: communicating with decision makers, and strengthening the institutional structures available to implement the recommendations or implications flowing from its research. Communication can inform and encourage decision and action. At the same time, if there is no system in place to implement the proposed recommendations, the research findings may never be acted upon.

The case of the Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Project (TEHIP) is instructive. TEHIP researchers, in tight collaboration with local health workers and rural villagers, were assessing the real health service needs of people in their own households. The challenge now was to design and execute a programme by institutionalizing TEHIP approaches within the central Ministry of Health. A lack of coordination among the various players in the health sector led to a slowdown of the project after its pilot phase. Practical progress began to emerge only after months of preparatory work involving researchers, international donors, and government authorities.

In the Philippines, an extensive survey of poverty had been undertaken as part of a multinational research project known as MIMAP. As an early outcome, the need to increase and institutionalize poverty monitoring in order to address the poverty gap was articulated by MIMAP researchers. Their work resonated with the policymakers. But again, as with TEHIP, the challenge was to advance beyond local-level action, and to establish a poverty monitoring system nationwide. It grew obvious that government leadership and implementation both had to correspond to the realities of governmental decentralization in the Philippines (a factor that will be addressed directly in Chapter 4).

MIMAP-Bangladesh, on the other hand, provides an example of successful institutionalization of research activities within national government institutions. The project staff worked from the very beginning to train officials in the Bureau of Statistics and in the National Planning Commission to use MIMAP analysis tools, thus vesting the project’s policy implementation with officials themselves. And the timing was fortuitous: the staff at one of these government bodies in Bangladesh was also involved in designing a national economic development plan, as well as the country’s PRSP, and they drew on the MIMAP research in formulating these documents. Research had influence by careful attention to communicating with government officials, and by working to insert the research itself into the policy process.

These and other cases confirm that government interest in research is not in itself a guarantee of research influence. Where official interest is evident but implementation leadership is absent, the research team may need to cultivate leadership by cooperating with relevant decision makers, for example, providing training along with timely and relevant policy information.

Government Interest in Research, but with a Capacity Shortfall

Sometimes there is no dispute that a particular research subject is also an important policy matter. Government officials might even accept the wisdom of early decision and implementation in principle. In practice, however, action is forestalled by a lack of capacity, or because it has been trumped by other policy priorities. In this context, research participants should first of all be concerned with enhancing governmental research capacities and with promoting the issue up the priority list confronting the policymakers. It is generally premature to contemplate implementing research while the policy environment still displays an acute lack of capacity, or while the issue itself has not registered as an urgent priority within the policy community.

These conditions can be overcome, as demonstrated in our cases by the Environmental Management Development in Ukraine (EMDU) programme. The Dnipro River is widely recognized as critical to economic development in Ukraine. It has been described as the lifeblood of the country. Everyone also recognized that the Dnipro’s severe pollution was a menacing problem. Local researchers had carried out research on water quality for years before the IDRC funded project was initiated. Even so, the research was chronically underfunded, and research technologies had fallen badly out of date. The new IDRC project moved to correct these deficiencies. It strongly advocated the use of advanced, low-cost water testing technologies, and laid out plans for bringing data and evidence to policy formulation on water management. Also, the project team worked with government officials on the use of evidence in decision making, inspiring a change of attitudes as well as managerial technique.

But building capacity was only part of the story. Significantly, researchers also worked on creating popular support for the project among the general public—support that tended to attract and hold policymakers’ attention to the research. The synergies in the research project’s strategy were obvious. The introduction of low-cost technologies, and more productive decision-making processes encouraged adoption and implementation, while public advocacy and education infused political energy into Dnipro pollution monitoring as a worthy political priority. Researchers can simultaneously remedy a capacity shortfall in government (making action easier), while promoting the political salience of an issue (making action more compelling).

A New or Emerging Issue Activates Research, but Leaves Policymakers Uninterested

This context is defined by a near complete indifference among the country’s policymakers to an issue of new or rising importance to researchers. The issue simply fails to mobilize official scrutiny or political interest—and attracts little or no public attention. While individuals in the government might know of the issue or some of its significance, the subject may be contentious, or lack sponsoring support from a key political constituency.

Researchers seeking to influence policy in such circumstances need to pursue a three-part strategy. First, assemble and consolidate a strong research agenda by producing evidence-based policy advice worth heeding. Second, implement a coherent plan of advocacy that brings the research and its value to decision makers within the policy community. And third, energize popular interest in the issue, and in the policy approaches being proposed. All three parts of the strategy work together. Generating timely and policy relevant research advice, packaged in a form digestible by policymakers, is the essential first step to winning their notice. Effective advocacy serves to close the loop between information and decision. And public dissemination—especially among constituencies with direct interests in the issue, and who may exercise their own influence on policymakers—helps transform official indifference into attentive deliberation and action.

This last point is critical. Where government officials and political elites show no interest in a question that has activated researchers, the solution very often is to share research discoveries and policy prescriptions with a diverse public with a stake in the policy outcome. Ideally, communities are engaged in the research itself, almost from the start; as a result, community members understand the implications of the research, and stand ready to apply their own efforts in favour of government action.

As in other contexts, researchers struggling against the indifference of policymakers might need to contribute directly to capacity building to facilitate analysis and implementation. But the institutional issues here are usually less important than just getting the issue on the table. The potential for failure is high in this environment, but the risk is worth taking. Success can be achieved.

Much can be learned along those lines from what could be called the instructive failure of hard-pressed researchers in Guatemala. The overall objective in that project, supported by IDRC and a Mayan organization, was to support reforms in education financing with respect to indigenous peoples, especially girls. But at the time it was not the government’s priority to focus on ethnic and gender differences in educational spending; the country was undergoing political and economic turmoil, recovering from a lengthy and divisive civil conflict, and government leaders were concentrating more on creating unity than on recognizing diversity and special needs. This was an essential condition for the research team to acknowledge. Without addressing this central political fact, the message from researchers seemed bound to fail; however strong their advocacy, however careful their timing, however meticulous they were in reaching the right policy people. The case is telling because it reveals the implacability of governmental indifference even to constructive advice and the cost of misreading the political surroundings when devising and conducting policy research.

Happier experiences emerge from more successful research enterprises. In India, the Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI) has documented and circulated more than 10,000 grass-roots innovations and traditional practices in the Indian agricultural sector. But SRISTI has also created awareness among policymakers and institutionalized its activities through government structures. It accumulated convincing evidence, tailored its appeal to specific decision makers, and proactively created networking opportunities for government officials and project staff. Public authorities, once indifferent, became allies and advocates of SRISTI’s work.

Similarly, researchers in coastal Peru (working in support of a local NGO, with IDRC funding), helped to create pressure on government authorities and private industries to initiate a large-scale environmental clean-up of damage caused by copper mine tailings. The NGO carried out research on the problems, built relationships with officials and members of the community, and generated wide publicity for their problems. They were also able to draw the interest of an international tribunal in the matter, resulting in a report condemning both the company responsible and the lax government enforcement of environmental laws. The lesson learnt again is: in the face of governmental indifference, strong research needs to be supplemented by concentrated advocacy in the policy community along with a lively mobilization of local and national public opinion.

Government Treats Research with Disinterest, or Hostility

Policymakers in this environment are actively resistant to hearing research advice, and may actually be hostile to the issue itself. Either research has reached policymakers long before they are ready to listen, or the politics of the moment militate against whatever research might have to offer. A research team in these conditions must exercise a robust sense of purpose and a clear recognition from the start that the project carries a low probability of policy influence. Still, sometimes the best to be hoped is that with time and fortitude researchers can outlast the political resistance and ultimately receive a friendlier hearing.

Peru again provides a good example—this time in a research project exploring the health effects of high altitude mining. There is a commonly held view that while high altitude living can be physically demanding, people adapt over time and that the adverse effects of any occupation are relatively the same at high and low altitudes. Contradicting this comforting belief, researchers here found that small-scale, artisanal mining high in Andean Peru harmed the health of miners and their families much more than at low altitudes. Peru’s Ministry of Health, like the mining industry, was unreceptive to these results. Furthermore, many in the mining communities shared the traditional belief about adaptation to high altitudes, so there was little opportunity, at least in the short-term, to rally public activism in support of a health protecting policy change. Any chance of early policy influence was subsequently hampered as Peru, with other South American countries, underwent major economic policy changes, including labour market liberalization, and the privatization of state-owned companies, all of which have tended to weaken the miners’ union that was active on the issue.

Summary

Whether a development research project influences public policy depends decisively, but not only, on the context of its time and place. Influence is easiest to achieve where policymakers’ receptivity to research is high and where their capacity to apply research is adequate. Where receptivity is minimal and adaptive capacity is weak, influence is much harder to achieve.

What the cases tell us, however, is more complicated than that and more hopeful. Indeed, two striking conclusions emerge from these case studies. The first conclusion is that research can make a difference in policy even where receptivity in the beginning appears unpromising. Researchers can maximize their influence in almost any circumstance by conducting their work, and communicating their results to decision makers and the public, according to a coherent and context-appropriate strategy. The second inescapable conclusion is that things change, both in research and in policymaking. Research projects can, and should, adapt to their changing surroundings. The policy context, meanwhile, often changes while the research is under way. In some cases, research itself seems to have changed policymakers’ minds, thereby opening the policy community to the value of research, building trust between researchers and policymakers, and enhancing receptivity. Using the categories defined in this chapter, Table 3.1 presents the cases according to their contextual fit. It illustrates, in the first column, the conditions at the beginning of the intervention and in the second column the changes that occurred over the life of each case as the context evolved, whether through their influence or through other influences.

Notably, among the research projects studied here, few that started in a context of low or no receptivity ended in that same context. Most, like SRISTI in India and the copper mining case in coastal Peru, eventually spoke to the policy community in contexts of improved receptivity; a couple, like the high altitude mining project in Peru, did not.

Given these variabilities, receptivity categories cannot by themselves entirely explain the degree of influence that research ultimately exerts; there is no perfect linear relationship between receptivity and influence. To understand the research to policy dynamic more fully, and more usefully, it is worth exploring some other key factors at play, both in the context of policy, and in the conduct and communication of research. This is the objective in Chapter 4.

Table 3.1: Analysis of 23 Case Studies by Context and over Time

4 Managing Research, Exploiting Contingencies

Development research is customarily carried out in conditions of hardship, scarcity, and sometimes personal danger. The logic of that reality is embedded in the purpose of the research itself; research undertaken to improve the economic, social, and political conditions prevailing in developing countries. Yet even in these inhospitable circumstances, it is possible to produce research that influences policy and action. If the design, conduct, and communication of research all meet the demands of the policy/political context, it can genuinely improve lives and livelihoods while promoting sustainable and democratic development.

The dynamic interaction of development research with its policy/political context was described in Chapter 3, and various strategic approaches to research were suggested. What follows here is practical detail, an array of experience-tested recommendations for producing research that can have effect.

Any such recommendations must begin with the re-emphasis of a simple-sounding observation: managing research in a developing country is usually hard. Assembling needed facilities and equipment in the midst of shortages; overcoming funding uncertainties and disappointments; recruiting, training, and retaining talented staff—all these and innumerable other difficulties inevitably confront the development research manager.

Retaining skilled and energetic research staff proves to be a remarkably common challenge. In more than a few of the IDRC supported projects, self-confidence, ambition, and marketable skills acquired in those same projects, led to considerable staff turnover. No magic solutions present themselves; the usual preventives against excessive turnover include careful recruitment followed by the standard incentives and rewards for continued productive contributions to the research enterprise. But one other finding gives added encouragement. Even in projects with high turnover, SRISTI and the Jordan greywater projects among them, continuity at leadership levels enabled successful policy influence despite staff changes at other levels. Much can be accomplished when research team management remains intact.

Along with assiduous internal management of the research itself, three critical operational recommendations emerge from the cases. First, establish the project’s explicit intent to influence policy and action. Second, create and sustain strong networks for research collaboration and policy advocacy. And third, devise and execute a coherent programme of communication and

Box 4.1: Saving Water and Improving Policy in Jordan

dissemination, systematically introducing research into the policy process. Let us consider each of these recommendations in turn.

Establishing Intent to Influence

Generally speaking, a development research project is more likely to influence policy and action if the intent to influence is expressly included among its original objectives. Intent here is not merely a state of mind, although a shared sense of mission can animate a lengthy project and give it direction. More than that, intent is method. Intent informs the early research questions. It helps decide the pace and conduct of investigation or experiment. Crucially, it frames the content and vocabulary chosen for reporting research results to the policy community and to the public. And as important as any other consideration, intent to influence imparts purpose to the work of cultivating lasting relationships between researchers and policymakers.

Much of this might strike some as self-evident. As a category of applied research, development research seems intrinsically undertaken to affect public policy and somehow inspire action by governments or others. It may be so. But frequently a disconnection occurs between the way researchers think about research and how they think about policy. Too often, influence is a late-stage add-on to the research project. For best effect, it should form part of the research design from the start.

By way of example, LATN—the Latin American Trade Network was created in 1998 as a regional research apparatus expressly mandated to help Latin American countries respond to global economic issues and engage in trade negotiations. Intent to influence defined its mission from the beginning and thereby gave direction to its operations over the years. Its continuing, pragmatic focus has been to deliver policy relevant research that meets the needs of the region’s decision makers.

LATN’s successes bear out the experience of others in another respect as well. Influence runs far deeper than just affecting a particular policy or programme. It has the long run effects of expanding policymaking capacities in government; broadening policy horizons with new questions and new answers; and improving policy regimes by strengthening the procedures of deliberation, decision, and policy execution. Establishing intent to influence as an explicit part of the research strategy requires an investment in these long-lasting interactions of research with policy.

One further point about influence is that declaring intent is always better late than never. In Southeast Asia, IDRC undertook a long-term commitment of support to the Asian Fisheries Social Science Research Network (AFSSRN). Confronting combined threats of overfishing and environmental degradation, AFSSRN’s early mission was to reinforce the region’s capacity to explore, especially the economic and social dimensions of coastal fisheries. It took several years before the network concentrated its focus more sharply on generating explicit policy advice, years in which AFSSRN researchers developed their collective skills and reputation. As their own research capacities grew, they applied their proven competence with new and explicit intent to influence policy. In turn, public policy and local practice have been improved.

Creating Networks for Research and Policy

AFSSRN, LATN, and many other collaborations have proven the diverse and sometimes surprising rewards of organizing research in networks of shared purpose. Networks can redress the afflictions common to research throughout the developing world—not just the usual shortages of money and facilities, but the isolation and distance often felt by poor country researchers alone in their work. The benevolent multiplier effects of networks can be dramatic in their pooling of resources, experiences, and discoveries. In a research universe too readily dominated by North to South flows of knowledge and influence, networks empower Southerners to create and share their own knowledge and influence in cooperation between researchers and policymakers.

The most effective networks are the ones that map out their own strategies for influence early on. They make policy influence an explicit part of their programme. They try to ensure that all stakeholders actively engage in the network’s activities. They consult widely with policymakers and others in setting the evolving research agenda. They carefully heed the changing needs of policymakers. And they invest in the undeniably long work of cooperatively pursuing a common cause.

LATN, the network of Latin American trade policy researchers, has displayed many of these qualities: an early and express policy orientation, wide-ranging enlistment and engagement of researcher participants, and patient persistence in building research to policy relationships. LATN, like the social scientists in AFSSRN, also showed another significant, though unexpected, trait of successful networks—a fluid mobility of personnel between the research and the policy communities. In Latin America, Asia, and Africa, a number of accomplished researchers have migrated into the policymaking community, while seasoned government officials have enjoyed sojourns into research and analysis. Naturally enough, these career convergences greatly enhance working relationships between researchers and policymakers; more than occasionally the researcher and the policymaker is one and the same person. Network collaborations multiply the opportunities for these interactions transnationally.

Communicating with Policymakers and the Public

One might as well be frank about this. Researchers in the main are uncomfortable communicating with officials and politicians in the policy community. Scientists and scholars recoil at the mention of cultivating extended relationships in the turbulence, confusions, and reversals of governmental bureaucracy and politics. And they despair at the prospect of simplifying and compressing the complexities of their own research to catch the distracted attention of decision makers.

The misgivings are normal and misplaced. Development research is more than discovering fresh answers to clever questions. Development researchers are increasingly expected to formulate, assemble, and articulate the meaning and policy implications of their work to the policy community and to the public. As one exasperated researcher lamented at a conference on these matters, researchers now are supposed to ‘be like Erin Brokovich [or at least like Julia Roberts]. . . . You have to have the legs, the looks, . . . you have to do the research . . . dissemination work, strategy work, publication work. . . . Come on, I’m a researcher.’

Legs, no; strategy, yes. Repeating for emphasis: Influence demands communication. And communication is best understood as a long-term process of building trust and confidence between researchers and policymakers, punctuated by just-in-time deliveries of information or advice that helps decision makers decide. All of this takes patience and organized effort.

Imagine a development research project planned to last five years. The communication strategy should start in Year One. First steps might include informal conversations or half-hour introductory briefings with mid-level government officials. (Middle ranks can be more stable than politically exposed higher echelons in government bureaucracies; your contacts now are more likely to be still in government five years from now.) Early communications should probably also include interested constituencies outside the national government, in business associations, farm and labour organizations, professional societies, and the like. Depending on the research subject, policy people in other levels of government should be engaged, whether in provincial legislatures or city councils.

Some of the most influential communications can occur with ordinary women and men in their own homes and communities. To enquire about health or education or affordable Internet access, ask the experts—the families living inside these questions. These are the people whose cooperation or resistance might well determine the effectiveness of a later policy; mutual education between researchers and communities can foster understanding of the impending policy decision and support for its implementation.

As the research proceeds and results start to accumulate, communication with policymakers can become more specific and timelier. By now vocabulary and format assume importance. Usually, policymakers will show little curiosity about the original research questions and still less about theory and methodologies that properly concern research professionals. Instead, policymakers will be grateful for clearly and concisely stated answers to the questions that concern them in their own work.

Timing is everything or almost everything. Policymakers will spend endless months ignoring researchers utterly and then insist on instant answers. Researchers intending to influence policy will spend those months readying their case, never certain when opportunity will knock. As Louis Pasteur famously said of research and chance, ‘fortune favours the prepared mind’.

Policymakers inhabit a community of confounding dilemmas. They seldom thank researchers for complicating a policy problem with more mysteries and contradictions. What policymakers most often want is unambiguous, quickly understood information that contributes to a decision. This does not mean researchers should overstate their confidence in a policy solution, however, it does mean researchers should straightforwardly say what they know, and explain if asked, what they do not know. Researchers can make room in their advice for insight and informed intuition, but they must also make it clear where the facts give way to probability and prediction. Rarely will a researcher produce the complete solution to the problem of the day. And sometimes policymakers are helped simply by a reassurance that they are not alone—that nobody else knows what they do not know. This kind of timely, concise, candid communication builds trust and influence.

Exploiting Contingencies

Project management, explicit intent, building networks, communication—these fall within the power of researchers and their colleagues to arrange. Other factors—attributes mainly of the policy/political setting—lie outside the direct control of research managers. Call them system contingencies, the institutional or political variables to which, in any context, researchers should fine-tune their strategies for bringing knowledge to policy. Five of these system contingencies deserve special mention.

Stability of decision-making institutions

Achieving policy influence for development research usually means two things: making personal connections with policymakers, and entrenching the research itself in the institutional memory of the policy community. Where policymakers come and go rapidly and unpredictably, and where institutional memory fails, influence is impaired. These are not uncommon contingencies in developing countries.

In IDRC’s Guatemalan education case, research influence was impeded when far-reaching structural changes moved decision-making powers away from the executive and into the legislative branch of government. Unprepared for these institutional instabilities, researchers found themselves unable to lobby legislators effectively; influence suffered as a result. In the high altitude mining project in Peru, budget cuts led to the elimination of a government institution dealing with occupational health issues, removing what could have been a valuable institutional ally in converting research into policy reform. The research produced findings, but the absence of a receptive government agency combined with an unhelpful turn in overall government policy direction, blocked implementation of those findings in policy or action.

The river pollution project in Ukraine was similarly challenged by institutional instability. But in this case, researchers largely overcame the challenges by addressing their research-based messages to a wider public through television programmes, for example. They moreover identified a particularly stable government structure, the presidency, for special attention. Mobilizing public opinion and focusing on the most stable decision-making institutions of government, can give some protection against the hazards and harms of institutional instability.

Another strategy, as noted earlier, is to work with the middle levels of the government bureaucracy where institutional memory is often strongest and staff turnover less damaging. Members of the LATN trade policy network successfully used this approach. Still another strategy is to search out more stable decision-making bodies in subnational governing structures, a point to be addressed below. A village council, a state government, or a district school board sometimes makes the best partner for putting research into practice.

Capacity of policymakers to apply research

In many developing countries, weak government capacity is practically a definition of the national development problem. Without capacity to create conditions in which economic and social change can flourish, it often seems that little else can happen to advance development progress. Weak capacity to absorb and implement research is a common and chronic contingency faced by researchers.

But researchers have remedies. In the LATN case, government officials at first were unfamiliar with some basic concepts of trade negotiations. LATN researchers in response devoted more of their time than planned to educate public officials. Likewise, when the Group of 24 developing country governments set up a Technical Support Service to conduct research on urgent global economic questions, it did not necessarily mean G-24 ministers and officials were equipped to act on the research results. In fact, researchers found ministers initially sceptical of the econometrics generated by the research and wary of adopting any measure that might displease the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. In such contingencies, research teams should plan and invest in the time needed to build policymaking capacity through training and advocacy. It is unwise to presume that busy officials and ministers will immediately understand the assumptions or language or statistics of research conclusions. More often than not, the time will come in bringing research to policy when the attentive researcher becomes teacher to a policymaker pupil.

Decentralization, or tight central control?

Whether a country’s policymaking is institutionally decentralized or not, on the evidence, seems to have little bearing on whether research influences policy. What matters much more is aligning any project’s plan for influence with the real world structures of political decision-making. This starts with a reading of the country’s constitution; if health policy is made by provincial or regional authorities, they are the natural audience for health research findings. But contingencies of decentralization rarely end with the black letter law of a constitution. To maximize the influence of research, researchers need to understand informal and unwritten policymaking practice, and sort out the distributions of power that policymakers are trying to achieve.

When MIMAP researchers in the Philippines assembled their poverty monitoring systems, their plan was successfully instituted in the province of Palawan, where they began. Later it was implemented across a second province, Bulacan. As poverty monitoring and alleviation were decentralized responsibilities in the Philippines, it required considerable effort and time to achieve nationwide adoption of MIMAP policy approaches.

In Tanzania’s TEHIP project, the central government was interested in promoting decentralized decision-making by health workers at the district and local levels. The pilot project—assessing health needs by talking to people in their households—helped to guide the decentralization programme from one district to another.

As in TEHIP, many of IDRC’s ICT projects have also reflected a central government’s own objective of decentralizing regulation and facilitation of information and communication technologies. In city markets and village schoolrooms, in farmers’ fields and in fishing boats, appropriate and decentralized approaches have democratized ICT innovation and transformed livelihoods. But researchers have had to understand the decentralizing forces and purposes at work.

Tight centralized control over national policymaking can work for or against research influence, depending on the research. Political centralization tends to encourage the national level policy effects of research when the research contributes to national interests as perceived by the central authorities. In Vietnam, economic research was avidly consumed by the government as it strove to introduce market-based economic reforms. The subject of the research and the thrust of its results, was already of interest to the (centralized) policy community. As a contrary case, in Syria—where policymaking was resolutely centralized— research on irrigation was never utilized, in large part because irrigation itself was not a priority of the government.

In sum, research projects carry a better probability of exercising influence when the intended level of influence corresponds to the country’s decision-making structures. If the project aims to have a national effect in a system where those decisions are made locally, initial outcomes are likely to disappoint. What is the solution? When designing a development research project, it is best to explore structures and processes of policymaking in the relevant subject matter, chart degrees and directions of centralization-decentralization, and align project execution and reporting to fit those policymaking realities.

Special opportunities of countries in transition

As suggested in earlier chapters, countries undergoing political, economic, and social transition can open unique opportunities for research to influence public policy and action. Policymakers in these conditions are alive to unorthodox thought and innovation; young institutions in formative phases are flexible and public opinion often welcomes anti-conventional propositions. Systems in transition alter not only the contents of policies but the procedures of governance. Research can influence both the policy and the rules for debating and determining the policy.

Researchers supported by IDRC have exerted their influence in exactly these contingencies, from Ukraine to South Africa, to Vietnam. In Ukraine, research informed new procedures for transparent and accountable environmental management in the context of changing governance. Research in South Africa prepared the ground for post-apartheid social and economic change and supported the country’s first majority government. In Vietnam, research informed and reinforced economic reform. Transitions are not gentle settings for research; upheavals and setbacks are endemic. But patient and opportunistic research can have sudden and enduring influence on the course of events.

Economic crisis and pressures on government

Economic crisis or intensifying economic pressures on policymakers often represent a promising contingency for researchers looking to influence policy. In most of the cases where governmental receptivity to research was highest, government leaders were responding to some economic imperative. MIMAP projects appeared to succeed because governments were under pressure from international lenders to produce a PRSP. Vietnamese officials and politicians needed to attract foreign donors, and satisfy potential partners in trade agreements by introducing credible policy reforms. Many governments have invited research guidance for regulating and encouraging ICTs for development. The evidence altogether supports the simple dictum that research influence is strongest when it plainly answers the country’s economic needs as felt by its government. (This rule applies even where the research itself is not chiefly about economics. Research into health services can capture official attention, for instance, where it promises more efficient allocations within straitened health care budgets.) Where economic need is not a pressing priority, researchers will probably have to undertake a more elaborate programme of education and persuasion among decision makers and the public at large.

These five system contingencies in some sense complete the array of receptivity contexts set out in Chapters 2 and 3. The lesson of experience is that in any general context the particular system contingencies of policy and politics will colour the prospects and strategies for achieving policy influence.

Over time, however, receptivity and system contingencies move, merge, and evolve, partly as a result of research discovery and advocacy. For the research community, making the most of these transformations will call for both agility and tenacity. This is the subject of the chapter to follow.

5 Research and the Politics of Policy

As our cases illustrate, policy processes are seldom straightforward. The structures, procedures, and personalities engaged in political decision and governmental action all define the setting in which research can influence policy. Moreover, settings change. The twofold implication for research strategy is inescapable. First, getting research into policy means directing research knowledge specifically to those in the policy process who are best placed to adopt and apply that knowledge. Second, influencing policy will call for agile adaptation by researchers when the policy setting changes. Poverty researchers in Bangladesh dealt directly with senior officials in the bureaucracy; these officials had the power to execute policy, and the research team lacked strong affiliations lower in the government hierarchy. In Latin America, by contrast, trade policy researchers cultivated relationships with mid-level civil service professionals because their ranks remained stable while politically appointed superiors tended to change with every change of government. Setting determines who exactly researchers should try to influence and how that influence should be attempted.

Nor should research to policy strategies assume any linear logic in the ordinary course of policymaking. On the contrary, policy decisions over time generally display a complicated pattern of advances and reversals tied together in feedback loops of decision, implementation, second thoughts, and course corrections. New issues arise, decisions are taken and tested, and the issues shift (in part, by not only, as a result of the preceding decisions).

All of this suggests that researchers intending to influence policy have to anticipate, educate, and inform policy decisions and policymakers, more or less continuously. In Senegal, for example, poverty reduction researchers set up workshops for political leaders, including those in the opposition, to discuss economic developments before they emerged on the political agenda. They brought novel policy approaches to the policy people to educate them in advance of decisions, and they established their own credibility as helpful interveners so policymakers would seek out their advice when the moment arrived for a policy decision.

The only cases where policy influence seemed to occur as a one-off event were in the domain of ICT. In Nepal, a small project costing under $100,000, was quickly instrumental in the designing of a telecom policy for the country. But even here appearances can deceive. Although policymakers did turn to researchers for guidance on a particular policy question, the researchers and their research programme were already well known to the policy community, and they enjoyed a solid reputation. Once a decision was made to request policy advice (a relatively easy move when the subject is new), enlisting the help of familiar advisers would have seemed natural and risk free. Again, influence normally grows out of longstanding relationships.

Besides these matters of context, experience demonstrates that the probability of influencing policy is improved by the adroit management of three other critical factors: partnerships and networks, communication, and time. Each of these factors is discussed in detail.

Partnerships and Networks

The arguments for investing in development research partnerships and networks are by now well known, but they are no less valid for that. In many and different places, partnerships and networks have captured significant economies of scale, assembled diversities of knowledge and insight, mobilized public opinion and energy, and achieved influence with policymakers. Research by its nature is almost always a collaborative effort. Partnerships and networks help to organize these collaborations in shared undertakings of discovery and change. The distinction between partnerships and networks eludes any hard and fast rule. A network is an organizational form; a partnership, operational or strategic, gives expression to a cooperative plan or intention.

Building and maintaining research partnerships and networks will never be effortless, or free. They require commitment of resources, including time. And success demands a certain strategic coherence—a plan of action, membership, and purpose reflecting both the available resources, and the surrounding political-economic circumstances. With these elements in place, partnerships and networks have served to alter public policy and advance development.

International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) evaluation has identified four operational considerations especially important in determining whether a partnership or network exercises real influence on policy.

The first determining factor is the deployment of adequate skills and resources in all aspects of the research enterprise, including public advocacy and governmental engagement. Policy influence is frequently more effective when researchers themselves carry out the work of advocacy and engagement with policymakers. The SRISTI project in India presents a persuasive model in which network members were personally and extensively involved in village-level consultations and governmental lobbying. In the copper mining case in Peru, the fact-finding and advocacy group, LABOR (Asosiación Civil Labor, http://www.labor.org.pe/info.php?id_seccion=1), applied its experience to galvanize international opinion, generate publicity, and induce policy change by the government.

The second consideration is the readiness of the project participants to form partnerships directly with decision makers. From economic research in Vietnam to ICT policymaking in Mozambique, progress was achieved when networks brought both researchers and policymakers to the same table, with the same objectives. In fact, these partnerships are often instigated first by the policy side, always a promising sign that policy is open to influence from good research.

Box 5.1: Building Negotiating Strength in Latin America

This leads to the third factor, that is membership and questions about who should be recruited into a partnership or network. Here the calculations can become tricky. Over time, it is generally good strategy to enlist all those with a stake in the issue to participate in the research and in the policy design and implementation. It is always sensible, at some point, to attract support from anyone who has the power to block a research to policy project. It can also be advantageous to include policymakers themselves in a research-centred partnership or network, although it is rare for decision makers in positions of authority to take part throughout. Harder questions arise when it comes to judging when, and how, these various actors should be brought into the partnership or network. In some situations—tobacco control programmes and conflict resolution, to name two—the right sequencing of recruitment and participation is crucial. IDRC has found over the years that research itself can contribute to dispute settling accommodations; new evidence can dissolve old prejudices, build trust, and break zero-sum deadlocks. This is why it is worthwhile to engage many participants in a research to policy partnership, not just the like-minded. In due course, all stakeholders should be included, but not necessarily all at once.

The fourth factor is about creating a common vision among disparate partners, and coordinating separate efforts with common goals. This is not easy. But it is essential for achieving the enormous multiplier effects of the best partnerships and networks—effects that could not be produced by any of the partners acting alone. Researchers commonly doubt their own abilities to inspire and sustain a common sense of purpose and zeal to proceed. It is often wise to recruit network partners with precisely those talents of attraction and inspiration.

Communication

One way or another, if research is to influence policy, the people who make and execute policy need to know about the research. This takes communication between researchers and policymakers. At its best, communication starts early in the research, designed into the research plan, and carried out as the project unfolds. Sometimes policymakers are personally engaged in planning and conducting the research, perhaps as participants in an informal partnership, or formally organized network. In Tanzania’s research on health service delivery, government officials were involved from the beginning. More often, researchers report to policymakers, and others, as research yields results.

Dissemination of the implications and lessons of research occurs through two kinds of channels: in the exchange of information, and in the interchange of people between research and policy assignments. Information exchange includes anything from a policy brief for ministers to a nationally broadcast television programme. The interchange of researchers and policymakers describes what happens in the intermingling of the research and the policy communities. Both can have a powerful effect in bringing research into policy and action.

Information exchange embraces all the well tried approaches to inform policymakers: workshops, conferences, policy papers, reports in specialized or mass media, and personal contacts between researchers and policymakers. But even if these techniques look obvious, they are not always exploited successfully. Attention to key variables greatly improves the chances of achieving policy influence.

First, information needs to flow both ways. Important as it is for researchers to speak to policymakers, it is just as important for researchers to listen. This is the dialogue in which attentive researchers hear policymakers’ question in their own words, and discern whether policymakers are absorbing the research advice that researchers are presenting. Understanding the policy problem as the policymaker sees it, then crafting a research-based answer in similar terms, speeds communication and influence.

Second, communication needs to be continuous. One-shot briefs or workshops will have little lasting impact, especially where turnover in government offices runs high. This is one reason why communication belongs in the research strategy throughout the life of the project. Long-term communication counts among the most valuable functions of research networks, particularly those that include policymakers in their membership.

Third, communication needs to be economical. Short papers, going straight to the policy issue, are more likely to be read and remembered than long demonstrations of scholarly learning. Experience shows that this is a hard truth for researchers to put into practice. But it is a truth. Busy policymakers, especially those in authority, have no time for elegant abstractions or richly detailed histories. A few routine workshops connecting policy people and researchers; timely reports of work in progress; occasional meetings to reflect on upcoming developments or mobile priorities—all these have proven useful in facilitating research-based policymaking.

Interchange of people between research and policy jobs comprise the second channel of communicating research to policy. In a striking number of cases, this happens when research project members move directly into government offices, where they share research knowledge with colleagues, and promote the application of research in policy decision and implementation. One member of the Asian fisheries research network eventually assumed leadership of a large bureau of agricultural research in the Philippines; a project leader in Syria was appointed minister of agriculture after the project ended. Other examples abound.

Dissemination through people can also occur when those who hold important societal positions become involved in research. In India’s SRISTI case, the reputation of the project’s principal researcher allowed him to excite the interest of senior government officials in the project’s exploration of indigenous knowledge. A nationally known informatics scholar in Mozambique was able to interest government officials in the potential for ICT development. Well-earned prominence eases the transformation of research into policy.

Finally, personal interchange happens when researchers form their own alliances inside government, or with people who have influence inside government. In Jordan, researchers in greywater recycling projects developed relationships with officials in the Bureau of Statistics. When these officials realized they shared goals with the project, they posted project activities on their website, thereby distributing project outputs to other parts of the government, and enhancing the standing of the project itself. In Vietnam, the head of the country’s premier research institution, who held membership in several decision-making bodies, is credited with popularizing the project’s findings and promoting their implementation.

Such cases make another enduring point about researchers and policymakers: ultimately, they do not always constitute two separate communities. Rather, they are more often people occupying different roles at different times, with complementary needs and interests. This is true in rich countries; it might be even truer in many developing countries where research and policy communities must share the same limited number of highly qualified professionals. When notions and expectations of division between research and policy are set aside, cooperation between researchers and policymakers can find its full potential.

Who’s Listening?

Policymakers need not always be the sole or primary audience for communication of researchers. Other influential audiences can include NGOs; research institutions; university scholars; business, labour and farm organizations; local or regional authorities; and community leaders. As more than one case has shown, activating public opinion can help attract and hold the interest of politicians and senior government officials. (And this bears repeating: The best outcome of research is sometimes to inform and change the working lives of men and women in their own communities, irrespective of any formal governmental response.)

In any case, communication by researchers seems to pay off best when project managers identify specific audiences at the outset, and sustain a communication strategy during the whole project. Strong dissemination practice cannot guarantee influence; events and context can defeat even the best of communication strategies. But where conditions allow for any chance of success, communication well planned and executed can radically improve the prospects for influencing policy.

Time and Timing

It is obviously easier to influence policy when the research coincides with a governmental interest in the research subject. In Africa, as in Nepal, ICT policy research was undertaken, and it produced results at a time when governments were recognizing they had an ICT policy problem that needed solving. In other cases, policymakers developed an appetite for research-based advice when the research had already progressed for several years—a reminder that researchers should always be ready for the policymaker’s sudden call for help.

But the passage of time itself can serve to strengthen researchers’ capacity to inform policy decisions. Persistence is often repaid as researchers gradually increase their own understanding of a policy issue, and build their confidence and credibility as reliable experts in the subject. In the LATN, and in the AFSSRN, years of knowledge gathering built capacity and reputation for giving useful advice.

Time and patience can also permit the playing out of a supply and demand dynamic between research and policy. The supply side represents the more conventional approach to development research: design the project, do the research, analyze the findings, publish and circulate the results. The demand side approach starts with the policymakers asking for advice, eliciting a quick analysis and response from researchers, and moving on to the next problem. Each approach carries advantages and drawbacks. The supply side looks more to long-term outcomes and capacity building, but can miss transitory opportunities to exert real influence on policy. Focusing on the demand side can score some quick hits with policymakers, but risks trapping researchers in a confining cycle of short-term outputs with little growth of lasting capacity. With time and patience, researchers and policymakers can reach a mutually supportive equilibrium between these two sets of pressures, generating timely guidance from research while enlarging research capacity for the long run.

Donor Performance: Persistence, Opportunism, and Other Virtues

Supporting timely research, and staying for the long run will inevitably test the resilience of donor organizations. IDRC’s experience in the field proves the value of a multi-year commitment to underwriting a sound research project. IDRC’s support for the Asian fisheries research network lasted 14 years; support for G-24 policy research lasted 15 years. These and other endeavours were designed from the start as long investments in capacity building.

This sort of durable donor support can be decisively important in fostering the legitimacy and credibility of a research team, building its confidence, and facilitating uptake of research results by policymakers. But a long-run strategy imposes stresses of its own.

For one thing, donors need to exercise a determined modesty in their offers of support and the direction they give. Indeed, the more significant the donor’s support is in the scheme of the research programme, the more modest it must be in prescribing policy research priorities. As outsiders, donors need to support relevant research without interfering in a country’s own policy agenda. Sustainable development research, like sustainable development, must be decided by the people of the developing country itself.

For another thing, the desirable agility of a donor agency to respond quickly to new research opportunities and simultaneously promise support for the long term, operates in tension with the ordinary funding cycles that usually govern the donor’s own budget. Parliaments and congresses typically authorize funding to national and international agencies one year at a time; they properly insist on accountability to tax payers for the plans made, and the money spent by agencies supporting research. But development research hardly ever falls neatly into these yearly budget calendars. Seizing sudden project opportunities means quickly moving funds between accounts; pledging stable funding for years into the future imposes commitments on future legislators and future governments. These frictions of time and timing need to be expected, and managed, if research is to meet short-term demands from policymakers while supplying long-term knowledge for sustainable development. As always, getting research into policy will demand powers of manoeuvre, invention, and tenacity.

IDRC’s own experience as a research donor and advocate displays many of the rewards and difficulties typical of both short-term, project specific support, and longer running knowledge building commitments. With the right strategies, and good timing, either approach can work to influence policy.

How IDRC manages its own participation in any research enterprise has proven to be a critical factor in determining success. Quality of donor management inevitably includes staff stability; IDRC’s contribution to a project is degraded, communication with project managers is disrupted, and chances for influencing policy are diminished, when IDRC’s staff turnover is high. Management quality also includes the expertise of IDRC personnel; strong IDRC familiarity with the research subject and methods usually helped a project’s own researchers to pursue their work and enter the policy discourse. And management quality is demonstrably a matter of patience; steadfast, long-term support from IDRC has reinforced research programmes with reliable resources, capacity to exploit opportunities that have arisen, and time to build sustainable capacity for influential research. In short, high quality donor management contributes to both research and influence. Deficiencies in donor management inhibit research and influence.

Usually, projects funded by IDRC as part of a longer overall strategy, or in partnership with other donors, enjoy a better likelihood of influencing policy than a one-off project. But jumping at an unexpected project opportunity with a well prepared intervention can also pay dividends. Again we see the importance of both persistence and opportunism. Donors in development research need to practise a mix of reliability and flexibility.

The distinctive advantages of opportunism and persistent, long-term support can sometimes combine with excellent effect. In the Jordan greywater case, an IDRC programme officer adroitly helped existing partnerships to conduct a series of projects in sequence—together creating a critical mass of information on water management that captured the attention of policymakers. Similarly, related ICT research projects in Uganda and Mozambique together enhanced the potential for policy influence in both countries.

Whether donor support is geared to a discrete, fixed-term project or a longer strategic partnership, what is lamentably true is that, donor bureaucracy and funding delays can harm results. In at least a couple of cases, delays in IDRC disbursements were judged to have hurt chances for policy influence despite early potential. In the case of ECAPAPA, late funding by IDRC hampered efforts to disseminate research findings to policymakers. In that same case, and in Guatemala, slow IDRC disbursements probably contributed to staff losses in the projects themselves. Researchers in developing countries are often in short supply; when faced with competing demands and offers, they tend to spend their scarce time on the projects that render prompt and regular payment.

But donor performance is not just about the money. Donors can bring specialist knowledge, credibility, and connections to a research project; all of which can strengthen the research and the policy influence it achieves. Specialist knowledge, deployed by donors with tact and judgement, can extend from subject matter expertise through research methods and operations to interactions with the policy community. In IDRC experience there is often a South to South learning effect, with lessons from one developing country or region, applied with IDRC’s intermediary help, to another in like circumstances. A donor’s credibility counts as well. Credibility opens doors in the corridors of policymaking, engages support from other donor agencies, and attracts academic interest and contributions. Nor should the worth of connections be altogether disparaged. Donor officers and representatives with international reputations and records of accomplishments can advise, and solicit the advice of others, with real value for a research undertaking. There is something to be said for being on the right committees, privy to authoritative information and opinion.

The lessons of experience are unmistakable. With persistence and opportunism, donors can propel the pace of research and enlarge the capabilities of researchers for significant and lasting effect on policy.

6 Conclusion

When all is said and done, influencing public policy is only a means to an end. The true purpose of development research runs much deeper. Its purpose is to improve lives, especially the lives of poor people, by advancing the course of a country’s development. Informing better policy, and better governmental action, is a necessary means to that compelling end.

The record shows there are no universal ‘best practices’ for influencing policy with research. Every circumstance is different. Every situation presents its own complications of need and choice, danger and advantage for researchers and for policymakers. For researchers, influencing policy begins by forming some understanding of these complications, and understanding of how they interact.

More specifically, development researchers seeking influence will have to see their own work as one part of the policy process. When research influences policy, it is always in the turbulent confluence of factors that shape policy decisions and policy outcomes. Sensing the flow of these events, the interplay of personalities, the particulars of a political bargain or bureaucratic compromise, the political economy of crisis and transition even where the structures and procedures of government are reasonably stable and transparent, it is never easy to get a confident feel of the looping dynamics of policymaking.

IDRC’s 23 case evaluation allowed an exploration of these variables. The research projects examined here were not all successful; some failed to demonstrate much or any influence on policy. But they teach us that influence is possible, if rarely certain. Influence does not always happen. Still less does it happen in ways that are fully expected. Influence nearly always demands patient diligence, observant responsiveness to changing conditions, careful networking, and luck.

More than that, the cases point to practical steps researchers can take to increase their prospects of influencing policy. Influence here does not simply mean having effect on a certain policy. Influence that is lasting, that results in real change, draws from research that expands a country’s capacity for sound policymaking, broadens the policy horizon with new choices, and improves the ways in which governments make decisions. Expanding capacity strengthens the policy community’s own powers of analysis and communication. Broadening the policy horizon means introducing new knowledge, and new solutions for thinking about and resolving pressing policy problems. Improving the procedures of policy decisions makes a government more open, informed, accountable, and effective. This is influence that endures by promoting development that is sustainable and democratic.

Devising and executing a strategy for influential research, therefore, turns on a few recognizable practicalities. At the bottom, the objective for researchers here is to understand the setting in which policy is made and to organize research strategy for best effect within that setting.

The first diagnostic consideration to bear in mind is the overall nature of the decision regime: routine, incremental, or fundamental. This matters, because different sorts of governmental decision regimes call for different approaches by researchers trying to influence policy. Generally, policymaking in most countries tends to be routine or incremental; decision makers in these settings are most receptive to research-based advice that looks to small changes along the familiar lines of logic, values, and expectations. Fundamental decision regimes are much more open to big questions, and big answers, that depart from conventional wisdom. Researchers will enlarge their chances for influence by realistically assessing the character of the prevailing decision regime, and its receptivity to research findings. Routinists and incrementalists are likely to favour prescriptions for change in small doses. Fundamental decision regimes (governing countries in transition, for example, or in economic crisis) might be ready for more radical policy change.

The next questions go to the actual interaction between research and policy in any particular policy/political context. Recalling the discussion in Chapter 2, Table 6.1 sets out five distinguishable categories of governmental readiness and capacity to absorb research, ranging from positive interest to outright hostility. Each of these categories carries its own implications for research design and execution.

Obviously, some of these policy/political contexts are more promising than others for researchers attempting to influence public policy. But even in the least hospitable contexts, system contingencies can open surprising opportunities for policy influence. Researchers, along with their sponsors and advocates, should continually scan the policy landscape for the emergence of these contingencies—and for the opportunities they present. Five specific questions deserve constant attention.

How Stable are Decision Systems?

Where the structures and processes of governmental decisions are erratic, or undergoing significant change as in reorganizations or budget-cutting campaigns, prospects for influencing policy may be weak. Still, it is sometimes possible to find a level within the decision regime that retains a comparative stability—lower in a bureaucratic hierarchy, perhaps, where personnel and practices are less exposed to political storms.

What is the Capacity of Senior Decision-makers?

When policymakers lack analytical skills or practice, or when they are distracted by competing agendas, it will be harder to make a sophisticated, evidence-based policy argument that registers. In these cases, researchers need to think hard about how to communicate

Table 6.1: Responding to Policy Contexts

advice in terms and formats easily absorbed by policy people unfamiliar with the subject and busy with other problems.

Is the Decision System Centralized?

Evaluation demonstrates that research can influence policy even where decision-making powers are broadly decentralized to provincial or local authorities. But where powers are dispersed, researchers need to address the level of government making the decisions in the researcher’s specific field of interest. Detecting where policy is made requires a reading of the country’s constitutional structure—and a feel for its day-to-day politics.

Are any Special Conditions at Play (With Countries in Transition)?

Particularly where researchers are trusted and prepared, transitions give them a chance not only to influence policies but also to improve how policies are made. Similarly, the emergence of new policy challenges—like regulating and fostering ICTs for development—can open policymakers’ minds to the guidance that research can offer.

Do Policymakers Confront an Economic Crisis?

The cases show that economic crisis (or inescapable economic pressure, at least) strongly favours researchers who are ready with helpfully relevant advice. For any researcher, these questions are worth asking: Can you impute economic value to your evidence or findings? Can you relate your evidence to the government’s economic problems? If some in your country would benefit economically from the policy implications of your evidence, can you bring them into the discussion with policymakers? If you cannot identify direct economic value in your evidence, can you connect it nevertheless to national, subnational, or regional development? If as a development researcher, you cannot show any contribution your research might make to development, a reassessment of your work and objectives is overdue.

Whatever the policy context, and whatever contingencies arise, our evidence confirms the critical importance of researcher’s responsiveness in three operational endeavours: establishing intent to influence policy, creating relationships between researchers and policymakers, and communicating with policymakers and the public. All three of these activities share this happy quality in common: Regardless of all the travails and frustrations of politics and policy-making, these three functions remain wholly within the power of researchers to undertake.

Intent Affects Outcomes

Researchers cannot just wish their work to influence policy. They need to build their intent to influence explicitly into the design and conduct of the research itself, and into the communication of findings to the policy community and the public. So researchers must first ask whether their project is really tied to change and development; what specific policies are targeted for change; and whether all the project elements coherently serve this explicit intent to influence. To repeat a point stressed in Chapter 4: Intent is not merely a state of mind. Intent that is expressly declared in the research plan and execution will inform the early questions, shape the operations of the project, and frame the language in which it is reported to policymakers. Even when intent is absent from a project’s first phases, all is not lost; late-developing intent, vigorously expressed and executed, can make up for lost time in some cases. Generally, however, influence on policy is maximized when intent is explicit from the start. This general rule holds true even where the political or economic context looks unpromising. Under the worst conditions, the policy influence to be expected at the beginning might necessarily seem modest. But it is precisely in these hostile circumstances when intent needs to be made clear and remain robust.

Relationships with Policymakers and among Researchers Help Speed Research into Policy

In case after case, researchers in our evaluation emphasized the value of building relationships of trust and confidence with people in the policy world. This can sometimes develop informally, but it almost always has to develop intentionally. Researchers can connect personally with policy people; they can form alliances with local NGOs and associations of business, labour, and other economic interest groups; they can join or start research networks and partnerships to pool resources, share experiences and spread their influence within and beyond their own country or region. Partnerships and networks can overcome disadvantages of distance and isolation, and amplify the authoritative credibility of soundly based research findings. Throughout the life of a project or programme, researchers need to ask themselves: What decision processes are they trying to influence? Who are the key actors in these processes? How can those players be approached and engaged? Who are the natural allies in their work? And how can the participation of donors, other researchers, and other potential partners, reinforce the probability of exerting a meaningful effect on policy and action.

Communication is Essential for Achieving Policy Influence

Among our cases, communication contributed to every success. But communication is not confined to delivering information when it happens to emerge from research. Effective communication is a long-term, organized process of engaging with policymakers and with the public—heeding their concerns while keeping them abreast of the research under way, and highlighting its utility and pertinence to their interests. Researchers have to ask: Does the research design include a pragmatic communication strategy and operational plan? Have the researchers identified key communication channels, both formal and informal? Has the research team formed links with allies and potential advocates for the research—people who can help tell the story of its relevance to policymakers? Is the research team establishing genuine rapport in neighbourhoods and villages, with the people whose lives this research is meant to improve? Communication connects research to policy, in part by mobilizing interest and action. It belongs at the heart of any development research enterprise.

In the end, when development research succeeds in affecting a government policy or action for the better, something else can happen as well. The procedures for deliberation and deciding questions of public policy become fairer and more effective when they are fact-based, and reflect an open-minded tolerance. The scope and competence of governmental policy formulation grows stronger, and policy execution is more efficient. Citizens themselves secure new knowledge, a better informed understanding of public policy choices, and a wiser judgment about their government’s performance. With these changes, lives improve. This is the defining imperative of development research—empowering people with knowledge to understand and decide their own futures.

SECTION II
The Case Studies

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7 Introduction

The findings of this study are based on 23 rich case studies. As the interpretations and conclusions are inevitably based on the perspectives of the author and the other users and researchers who mined them, we thought readers would find it useful to have summaries of the cases to which to refer. The reader may find additional issues through reflection on these studies. For that reason, and for the benefit of those readers who would like to delve into the stories behind the findings in a bit more depth, summaries of all the cases are presented in this section of the book.

The cases are organized here around subject matter. Table 7.1 situates them by region for the benefit of the reader with a specific geographic interest.

We have attempted to cover the salient points in each case, but of course much of the rich detail included by the case study authors is necessarily truncated. For those who want even more depth, the longer studies can be found on the IDRC website at www.idrc.ca/evaluation-policy/ev-26606-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html.

The 22 case studies featured in this book show how research has and has not had an influence on policy.

Table 7.1: Summary of Case Studies by Region

Note: *This case study includes cases 7 and 11 as listed in Table 1.1.

8 Poverty Monitoring

A New Dynamic in the Struggle against Poverty: Researchers in Bangladesh Help Policymakers Find New Strategies to Reduce Poverty

This brief is based on a case study written by María Pía Riggirozzi and research carried out by Kirit Parikh.

Poverty has been an endemic problem in Bangladesh throughout the country’s 33 year history, and remains so despite an encouraging annual economic growth rate of more than 5 per cent in recent years. Now researchers and policymakers are collaborating to better understand the root causes of this stubborn economic malaise and design practical solutions.

Bangladesh, with its population of 142 million, is by far the largest member of the group of the 50 so-called Least Developed Countries. Despite decades of sustained domestic and international efforts to improve the nation’s economic prospects, Bangladesh remains one of the world’s poorest countries.

It must be said that nature has not been kind to Bangladesh. About one-third of the country is flooded every year by the rains of the monsoon season, and catastrophic cyclones are common. This is a major impediment to economic development, and seriously affects the livelihoods of the two-thirds of the population who are employed in the agricultural sector.

By no means can all the blame be placed on the forces of nature. The causes of poverty are deep-rooted and complex. Even the definition of poverty can be hard to pin down. One dictionary defines it as ‘the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions.’ Economists, it seems, read dictionaries. They have traditionally measured poverty solely on the basis of income and consumption. Unfortunately these measures do nothing to suggest the causes of poverty, nor do they point to solutions.

MIMAP

The search for solutions based on a clearer understanding of the root causes of poverty led Bangladesh to become the second country to participate in the Micro Impacts of Macroeconomic and Adjustment Policies (MIMAP) Programme in 1992. Created by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the MIMAP network pioneered the application of economic modelling techniques and poverty monitoring (see Box 8.1).

Box 8.1: The MIMAP Network—Promoting Innovation and Understanding

The resources offered by MIMAP enabled researchers and policymakers in Bangladesh to work together in the search for policy solutions. The innovative research involved poverty monitoring that goes well beyond simply measuring income and consumption to include indicators such as health, access to drinking water and land, quality of housing, and a myriad of other factors.

The resulting knowledge-related production has become a key source of information for policymakers regarding poverty reduction, according to María Pía Riggirozzi, who prepared a report on an evaluation of the MIMAP project in Bangladesh for IDRC, based on the research carried out by Kirit Parikh. The report states: ‘One of the most striking problems combating poverty in Bangladesh has been related to the lack of adequate sources of information on poverty-related issues.’

Access to information on poverty has been a critical challenge to the design of effective and sustainable economic policies that can have a positive impact on the poor. Access to adequate information on poverty-related issues and understanding the dynamics of poverty was considered a key priority in the government’s antipoverty agenda.

Although Bangladesh has initiated a number of antipoverty programmes, sources of information were both outdated and unreliable. Authorities had traditionally relied on only one source of data collection, the Household Expenditure Survey (HES) prepared by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). Dr Mustafa Mujeri, leader of the MIMAP team at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) in Dhaka, comments:

This survey was of little use to policymakers because it was produced irregularly—every five or 10 years—and its results were published with a time lag of three or four years so the available data was out of date. Moreover, the HES offered limited, one-dimensional information as it looked solely at income and consumption.

New research tools

Researchers developed a new tool, the Poverty Monitoring System (PMS) which tracks a wide-ranging set of indicators. These include income, employment, health, education, housing, access to community services, access to land, and so on. Several rounds of surveys are conducted to assess the situation of the same set of households over time. New indicators were added over the life of the project as the system was refined. The system now includes a multidimensional core set of 12 indicators that are used to collect data in 21 districts through a continuous series of surveys.

These surveys have emerged as a primary source of information on trends in poverty, with strong policy implications. As Riggirozzi says: The PMS results are available within a year of the survey allowing policy formulation to be based on reliable and timely information, enhancing efficiency in poverty-related policies. In this context, decision-making on poverty-related issues has improved as policies can be based on alternative scenarios, and their implementation monitored and adjusted along the process.

The PMS tool has since been adapted for use at the local level. This is a considerable challenge in a country that is divided into 64 districts with a total of 60,000 villages. Initially, the surveys were conducted at the district level, with the results made available to local NGOs and civil society organizations. A small number of village level surveys were conducted, and the Bangladesh Academy of Rural Development (BARD) expressed confidence that the experience could be replicated on a broader scale with the involvement of local NGOs.

Computers are an invaluable aid when dealing with the volume of complex data produced by such surveys. Two computer-based tools were developed as part of the MIMAP project. The Computerized Information System (CIS) was created for the development of an integrated database to process, archive, and disseminate poverty-related information. Riggirozzi reports that capacity building in the management of the CIS was important to ensure that users were able to take full advantage of the system.

In addition, the MIMAP team developed a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, an analytical tool to help monitor and analyze the impact of macroeconomic policies on poverty. The model proved to be particularly useful as the country embarked on a process of structural adjustment and macroeconomic reforms, reports Riggirozzi. ‘Antipoverty policies can be followed as the government implements necessary economic reforms, observing macro and micro aspects of economic impact, such as the consequences of macroeconomic policies on household welfare and income distribution.’

The MIMAP programme also included a series of focus studies designed to supplement the modelling and poverty monitoring efforts. These studies generated numerous working papers, technical papers, policy papers, and newsletters. These and other documents were widely disseminated as part of a strategy to keep those closest to the policymaking process up to date on the latest research results.

Policy influence

The point of all this information gathering and analysis, of course, is to influence government policy. Riggirozzi reports that:

The objective of influencing policy has been implicit in the content of the IDRC-supported programme. Its key aim in this sense is to articulate research that has the potential to inform policymakers in a linear manner and to contribute to the formulation of sound policy options.

Dr Mujeri, former leader of the MIMAP team at BIDS, puts it more bluntly. ‘At the end of the day,’ he says, ‘it is not whose research has got to the policymakers, but whether the policies have been developed or not—and if they are the right policies.’

According to Riggirozzi all these activities—the PMS surveys, computer modelling, capacity building, focus studies, dissemination—have been important in broadening the understanding of poverty. ‘MIMAP activities not only filled the gaps in the existing knowledge of researchers and policymakers but also introduced new fields of policy inquiry, putting these issues on the agendas of policymakers,’ she reports.

For example, she notes that, in one instance, information gathered by the PMS surveys was the main source underpinning the Finance Minister’s budget documents. It is also an important input for the work of the Planning Commission. ‘The Planning Commission has significantly relied on MIMAP modelling work.... Moreover, the fact that a CGE model was managed in the Planning Commission has enhanced the ability of government officials to use instrumental data on issues of micro impact of macro policy.’

Another example of the direct use of knowledge generated by MIMAP is the contribution of CGE survey data in the preparation of Bangladesh’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The paper was developed by the Planning Commission, and outlines a detailed five-year planning process. Dr Mujeri, who participated in the preparation of the PRSP, highlights the impact of MIMAP research inputs. ‘Bangladesh is now allocating 26 per cent or 27 per cent of its total budget to social sectors. When we started, the allocations were 15 per cent to 17 per cent,’ he says. ‘MIMAP has stressed the importance of social development since the beginning.’

MIMAP findings have also proved useful in capacity building. Based on interviews conducted by Dr Kirit Parikh with many of the participants, Riggirozzi concludes that MIMAP has strengthened the professional capacities of researchers and research institutions to conduct high quality, policy-relevant research. It has also increased the ability of decision makers to use the research for poverty alleviation programmes on the ground. And because government agencies and MIMAP project members worked together on poverty monitoring activities, capacity building has significantly contributed to the skills of government officials.

Affecting policy regimes

The success of MIMAP-Bangladesh in influencing policy is based on the close links that developed between research producers and research users. This collaboration was something new, according to Dr Mujeri. He observed ‘When the MIMAP project started there was no culture of informed research on policy in Bangladesh, no tradition of consulting researchers. We had to convince policymakers that they need research. One of the keys to bridging the research-policy divide lies in close relationships.’

Dr Mujeri believes that involving government officials in MIMAP activities helped to create a sense of ownership. Taking the PMS surveys as an example, he says, ‘We could have carried them out ourselves and there would have been a report, but continuity would not have been there.’ He believes that dialogue between the policy and the research communities has had a direct impact on decision-making processes.

María Pía Riggirozzi supports that belief in her report, arguing that ‘in Bangladesh a major contribution of MIMAP has been the development of dynamic channels and mechanisms in favour of greater research use by policymakers.’ She adds that the main project outcomes have contributed to fostering policy change.

In effect, she writes, from the beginning the implementation of MIMAP, ‘was based on coordinated work bridging the needs of policymakers in terms of policy instruments and the expertise of research institutions and experts in the development of new methodologies to approach the issue of poverty.’

As such, researchers and policymakers developed close links in the process of policy formulation, monitoring, and assessment. In the process, a culture of research usage and ownership in the development of economic policies was strengthened.

Enlisting Communities in the Fight against Poverty: Gathering and Analyzing Information Yields Results in the Philippines

This brief is based on a case study written by María Pía Riggirozzi and Tracy Tuplin, with files from Kirit Parikh.

Effectively reducing poverty requires timely, accurate information. But while poverty alleviation has been a major goal of the Philippine government since 1986, gathering the data to support poverty alleviation programmes has been difficult. IDRC’s Micro Impacts of Macroeconomic and Adjustment Policies (MIMAP) programme has been helping to provide that information since 1990. As a recent evaluation noted, the research initiated by MIMAP was exactly what the country needed.

Tourist guides almost invariably refer to Palawan as the most ‘enchantingly rustic’ of the Philippine provinces. For the province’s 750,000 people, however, ‘rustic’ is a euphemism for ‘poor’. The poverty rate in Palawan is close to 50 per cent. Many inhabitants do not have potable water, adequate sanitation facilities, or electricity. Many are illiterate and malnourished.

When the provincial officials sat down to plan the 1999 budget, they were determined to change that reality. But the problems seemed insurmountable. Palawan, made up of close to 1,800 islands stretched over 650 kilometres, suffers from an inadequate infrastructure, an enormous obstacle to development. Education and health services desperately need huge injections of money. Also contributing to poverty is the rate of population growth—at 3.8 per cent, it is the highest in the Philippines.

Effectively reducing poverty requires timely, accurate information. But while poverty alleviation has been a major goal of the Philippine government since 1986, gathering the data to support poverty alleviation programmes has been difficult. In fact, data on poverty was irregular, infrequent, and unmatched from survey to survey, so no comprehensive profile could be drawn at any time. Regular surveys provide data on macro variables, such as the rate of inflation, the exchange rate, and the balance of trade. Surveys that measure income, housing, and the rate of malnutrition, however, are not conducted yearly, reducing their relevance and impact.

‘We would know the impact of policies and programs only after three or four years,’ says Dr Ponciano Intal, Executive Director of the Angelo King Institute for Economics and Business Studies (AKI) at De La Salle University in Manila. A case in point is the effect of the 1997–98 East Asia financial crisis and El Niño phenomena. Economist Dr Celia Reyes points out that ‘We only had a 1997 national survey; the next survey would be done three years later in 2000, so we didn’t have enough information to signal to policymakers and others that there were adverse social impacts on the population.’ Yet the impacts were considerable: the Philippines gross domestic product contracted by 0.5 per cent, triggering a boom-bust cycle and loss of foreign investment. Years of gains in poverty reduction were wiped out.

A three-pronged programme

Also lacking was a systematic and regular collection of information on the ‘human dimension’. ‘We had planning exercises, but we didn’t have a way of measuring the quality-of-life of households,’ explains Josephine Escano, Chief of the Research and Evaluation Division of the Provincial Planning and Development Office in Palawan. ‘We needed to find a way to measure that over the long haul so we could plan more efficiently and effectively.’

What they found was a Community-based Poverty Monitoring System (CBMS) designed by the MIMAP-Philippines team. MIMAP had begun in 1990 in the Philippines to sustain efforts to measure and analyze poverty, and to develop policy alternatives that minimize adverse impacts on the poor (for more information:http://web.idrc.ca/en/ev-6649-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html).

‘There are many possible strategies for addressing poverty,’ says Dr Reyes, leader of MIMAP’s CBMS network.

I think one of the most important may be to put in place a poverty monitoring system. Why? Because it would provide information on the different dimensions of poverty. Good numbers from a poverty monitoring system also allow us to assess the impact of policies and programs, and can help us identify beneficiaries for targeted programs.

Poverty monitoring is one of the three main components of the MIMAP-Philippines project. The second component, economic modelling, consists of a series of economic model using estimated Philippine data, including macroeconomic models, household models, and a linking matrix that translates macroeconomic effects into household effects. These models have been used to analyze the impact of tax reforms, trade liberalization, foreign exchange liberalization and deregulation, among others.

The third component is policy advocacy and information dissemination. As Celia Reyes explains, ‘It is only by effectively communicating the project’s findings to the appropriate audiences that we can hope to influence policymaking.’ Tools include publications such as a quarterly bulletin, research papers, and a website. Policy workshops and community dialogues bring together technical experts and practitioners from the academic and research community, and from policymaking bodies. MIMAP-Philippines has also participated actively in technical working groups on poverty and welfare monitoring, as well as on policy impact assessment.

Linking research to policy

According to the report prepared by María Pía Riggirozzi and Tracy Tuplin with files from Kirit Parikh, MIMAP could not have arrived in the Philippines at a more propitious time. Dr Marío Lamberte, President of the Philippines Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), says that the research initiated by the MIMAP project was exactly what the country needed in 1990. ‘The Philippines had experienced a number of economic crises,’ he says, ‘and the government was concerned about how to respond.’

The success of MIMAP’s modelling work was evident early on in the interest policymakers and government officials took in the results. Every forum brought more people to the table. Key, explains Dr Caesar Cororaton, Research Fellow at PIDS and MIMAP Assistant Project Director, was that everyone recognized the research to be neutral.

Broadening horizons, expanding capacity

Respondents interviewed in the course of the study pointed to two major contributions by MIMAP-Philippines that broadened policy horizons and expanded policy capacity.

First, analytical tools were developed to capture the consequences of various economic reforms, and to provide policymakers with good information on their possible impact. ‘MIMAP-Philippines illustrates a case of improving knowledge and supporting recipients to develop policies and capabilities of policymakers,’ note Riggirozzi and Tuplin. Simply put, the tools for collecting data, and the information gathered have enabled local decision makers to analyze the causes of poverty, track changes, and assess the welfare of the population. When MIMAP first started, there was little research to back up policies. As Lamberte bluntly commented, government analysts or policymakers would not bother with the micro impacts of macroeconomic policies because there was no way of checking on them—the analytical part was simply missing.

The Commission to Fight Poverty, created in 1993–94, has since adopted those tools. The MIMAP team has also helped government agencies to implement the monitoring system. The evaluation notes, however, that the Philippine policymaking bodies have not yet institutionalized the models.

Second, MIMAP developed and tested quantitative methods for policy analysis and simulation, including computable general equilibrium, macroeconometrics, income distribution, and household models. These affected the planning system, budgeting, and programme design at local and national levels. The modelling work and development of the indicators have clarified important policy issues and contributed to national debates on them, says the report. New development knowledge was brought to the table, as well as new insights into the process of development.

‘The MIMAP project has played a crucial role in the analysis and forecasting of impacts of macroeconomic and adjustment policies in the Philippines,’ say Riggirozzi and Tuplin. Not only were new ideas of poverty alleviation and new tools to monitor the consequences on the poor developed, but MIMAP’s analytical instruments increased the quality and reliability of diagnostic work.

Affecting policy regimes

MIMAP’s lynchpin, however, is the poverty monitoring system. First tested in two villages, the system is now being implemented throughout the Philippines, including province-wide in Palawan, and more recently, in Bulacan. In April 2003, the Philippine Department of the Interior and Local Government directed all local government units—at the barangay (smallest administrative unit in the Phillippines), municipal, city, and provincial levels—to adopt the system’s 13 core indicators for measuring poverty. From its first home in the Philippines, CBMS has now spread, with IDRC support, to 12 countries.

Fundamentally modifying programmes and policies is not an easy task. But, say the evaluators, the implementation of CBMS in Palawan, ‘is a shining success story’. Contributing factors include:

1. The involvement of policymakers at provincial, municipal, and barangay levels, as well as the vice-Governor and Governor, which contributed to the effective use of research outputs in the policy process.

2. MIMAP research and statistical activities fed a new way of approaching poverty-related problems in Palawan. At the core is the set of indicators that allows data collection and interpretation in an easy, focused way. ‘CBMS gives you information about where you are now, where you should be, and how you’re going to get there,’ says the Honourable Joel Reyes, Governor of Palawan and a staunch CBMS supporter. ‘It provides reliable, relevant, and comprehensive data on welfare conditions and development status across the province.’

3. The research results were transferred to local people who now have a sense of ownership of the CBMS.

This last factor is crucial. Community members participate in the collection, processing, and use of the data, and in validating the data after collection. This empowers communities by providing them with information and a process through which they can actively participate in planning, explains Dr Reyes. Barangay residents thus develop a keen sense of their priorities and are better able to articulate their needs to city planning officers. Armed with hard information on their condition, they are able to play a direct role in allocating budgetary resources. And they can demand accountability and transparency on the part of government officials.

‘The MIMAP project has changed the way of making policy in that research gave new understanding to define a manageable, relevant set of indicators, as well as it gave credibility to policy formulation. In this sense it made it possible to test ideas, to adjust policies, and to improve them along the process of implementation,’ say Riggirozzi and Tuplin. Equally important, CBMS’ successful implantation in Palawan facilitates its replication in other Philippine provinces.

Keys to success

MIMAP’s success in influencing policy in the Philippines is not serendipity. Riggirozzi and Tuplin note that the project was conceived ‘to influence policymakers directly by generating problem-solving knowledge.’

Other factors also contributed. Important were the close relationships established by the research team with government bodies such as the Presidential Commission to Fight Poverty (now the National Anti-Poverty Commission), the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the Department of Social Welfare and Development, and the National Economic and Development Authority. In fact, senior government officials participated in the project’s advisory board from the outset. Since then, the National Anti-Poverty Commission has invited Dr Reyes to collaborate in proposing mechanisms to diagnose poverty before an inter-agency committee working on institutionalizing a local poverty monitoring system. This close collaboration with government agencies resulted in further networking exercises among governmental and non-governmental actors at different levels.

The sense of ownership by local government units, such as in Palawan, and by communities themselves, contributed strongly to MIMAP’s success. Says Celia Reyes: ‘It is important to work with local governments at the outset since they will ultimately bear the costs and benefits.’

Building capacity by doing

Influence was further assured by building the capacity of both policymakers and researchers through workshops and by networking. For instance, training was provided for government officials in newsletter writing and preparation so that the results of the CBMS survey could be disseminated more widely. This, says the evaluation, helped broaden policy debate among the population.

Lamberte also recognized that the capacity of researchers themselves to understand and advise policy was increased. According to him, this affected the growing maturity of the researchers, deepening their understanding of the issue, and providing better and more credible policy advice.

The next challenges for MIMAP are to scale up and ensure that national statistical agencies coordinate the generation of data. This would enable CBMS to go nationwide, says Celia Reyes. Also needed is technical assistance to local government units, and a central repository for the data. And as Carmelita Ericta, administrator of the National Statistical Office, pointed out, all government units need to recognize that information gathering is not a cost—rather, it is an investment.

An Interactive Policy Process against Poverty: Researchers and Policymakers in Senegal Create Home-grown Strategies

This brief is based on a case study written by Tracy Tuplin with research by Fred Carden.

Like most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Senegal has struggled unsuccessfully to provide a better life for the majority of its people. Now a new approach to the underlying issues of poverty offers hope for policies that will finally bring about real change.

Senegal is among the poorest countries in the world. In the past decade the proportion of the country’s population living below the poverty line has increased from about one-third to more than half. A 2001 survey estimated that two-thirds of the people were ‘poor’. In the rural areas that number increases to about 80 per cent. These are grim statistics indeed for a nation of 10 million that had high hopes when it became independent from France in 1962.

Evidence of the economic problems surfaced in the 1980s. Low economic growth, strong internal demand, instability in public finances, and a chronic balance of payments deficit combined to bring about a serious deterioration in the quality of life for many Senegalese. A short-lived federation with neighbouring Gambia never fully got off the ground: the union was dissolved in 1989.

In the 1990s the Government of Senegal attempted to turn things around by launching an ambitious economic reform programme with tough measures that included devaluing its currency, and dismantling price controls and subsidies. The reform programme produced results—from 1995 to 2001, the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an annual rate of 5 per cent, and inflation declined.

On the other side of the ledger, however, the number of poor people continued to rise despite the increases in GDP. Seventy per cent of the workforce is employed in agriculture, and this sector remained stubbornly stagnant despite the support of the international donor community. Industrial development and the private sector have not expanded as envisioned.

The micro impacts of macroeconomic and adjustment policies (MIMAP) approach

As it has been seen in many of the world’s least developed countries, poverty is a complex and persistent problem that is not easily eliminated. Increases in GDP do not automatically translate into improvements in the lives of the poor. To design programmes that will alleviate or even eliminate poverty, economists and policymakers first need to understand the root causes of the problem, and how the poor are affected by government’s economic strategies, or indeed, if they are affected at all.

Providing answers to those kinds of questions is the role of the MIMAP programme. The programme was created in 1989 by Canada’s IDRC and now comprises a network of a dozen countries in Asia and Africa (see Box 8.2). Senegal is a recent member of the MIMAP network.

IDRC had been active in Senegal since the 1980s. One of the institutions it had been supporting, the Centre de Recherches Économiques Appliquées (CREA), was chosen to undertake the MIMAP-Senegal research. This brought about a notable change, according to Dr Abdoulaye Diagne, who is the director of CREA and was appointed coordinator of the

Box 8.2: The MIMAP Network—Promoting Innovation and Understanding

MIMAP programme in Senegal. ‘Previously, Senegalese academics did not work on poverty,’ he says. ‘Many studies were done, but by foreign consultants. Thanks to MIMAP our institute was able to carry out research on poverty.’

The MIMAP-Senegal programme is one of the number of projects selected by IDRC’s Evaluation Unit for study to determine how effective the project has been in influencing policy and policymakers. The study report, prepared for IDRC by Tracy Tuplin, is based on an original document by Fred Carden and points out that, at the time MIMAP-Senegal was getting underway, a second event occurred that had a significant impact on the original project design.

The project had barely started when Dr Diagne was made aware of the country’s requirement to produce a comprehensive PRSP. This paper was a requirement to determine Senegal’s eligibility for the initiative for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) led by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to alleviate debt and benefit from new loans. To be eligible, a country must submit a proposal on how the various national actors intend to use newly available funds to reduce poverty.

Just three months into the MIMAP project, CREA was selected as the technical partner of the Ministry of Economics and Finance to develop the PRSP. The goal was for the paper to reflect a consensus among government bodies, local experts, development partners, and civil society organizations. Given the pivotal role of CREA, it was inevitable that there would be considerable overlap between the two initiatives—MIMAP and PRSP.

Dr Diagne sees it as pure serendipity. ‘We produced a document that served as the launch pad for the consultative process leading to drafting the PRSP,’ he says. ‘The barriers fell very quickly, and we now have joint teams involving our researchers and those of the administration. Now it’s as if there is no one involved but ourselves. I don’t see consultants any more.’

The turning point

MIMAP-Senegal began in June 2000 with the overall objective of improving CREA’s capacity for research that would lead to a better understanding of the microeconomic effects of macroeconomic decisions, and how they impact on poverty issues. The CREA research team of 10 included professors and doctoral students from CREA, as well as representatives from the Bureau of Statistics. They had four specific goals:

1. Construct a profile of poverty in Senegal and develop a monitoring system;

2. Develop tools to analyze the impact of macroeconomic policies on income distribution;

3. Study poor people’s access to financial services, the gender dimension of poverty, and the relationship between education and poverty; and

4. Encourage dialogue among development actors (researchers, policymakers, NGOs, and financiers) in the fight against poverty.

In November 2000, seven members of the CREA team attended a workshop on poverty analysis. This was the turning point, according to Tuplin who writes:

To a large extent the originally planned MIMAP activities were put on the back burner. The bottom line is that the PRSP process made active use of CREA data and studies—a contribution that was praised on a number of counts. The PRSP recommendations are based on CREA findings, illustrating the importance of the work in influencing policy, particularly in Senegal’s poverty reduction strategy.

The report adds that CREA’s help ensured that the PRSP document was written by Senegalese, establishing ownership that is expected to make implementation easier. In fact, CREA’s collaboration with various government ministries brought about an important change in the policy community. As Carden noted, ‘Before the PRSP, national researchers were largely ignored by policymakers and economic policy research was directed primarily by staff of the World Bank and the IMF ... the involvement of national researchers in the PRSP is a critical case of change in the policy community.’

The fact that several of the CREA team members were also public administrators resulted in a policy process that was much more interactive—it became a two-way process. Not only did the administration make their needs known, now they were also advised by the researchers as to what was needed. And after decisions were made, the researchers continued to be involved in monitoring and evaluating the results. Tuplin writes:

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this policy influence is the fact that it was unintended. While the final result was likely more than the project hoped to achieve, there was a sense of apology that the MIMAP team was not able to keep to the original calendar of activities as planned at the outset of the project.

Types of policy influence

Despite that ‘sense of apology’, Tuplin reasons that the MIMAP project has achieved most of its original goals to a greater or lesser extent. Expanding policy capacity was a key element of the original proposal. This was achieved through a number of training events, as well as the development of a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model. This is an analytical tool to help monitor and analyze the impact of macroeconomic policies on poverty. Development of the model required a review of available poverty data, and resulted in new and more relevant national data on poverty.

Several government officials commented on the impact of the project. Daouda Gueye, with the Ministry of Education’s Office of General and Economic Administration, noted that CREA’s continuing requests for information forced some government departments to improve their information collection methods in order to be able to provide what was needed. Also, Thierno Niane, coordinator of the Cell to Fight Poverty in the Ministry of Economy and Finance, commented that the project was able to ‘work on the levers that work in Senegal to understand which ones do work in order to better identify the links between economic growth and poverty reduction.’

Tuplin adds that visibility and trust grew with the research. ‘The team became known for its abilities, establishing CREA as a credible research centre for government work. The researchers trained within the framework of the MIMAP project are now considered as being among the most qualified resource persons in the region.’

The report points out that the MIMAP project also broadened policy horizons for a wide range of people—from students and researchers to economic planners and administrators, as well as donors. Even researchers and administrators who are no longer associated with the MIMAP project continue to work on other initiatives in the fight against poverty in Senegal, using the experience and contacts they have gained.

In terms of the project’s effect on policy regimes, Tuplin states that it was key in redefining research-policy linkages in the country.

Before the project, the Senegalese administration did not have the habit of integrating researchers, except for the occasional consultancy. Collaborative efforts here resulted in recognition that researchers increase the quality and speed of the work and of the team. This in itself translates into a new framework for collaboration.

Factors affecting policy influence

Key people are a significant factor in affecting policy influence, and Tuplin has praise for CREA’s Dr Diagne as project leader, as well as others who played important roles in the MIMAP–PRSP projects. However, the report also points out that ‘In Africa, human capacity is overextended . . . national experts are too few in number, creating a bottleneck in the supply-and-demand chain. This affects not only the quality of work but also presents problems for institution building.’

Dissemination of research was seen as less critical in the MIMAP–PRSP project than in some other research programmes, although there were numerous activities aimed at communicating more effectively and reaching a broader audience. For example, CREA organized a ‘Day of Reflection on the Economy of Senegal’, which was very well received by policymakers.

Tuplin writes that, because it was interactive, the research had direct access to policy circles.

Dissemination as a concept has a passive connotation that is contrasted with how mainstream MIMAP-Senegal became. Policymakers were a standing constituency of MIMAP as MIMAP unfolded into PRSP. This is in stark contrast to other research projects that are particularly dependent on dissemination to reach policymakers.

Institutional issues also affect policy regimes. Although institution building was not an IDRC policy, at the time it was felt that support through CREA could eventually have a significant

impact in the region. Tuplin reports that this was an investment that is paying off, adding however that some believe CREA should have more formal links to government. To date, the links are informal and personal, with government researchers involved in MIMAP activities as experts, but not as representatives of their ministries.

CREA’s director, Dr Diagne, is attempting to establish some institutional arrangements to sustain partnerships. As an example, he cites a three-year contract with the Ministry of Education to conduct a number of studies and prepare a report. There is also the possibility that CREA-MIMAP could serve as the research base for activities related to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Ultimately, Tuplin concludes, ‘the most striking aspect of the project is that the PRSP was not part of MIMAP’s original landscape. A number of internal and external factors created a significant policy window that was critical in joining these two efforts, and making the result so successful.’

Research and Policy on Parallel Courses: The Challenges of Measuring the Influence of Research on Vietnam’s Economic Policies

This brief is based on a case study written by André Saumier.

Since the early 1990s, Vietnam has embarked on a radical overhaul of its economic system. The country aims to open its economy to market forces, but without changing its socialist political structure. During this same period, IDRC has sponsored three large research programmes in Vietnam. Have these projects influenced Vietnam’s policies?

Despite its considerable economic and social problems, Vietnam has made important strides. In less than 12 years, it has succeeded in raising itself from the bottom of the World Bank’s list of least developed countries to the status of ‘simply’ a developing country.

Some 80 per cent of the Vietnam’s 80 million citizens live in rural areas. Economic development, however, is concentrated in the two main cities, Ho Chi Minh City in the south and, to a lesser extent, Hanoi in the north. This creates increasingly large and growing disparities of opportunities, employment, and income. Not surprisingly, illegal migration from the countryside to the cities is growing. Nevertheless, Vietnam’s progress is impressive. GDP per capita increased from US $114 in 1990 to an estimated $423 in 2002, despite a population increase of 14 million people. During the same period, seafood exports rose from $239 million to $2 billion, and rice exports doubled. Vietnam is now a leading exporter of rice, coffee, footwear, and other products.

None of these developments have happened by accident. Since 1991, Vietnam has pursued an ambitious programme of economic reform and modernization called Doi Moi, or ‘reconstruction’. Doi Moi aims to introduce into Vietnam’s socialist system some elements of a market-oriented economy—a ‘market socialism’, in effect. Doi Moi has an unusual and distinctive characteristic: the determination to change the economic components of the communist system without changing the political system. Since this has not been attempted before, except in the People’s Republic of China, there is no roadmap, no recipe to follow.

André Saumier, who assessed the influence of research on policy in Vietnam on behalf of the IDRC, notes:

... few in the leadership had much, if any, even superficial familiarity with either the theory, the practice, the measurement or the development and deployment of such policies. Since none of these could come from within, at least for an initial period of undetermined length, they had per force to come from without.

IDRC’s presence in Vietnam

It is in this context that IDRC began supporting research in Vietnam in 1991. A study commissioned by IDRC’s Evaluation Unit in 2002 sought to determine if, to what extent, and by what means, the work it sponsored has had a degree of policy influence. As André Saumier points out in his report, ‘The “policy impacts” one is searching for here are neither trivial nor marginal. We are indeed looking at the root and branch redesign of an economic system; that redesign is unfolding within the extremely severe constraint of the continuation in power of a totalitarian Party [...].’

André Saumier’s report was compiled on the basis of a literature review and interviews with Vietnamese researchers and senior government officials, in particular leaders of advisory and research bodies. His survey focused on three IDRC programmes.

Vietnam Sustainable Economic Development (VISED)

In 1993, IDRC and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) supported a major effort to increase Vietnam’s capacity in environmental economic research through the Vietnam Sustainable Economic Development (VISED) programme. By its close in 1997, it had supported 50 relatively small-scale, somewhat disparate investigations in 25 institutions. It examined such varied topics as special economic zones, shareholding companies, credit funds, and state-owned enterprises.

IDRC’s counterpart organization was the new Ministry of Science, Technology, and the Environment. Although the Ministry was less involved with economic issues, it had a strong, well connected advisory group.

Vietnam Economic and Environment Management (VEEM)

In 1997, both IDRC and CIDA contributed to VISED’s successor, the five-year VEEM programme, which built on the past experience in a more tightly structured manner. VEEM aimed to enhance the government’s capacity for policy development in economic integration and natural resource management, and to conduct policy-oriented research in those areas. Says André Saumier: ‘VEEM had a clear and upfront policy thrust from day one.’

VEEM’s economic component focused on only two interrelated areas: trade liberalization and the competitiveness of export industries. Five major reports, published in 2001, were supported by a comprehensive computerized trade database, the first and only one of its kind in Vietnam.

Micro Impacts of Macroeconomic and Adjustment Policies (MIMAP)

The MIMAP programme (1995–2001) had two somewhat autonomous components: poverty monitoring and modelling issues. Poverty alleviation and hunger elimination have for years been stated policy objectives of the Government of Vietnam.

The poverty monitoring component sought to develop a community-based monitoring system offering ‘richer’ and quicker data on actual poverty than large traditional surveys. MIMAP proposed and tested a methodology calling for bottom-up measurement on the basis of simple questionnaires administered by local people. Such an approach ought to lead to social programmes better tailored to the needs of each community.

The other MIMAP component supported the development of econometric models capable of analyzing the broad consequences of various policy stances or proposals, a first for Vietnam. The areas analyzed were the distribution and equity effects of fiscal policy (that is, VAT rates) and of trade reform (tariff rates).

Assessing policy influence

Research can influence public policy in different ways, for example, by expanding policy capacities, broadening policy horizons, and affecting policy regimes.

Expanding policy capacities

Research can support the development of innovative ideas and the skills to communicate them, and develop new talent for doing issues-based research and analysis. In other words, research can improve the institutional framework surrounding policymaking.

When IDRC started supporting research in Vietnam, the policy capacities of Vietnamese institutions and scholars were weak. As Vietnamese economists in important policy advisory positions had studied orthodox Marxist doctrines in Soviet capitals, they were unacquainted with Western economic concepts. The kind of economic analysis required in a market economy is fundamentally different from that called for in a centrally planned economy. All economists therefore had to be retrained in capitalist economic theory and models. But who would do the retraining, and how?

It is at this level ‘that the three IDRC programmes [...] made an outstanding and singular contribution through their adoption of an innovative approach which no one else was using at that time,’ writes Saumier. The approach was to let the Vietnamese researchers themselves select the issues to be investigated, to entrust the research to Vietnamese institutions and researchers, and to provide senior academic advisors who came periodically to Hanoi to advise their colleagues and to review progress. Also, IDRC encouraged the formation of inter-institutional networks capable of working cooperatively. This approach proved extraordinarily fruitful, and gradually a cadre of competent researchers emerged.

The effectiveness of that method was evident from the start, with the VISED programme and its varied small projects. But the scenario holds particularly for the components of VEEM, which were major undertakings calling for the gathering and analysis of large quantities of hard data. The preparation of the computerized trade database, for example, was a complex exercise hitherto unheard of among Vietnamese researchers.

The scenario applies also to the modelling component of MIMAP. Here again, Vietnamese researchers, assisted by outside scholars, carried out the complex work. Similarly, when the time came to actually use the model to analyze policy proposals, the issues were selected by Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance.

Another innovation, encouraged especially by VEEM and MIMAP, was the creation of teams of institutions and researchers working together, a rare collaboration in Vietnam. The IDRC projects showed that it was possible to jointly carry out complicated endeavours requiring a range of skills.

Broadening policy horizons

Research can introduce new ideas to the policy agenda, ensure that knowledge is provided to decision makers in a form they can use, and nourish dialogues among researchers and decision makers. To put it another way, research can improve the intellectual framework surrounding policymaking.

As André Saumier notes, Doi Moi was launched when the limitations of the communist economic doctrine became increasingly obvious. Therefore, he writes, ‘The initial challenge to policy and decision makers was less one of broadening existing policy horizons than one of exploring a true ”terra incognita” of economic policy and of finding one’s way around there.’ At the beginning of this process, Vietnam enjoyed great success: the country was heralded as the ‘new tiger’ because of the rapid growth of its economy. ‘A certain complacency had taken hold,’ notes Saumier, ‘based on the view that sufficient reform had by and large already been implemented, that success was basically in hand.’ But the Asian financial crisis of 1996–97 was a brutal wake-up call. The urgent question then became: How to restore the momentum?

As these issues arose after VISED had ended, the programme’s role in broadening policy horizons is unclear. It is true that most of the projects supported by VISED did break fresh ground, such as its contribution to new thinking on regional development. On the other hand, VISED’s impact on senior level advisors remains poorly documented.

By contrast, the VEEM programme helped the Institute of Economics address two urgent questions: trade policy and competitiveness policy. The Institute’s research showed that the vaunted export orientation policy of the government was actually one of import substitution and, in effect, a legacy of the centrally planned economy. It also showed that the tariff policy worked to the detriment of rural areas. In addition, the research revealed that measures to maintain the competitiveness of the key export sectors of garments and textiles were based on flawed analyses. Undoubtedly, such findings had important policy implications.

The conclusions reached by the Institute were shared by other key policy groups, and as Saumier points out, these were ‘in the air’, although it is not possible to fully document the mechanisms employed for the diffusion of the results to senior policy levels. But the economic component of VEEM was managed by three senior government advisors who could bring those findings to high places. And as several persons interviewed during this evaluation argued, the president of the Institute of Economics played a key role in his capacity as a member of the Party Central Committee and of the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs of the National Assembly.

One of MIMAP’s overt purposes was to broaden policy horizons, since it proposed a new definition of poverty and a novel method to document it. ‘It is clear’, writes Saumier, ‘that MIMAP has had an important impact on the thinking and methodology of PHERP [the National Program for Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction].’

MIMAP’s modelling component has also had a clear broadening effect on the taxation side of the Ministry of Finance. The Ministry’s lack of econometric models was remedied by the development of a CGE model with the assistance of IDRC provided experts. The Ministry has since taken ‘ownership’ of this model and has been using it for many purposes. It is also continuing to expand it.

Affecting policy regimes

Finally, research can sometimes influence public policy in a direct way: findings can modify the development of laws, regulations, programmes, or structures. In actual fact, such a process is rare and normally circuitous, and only in a few instances can change be attributed, visibly and directly, to the inspiration of research alone.

As Saumier argues, because the implementation of Doi Moi called for a fundamental redesign of programmes and policies and the development of new ones,

... it would certainly not be illegitimate to argue that the various components of VISED and VEEM did inevitably affect the Vietnam policy regimes, if only by the fact that they expanded the Government’s policy capacities and broadened its policy horizons in a context of strong demand for policy and of very scarce supply thereof.

Clear paths are difficult to trace, but in the case of VISED, one can at least observe that many important policy decisions did conform, ultimately, to the recommendations of some research.

VEEM, meanwhile, came to far-reaching conclusions, but paradoxically had less perceptible direct effect on policy regimes. Among factors contributing to this were academic style reports that were not operational in policy terms. Also, the reports became available only in late 2001, and so insufficient time may have passed for their influence to be felt.

MIMAP did not set out to replace current poverty indicators. However, the government may well adopt MIMAP’s approach to poverty measurement. Thus, that programme will have enjoyed far-reaching policy consequences. And its modelling element has led to interesting theoretical conclusions, for example concerning the failure of trade liberalization to ‘trickle down’.

9 Trade and Finance

Influencing the Global Economic Agenda: Developing Country Economies are Growing in Importance

This brief is based on a case study by Diana Tussie.

The World Bank estimates that the developing countries will account for more than half of global consumption and capital formation by 2010. Yet, in the esoteric world of international economic and monetary policy, developing countries must fight to make their voice heard over their Northern industrial neighbours.

The voice of the developing world in discussions to set the global economic agenda is the inter-governmental Group of 24—better known simply as the G-24. Created more than 30 years ago, the G-24 faced a daunting task in attempting to ensure that their issues were heard in deliberations of the larger G-77, dominated by the wealthy Northern industrialized nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Both the G-24 and the G-77 are creations of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and they continue to operate under the UNCTAD umbrella. Their role is to help set the policies of the Bank and the IMF in issues of international finance. However, from the beginning, the G-24 found itself disadvantaged at the conference table, lacking the capacity to research the complex issues in order to make its case effectively.

Initial technical support for the project, administered by UNCTAD, was provided by the UN system through the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. Financing was arranged though the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), but because of a UNDP provision that prohibits financing beyond 10 years without parallel funding, UNDP funds came to an end in 1986. The Group turned to IDRC for assistance. The objective of the original three year project in 1988 was to ‘assist developing countries in building up their capacity in international monetary negotiations and to strengthen their technical preparedness and their ability to participate in and contribute to all phases of discussion and negotiation within the framework of the IMF and the Bank.’

A wide-ranging programme

Officially the project was called the Technical Support Service (TSS), although within the G-24 it was more generally known simply as the Research Programme. The primary aims of the G-24 TSS are:

1. To continue to strengthen the capacity of the G-24 to meaningfully contribute to the ongoing deliberations of the international financial institutions.

2. To enable developing countries to effectively participate in various fora in the debates on reforming the international financial architecture.

3. To reinforce developing countries’ capacities to design policies to help create a stable financial environment conducive to investment, and to reduce vulnerability to external shocks, particularly those arising from volatile world markets.

4. To enhance the understanding of developing country policymakers of complex issues such as the functioning of international markets and the inter-relationships between trade, investment, and finance.

5. To raise awareness outside developing countries of the need to introduce a ‘development dimension’ into discussions of international finance and institutional reform.

IDRC’s original commitment was for three years, but the Centre’s involvement with the TSS project has continued through four phases for close to 15 years. During that time, the Research Programme became, in the view of most of the stakeholders, ‘the glue that held the G-24 together.’ Other support, either financial or in kind, now comes from UNCTAD, the governments of Denmark and the Netherlands, and from the governments of the G-24 countries themselves.

The TSS has undertaken more than 100 research studies over the past 15 years. Among the more tangible products of the programme are 11 volume set of International Monetary and Financial Issues for the 1990s, and dozens of research papers published in the G-24 Discussion Paper Series. The aim of the studies was to provide solid technical analysis from a Southern point of view in the ongoing dialogue with the IMF and the World Bank—the type of research and analysis that previously had been almost the exclusive domain of those international financial institutions. The publications were also intended to alert members of the G-24 to emerging issues.

In addition to providing development-related research, the programme has served as a source of fresh ideas for the international public policy community at large, as well as for academics and research institutes. From IDRC’s viewpoint, the programme raised its visibility and reach among senior policymakers, and institutions working in this specialized area of development.

Reaching out to policymakers

The renowned economist G.K. (Gerry) Helleiner, currently Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Toronto, was the research coordinator for the TSS for eight years, starting in 1991. Dr Diana Tussie, the lead evaluator of the project for IDRC, comments that Helleiner was ‘a very active project director’, attending meetings of the G-24 deputies and ministers, as well as its Governing Council. He was also a strong advocate for a larger role of developing countries in world financial affairs.

Helleiner pointed out that in the mid-1990s, the developing countries accounted for 44 per cent of the world output in purchasing power parity terms. ‘Developing countries as a group are generally projected to grow at roughly double the rate of the industrial world during the coming decade,’ he said. ‘The developing countries (and other non-G-7 members) are economically as well as demographically important, and they are very rapidly increasing their importance in the global economy.’

As an example of this importance, Helleiner pointed out that ‘during the 1991 recession in the industrial world, three-quarters of the increase in world exports, which buffered their problems, went to developing-country markets.’

While he was effective at making the case for an enhanced role for the G-24 countries, Helleiner faced some more mundane problems in the day-to-day operations of the Research Programme, particularly in the area of communication. It was found that the mailing lists used to distribute the research output were often out of date. Thus, material was not reaching the right people. Dr Tussie also points out that there was ‘an erroneous assumption that by distributing the products to the Executive Directors, the rest of the national machinery would be in contact with the outputs.’

Many of these issues were overcome during the second phase of the project, from 1993 to 1996, and from the outset important steps were taken to increase ‘ownership’ of the G-24 programme by the member countries themselves. This included countries contributing to the funding, and the creation of new mechanisms for guiding research and gauging policy needs. Under this heading, the Technical Group (TG) was a key development, says Dr Tussie.

By bringing the researchers together with the G-24 representatives in a formal setting, the TG acted as an intermediary between the Research Programme and the G-24. It was a mechanism in which dialogue was expected to bridge the gap between research and policy.

Changes in approaches

Further attempts to bring about closer contact between researchers and policymakers were made during the critical third phase of the project from 1996 to 2000. These included the establishment of a Liaison Office with the goal of providing better access to the Executive Directors. In addition, informal meetings between researchers and policymakers from the G-24 countries provided opportunities for direct policy input to the Research Programme.

This phase of the project also saw Helleiner’s retirement and the appointment of a new research coordinator, Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Rodrik set out at once to improve the dissemination and outreach of the Research Programme’s output. Dissemination by way of the Internet was implemented—a major step in making the Research Programme’s product globally available. There was also an attempt to make the material more accessible by complementing some of the detailed research papers with shorter position papers on strategic topics. Papers were no longer published as volume sets because of the lag time involved; instead they were published jointly with UNCTAD and Harvard as stand-alone discussion papers.

Equally significant was a change in approach—an attempt to reach a wider audience and influence public policy at the global level, while also contributing more to the academic debate on international monetary and financial issues. As the proposal for the fourth phase put it, future studies would be published ‘with a view to contributing to the wider international discussions on financial and monetary issues from a development perspective in political, intergovernmental, and academic circles, and the civil society at large.’

This was a key departure from the previous nine years, when the focus of the Research Programme had always been on the executive directors of the G-24 countries as the primary target audience, says Dr Tussie. The change in emphasis resulted in some tension between the research coordinator, who advocated long-term change, and the Liaison Office, which favoured more demand driven research.

Even more fundamental, the extent of the research coordinator’s responsibilities, and the roles of the other actors in the project—never formally defined—became a matter for debate. Unlike Helleiner, who stressed the G-24’s ownership of the project, Rodrik saw himself as accountable primarily to UNCTAD that, for its part, saw the project as a technical assistance project to the G-24, similar to other technical assistance it provides.

The differences stem in part from differing perceptions of the policy process, Dr Tussie believes. ‘Traditionally, policymaking is viewed as a linear process where papers and positions are prepared and presented to policymakers who use them in negotiating and taking policy decisions’, she says, adding that it is a view that has largely been discarded today. In the early years many of the G-24 stakeholders had faith in a linear approach, believing that research papers could directly influence policy. Even today there is still ‘at least some hope that the Deputies and Ministers would read them and be influenced in their position by what they read.’

The alternative to the linear approach to influencing policy is what has been termed ‘enlightenment’, where research indirectly influences the ‘circulation and percolation’ of ideas over a period of time. Helleiner compared this approach to the action of water that drips and drips on rock until the rock slowly gives way. Rodrik, on the other hand, commented that while the linear approach is more immediate, ‘enlightenment’ is oriented more towards policy change as a result of changing perceptions.

The actual use of the Research Programme’s output is unclear, and various participants have differing views on who used it, and how. Aziz Ali Mohammed, with the G-24 Liaison Office, felt that the papers produced by TSS were most likely to be read by those at the lower levels of the policymaking machinery. On the other hand, Rodrik believed that executive directors and assistants were primary users of the material. A former Executive Director from Nigeria, Patrick Akatu, thought the papers were of high quality, but did not penetrate the policy community at the level of the Bank and the IMF. He says the research ‘is helpful to understand the context in which policy is made, but not helpful at the time to negotiate specific issues that are in the daily agenda.’ However, Dr Tussie concludes that the G-24 having an official Research Programme lends a certain seal of approval to developing country issues. Further, the fact that the Managing Director of the IMF and the President of the World Bank attend G-24 meetings gives the issues they raise more legitimacy than those raised by other international bodies. And finally, the fact that the Research Programme receives funding from multinational donor institutions lends it a further seal of approval.

Assessing policy influence

The study of the Research Programme’s influence on policy, carried out by IDRC, identifies three types of policy influence:

1. Expanding policy capacities—this includes improving knowledge, supporting, the development of innovative ideas and the capacity to communicate them, and developing new talent for research and analysis. Requests for detailed policy briefs are cited as one indication of the need for additional knowledge on specific issues.

2. Expanding policy horizons—similar to the ‘enlightenment’ approach as a means to influence policy, the resulting form of influence is often in terms of new concepts being introduced, new ideas on the agenda, and researchers and others educated to take up new positions with broader understanding of issues. This is considered to be one of the most important forms of influence attributed to the Research Programme.

3. Affecting policy regimes—referring to a fundamental redesign of modification of programmes or policies. This is considered to be a long-term goal for the Research Programme, although there are few instances where change can be seen to have been brought about through the influence of the Research Programme alone.

Negotiating the New World of International Trade: Research Helps Latin America to Cope with an Expanding Trade Dialogue

This brief is based on a case study by Luis Macadar.

During the late 1990s, in the wake of the Uruguay Round of international trade negotiations, Latin American nations found themselves literally lost in a plethora of issues that until then had been foreign to the discourse on foreign trade. They risked becoming mere spectators in a game that was crucial to their continued survival. That was when researchers, with IDRC support, got involved, seeking to bring together different sectors and countries in the region to begin writing a new chapter in the history of policymaking in the developing world. It’s a lucid and interesting, if still unfinished, chapter.

The year was 1997. Three years had passed since the exhaustive Uruguay Round had formally ended and the resultant agreements signed. But in the minds of thinkers such as Rohinton Medhora, the then team leader of the IDRC’s Trade, Employment, and Competitiveness programme initiative, the ink was taking a long time to dry. Something was wrong.

The trade negotiations, named after the Latin American country where they had begun in September 1986, had revealed major weaknesses in the region’s negotiating capacity. It seemed to validate the thesis, expounded a quarter century earlier by economist and educator Albert Hirschman, that some countries, Latin American ones prominent among them, had lost the liberty enjoyed by sovereign states to set their own policy agendas. They had become mere ‘coping states’. They spent more time reacting rather than acting.

Seven and one-half years of trade talks helped highlight this regional inadequacy. After Uruguay, trade negotiations were no longer just about the selling of sugar, cars, and textiles, but according to the World Trade Organization (WTO) website, covered everything ‘from toothbrushes to pleasure boats, from banking to telecommunications, from the genes of wild rice to AIDS treatment.’

Those talks, recalls Medhora, ‘were the first where the trade agenda was expanded to include what we now call behind-the-border subjects.’ These include international investment, competition policy, trade in services, telecommunications, financial services, export promotion, intellectual property rights, special and differential treatment, labour policy and, of course, the environment. In this expanded discourse, developing countries often found themselves on the sidelines, unable to participate fully, uncertain how to respond to this plethora of issues. The distinction between domestic and international policy had been blurred and, says Medhora, the need for ‘extremely specialized and sophisticated analytical ability on the part of trade negotiators’ became evident.

Medhora and other participants at a 1997 brainstorming session in Buenos Aires, Argentina, were moved by another piece of evidence of Latin America’s lack of preparedness for engagement in the growing international trade policy dialogue. Part of a World Bank study questioning the performance and effectiveness of Mercosur—a regional trade arrangement established six years earlier by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay—appeared in the Financial Times. A well-reasoned response to the publication came not from Latin America, but from the desk of an official in the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank.

‘In the industrialized countries,’ says senior foreign trade expert Luis Abugattas, ‘there are hundreds of think tanks producing policy papers that are analyzed by the authorities and then used as inputs for negotiating positions. In my own country, Peru, there is no university or think tank doing this kind of research.’ He characterized the Latin American situation as one of ‘gambling with our countries’ future every day at the negotiating table.’

There were other problems: the sheer lack of technical expertise, particularly among the smaller countries; a ‘disconnect’, in some cases, between policymakers and the research community; and poor coordination among various institutions within the same government. Something had to be done. The Buenos Aires session led to an unprecedented mobilization of the research community to generate the information needed to influence Latin American trade policymaking and international trade dialogue in a new and positive way.

The researcher comes to the table

So, this is how the LATN was born. Just as developed country think tanks and research groups were represented at the negotiating table through the reception of their insights into their countries’ policymaking processes, the time had arrived for researchers to find their place, so to speak, on the Latin American side of the negotiation room. By December 1997, a project proposal had been drafted. The following March, IDRC approved a CA $1.32 million grant to the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) to establish LATN.

Consulting economist Luis Macadar recalled the objectives of LATN in a recent case study undertaken to discover whether and how the project had begun to influence public policy. LATN, says Macadar, aimed to:

1. Support agenda building and policy formulation in Latin American countries in response to the emerging trends and issues in the international trade system;

2. Harness the existing research capacity in Latin American countries to engage in international trade negotiations and contribute to human resource development; and

3. Strengthen collaboration among the participating institutions with a view to sustaining the long-term goals of the Network.

Many of the people interviewed by Macadar in the preparation of the case study envision the pursuit of a regional approach to trade negotiations as an important complementary objective. In terms of the research process itself, they stress the importance of LATN’s coordinating role in drawing upon the expertise of various national and regional institutions and in finding ‘common ground’ by bridging the much discussed divide among governments, researchers, and the private sector.

Studies undertaken to meet these aims fall into three groups.

1. Group 1 comprises wide, overarching issues. These include the preconditions for the formation of trade coalitions, and the challenges of bargaining in the context of ever-changing coalitions.

2. Group 2 involves the study, from a Latin American perspective, of emerging issues, including the expanding menu of items on the trade negotiation agenda that has made the Uruguay Round such an eye-opener.

3. Group 3, says Macadar, ‘consists of country case studies that aim to identify optimal or feasible national responses in the context of the current international trade relations regime for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.’

The Network that set about fulfilling this ample mandate in the spring of 1998 comprised a dozen researchers. Today, it brings together some 35 researchers from more than 30 academic institutions. The Network also includes policy officials from Latin American countries, and colleagues working with a number of international agencies—academic, non-governmental, and intergovernmental. Most LATN researchers are experienced academics—many, such as the Network’s director, Diana Tussie, having already achieved international renown— with broad experience in the issues addressed by LATN. There are also a number of young researchers, mainly Masters or PhD students or graduates of FLACSO.

Perfecting the LATN trademark

LATN’s focus is simple and pragmatic. It seeks to deliver policy relevant research that meets the needs of the region’s decision makers—those in government, but often those in the private sector as well. An example of this approach is the research by Tussie and LATN Deputy Director Miguel Lengyel on export subsidies. That study was valuable, given the long-standing importance of subsidies to key Latin American industries, and the complaints from other countries that such subsidies conferred an unfair advantage.

Following the Uruguay Round, which defined the term subsidy and clearly listed acceptable export promotion practices, reports Lengyel, ‘countries now have their hands tied when it comes to export promotion policies.’ The study identified ‘margins for manoeuvre’ that survived the agreements signed as part of the Uruguay Round, and that were consistent with other bilateral and multilateral obligations. The two experienced researchers discovered that measures such as reimbursing indirect taxes on items like energy costs and such policy initiatives as research and development or training support, continued to be legitimate.

LATN’s focused approach has also meant following up on the output of other researchers and academics in the field of international trade, rather than yielding to the temptation to generate brand new research. Macadar describes what he calls ‘the LATN trademark’, the Network’s particular way of looking at problems, which ‘involves taking approaches from the literature and prioritizing them in a certain way, applying them to a specific issue related to the trade negotiations.’ This combination includes technical, legal, juridical, and economic elements. This unique LATN approach may be summarized as ‘academic knowledge applied specifically to a concrete sphere.’

Also, LATN has seen the need to combine firm focus with creative flexibility. While the objectives in the original IDRC project proposal remain, emphases have been adjusted to meet the changing multilateral agenda which has represented a shifting and confusing picture. Agriculture has emerged as the key issue, followed by competition policy, internationalization of the multilateral trade rules, safeguard issues, anti-dumping, and services.

Also, emphasis was placed on the policy formulation process within individual governments, and the importance of adapting it to the needs of negotiators. The project was also tweaked to place greater emphasis on education. ‘The authorities were much less well informed than had been assumed in the original proposal,’ says Macadar. The emphasis on education was particularly important in view of the emerging need to conduct multiple and simultaneous negotiations, and because of the paucity of published material on relevant topics in Spanish and with a Latin American perspective.

Flexibility also required a change in the level at which LATN’s research output would be targeted. Given the frequent changes at the ministerial and deputy ministerial levels, LATN began to gear its material towards the middle level bureaucrat. The Network recognized the control of information, the capacity to influence policymaking in subtle ways, and the responsibility to provide policy continuity that resided at this middle level.

A dream fulfilled?

Asked whether the dream, that motivated him and a number of Latin American colleagues to come up with the LATN concept, had been fulfilled, Medhora, now IDRC vice president, Programme and Partnership Branch, answers: ‘Capacity building is a slow process and we had no illusions that anything dramatic would happen overnight. But I think if I were to assess where LATN is today, I would have to say I am extremely pleased.’ As an evidence of LATN’s success, Medhora noted that the Network had helped spawn similar networks. These include networks, also established with IDRC support, in Latin America itself, and in South Asia and Southern Africa.

This positive assessment is reflected in the results of Macadar’s case study, specifically in terms of the effectiveness of the project in influencing policy. An overall study by IDRC’s Evaluation Unit, of which Macadar’s case study is a part, identified three major forms of policy influence: expanding policy capacities, broadening policy horizons, and affecting policy regimes. Macadar found evidence of influence in all three areas, but particularly in the first two.

1. Expanding policy capacities: LATN has demonstrated success in this area, not only by the quantity and quality of its work, but also by the innovative ways in which it has targeted its research activities to ensure that specific needs in the area of international trade negotiations and international trade policy are addressed and that the education, information, and strengthening of Latin American negotiators can be achieved. The initiation of a new generation of academics—many of whom may well end up as policymakers later in their careers—into this aspect of social science research is another example of expanding capacities.

2. Broadening policy horizons: This ‘enlightenment approach’ encompasses the research, information dissemination, and training through which the Network has helped to better equip policymakers, negotiators, middle level officials, and private sector representatives to undertake effective international trade policy analysis and decision making. Various Latin American governments—those of Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, and several Central American countries—have approached the Network for assistance. Argentina’s Secretary of Trade, faced with complaints from the footwear lobby about competitive imports from Brazil, resolved the dispute with the help of a paper by LATN’s deputy director, and through the author’s direct participation in the discussions.

Regional bodies, including the Andean Community and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture, and Brazil’s National Confederation of Industries, have also sought LATN’s assistance in trade negotiations. LATN has helped the World Bank Institute customize its trade policy courses for the region in an effort that has also been supported by UNCTAD’s Trade Diplomacy Programme. UNCTAD and the WTO, both of which are linked to LATN, have identified the Network as a vehicle through which to strengthen regional collaboration between their two organizations. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has also associated itself with LATN’s work. Workshops conducted by LATN brought together negotiators from various governmental agencies of the same country, as well as representatives of various countries and of the private sector, in a non-competitive environment—often for the first time.

3. Affecting policy regimes: This ‘fundamental redesign or modification’ of policies or programmes is more difficult to demonstrate at this early stage. However, some examples are beginning to emerge. In developing negotiation approaches for liberalizing services, governments, at least in part as a result of the Network’s input, have been accepting the need to go to the negotiating table with a number of options, rather than with a single inflexible position. The importance of the Network’s studies and of its websites in the preparation of the background analysis for Argentina’s anti-dumping and subsidy countervail legislation was rated very highly. And following an agricultural seminar organized by LATN to equip policymakers for upcoming international negotiations, Argentina’s Ministry of Agriculture prepared a series of studies that were transformed into manuals that are now found in every decision maker’s office.

10 Resource Management

Sharing the Land, Shaping the Future: In Lebanon, Social Consensus and Institutional Revival were Key Ingredients in the Search for a Sustainable Land Use Strategy

This brief is based on a case study written by David Brooks.

A major accomplishment of the ‘Sustainable Improvement of Marginal Lands in Lebanon’ project was to help communities in Lebanon’s poor Arsaal district overcome social strife and chart a new course towards the sustainable use of an overstretched resource. But in the process, it had unexpected impacts—contributing to the revival of a moribund municipal government and prompting Lebanese researchers and international donors to adopt a new approach to environmental research.

There is a strong sense of history that clings to Arsaal, a sparsely populated, semi-arid highland area that stretches across 36,000 hectares in northeastern Lebanon, up to the Syrian border.

The town of Arsaal (the surrounding countryside goes by the same name) was first recorded some 350 years ago, and monuments in its cemetery date back to 100 years. In recent memory, it was a town mostly of tents, although most have now been replaced by stone houses. Many residents of the area still earn their livelihood from animal herding—indeed, goats and sheep outnumber the people by nearly two to one. But change has been coming to Arsaal, bringing both good news and bad. Stone fruit trees—introduced in 1952 by a local known as the Cherry Man, who brought the first cherry sapling—were not expected to thrive in this parched area. In the half-century or so since, however, orchards have flourished. This means, paradoxically, that at a time when deforestation is a major concern elsewhere, one of Lebanon’s driest places is getting greener. Arsaal now has some two million trees, mostly cherry and apricot, that provide a major source of income for 60 per cent of its population.

Yet the underside of this economic surge has been intensified social conflict and environmental uncertainty. Fruit farmers have ‘enclosed’ some of the best lands for cultivation, disrupting and shortening the herds’ migration patterns, and denying herders the use of lands they had relied upon during the driest periods. Local institutions have not been strong enough to resolve the differences between herders and farmers, who come from different families and social classes. And this social divide has been exacerbated by deepening income disparities, since fruit growing families are able to earn more, with less effort, than herders.

Looming ecological problems

The growth of the fruit industry also raised concerns about soil degradation. An Arsaali schoolteacher laments that: ‘The people don’t know how to look after their land properly; they were shepherds before. The soil is becoming weak, and now there is less common land for the remaining shepherds to use’ (Hamadeh et al. 2006).

Added to these problems is a further layer of conflict that emerged when outsiders began quarrying rock in the area. Since the practice started during Lebanon’s civil war when Arsaal had no functioning municipal government, quarry operators did not need to worry about permits or community oversight—often they just grabbed the land and shut out traditional users. Today, the dust from these quarries smothers nearby fruit trees, and truck traffic is a significant cause of road accidents.

A need for overlapping solutions

Dealing with this interlocking web of environmental, economic, and social challenges has required wide-ranging multidisciplinary research, undertaken in close contact with communities over a number of years. A two-phase project supported by IDRC, named Sustainable Improvement of Marginal Lands in Lebanon, had a complex mandate. One of its objectives was to help communities find and practice more sustainable forms of land use management. But before it could do that, it had to help create and nourish the institutions through which communities could work out their differences and establish some common goals.

The authors of The Cactus Flower, who also collaborated as researchers on the Sustainable Improvement project, note that the simultaneous challenges unfolding in Arsaal required a multitude of tools. ‘Our repertoire,’ they write, ‘included participatory geographic information systems, blending community participation with state of the art satellite imagery; different forms of institutional bricolage, such as a local users’ network, cooperatives and communication platforms; and new paradigms for development research, such as a sustainable livelihood approach and embedded research.’

The IDRC-supported researchers—who were based at the American University of Beirut (AUB) but who would, in many cases, live in the community for long periods—worked closely with the Arsaal Rural Development Association (ARDA), a local NGO. ARDA functioned like a kind of surrogate municipal government during the time when formal structures did not exist. It later helped to restore strength to the reinstated local council by creating the means for citizens to participate in the decision-making process.

One example of this is the local users’ network, which ARDA and the AUB researchers designed along the lines of the Arab majlis, or councils that facilitate face to face dialogue as a means of dispute resolution. This traditional form was augmented by modern methods such as the use of video cameras. The researchers believed that making videos allowed for a more candid and thorough exchange of information: people expressing their grievances on video would speak their minds more directly than in a formal town hall setting, while citizens who watched the videos had more time to consider the others’ point of view.

Other aspects of the work relied on similar marriages of modern technology and participatory methods. For instance, GIS modelling and satellite photos mapping soil types and water runoff patterns have helped community members plan for the construction of a reservoir—a lynchpin in the community’s plan to shift to a more sustainable style of management.

Real benefits for communities

David Brooks, a water expert who authored an evaluation of the Arsaal project for IDRC, is unequivocal in his assessment of the project’s community level impact. ‘The two phases of work in Arsaal were successful by almost any standard,’ he writes. Community members were deeply involved in the research programme, and have often seen tangible benefits as a result. For example, ARDA and AUB staff helped institute several cooperatives, a women’s food-processing business and carpet weaving enterprise that continue to function. Farmers and pastoralists have tapped into new information sources that have helped them reduce the high losses associated with the pests, water stress, and poor roads typical of their area. In general, community members made use of the resources that became available. Over 500 farmers, for instance, have participated in agricultural workshops associated with the project.

The project’s success is also reflected in its favourable reception outside the immediate area. Within Lebanon, the Arsaal experience has become a point of discussion in other communities, with aspects of its work being replicated in other areas. For example, four other herder cooperatives have been created based on the Arsaal model. Further afield, the UNDP has cited the Arsaal project as an example of ‘best practice in sustainable development’. Meanwhile, an official with the German aid agency GTZ, which adopted the Arsaal approach for its work against desertification, has praised the project for the ‘enormous intellectual investment’ it brought to Arsaal.

An unexpected policy dimension

Influencing policymakers and the policymaking process was not an explicit objective of the project at the outset. However, Brooks finds that it did make itself felt in the sphere of public policy in a variety of different ways and to differing degrees. He categorizes the project’s three levels of policy influence as: (a) ‘upward’ (influencing national institutions); (b) ‘horizontal’ (influencing the practices of researchers and research institutions); and (c) ‘downward’ (influencing local institutions and local people). Ranking the extent of influence in these three areas, Brooks found the greatest impact was horizontal, the second greatest was downward, and the least was upward.

A primary explanation for the relative lack of impact on national institutions is that the sparsely populated Arsaal region has been, historically, largely invisible to national authorities. The area’s poverty, and inadequate transportation to the area have contributed to the long-standing marginalization of Arsaal.

Brooks comments: ‘Over and over I heard the Arsaal region described as isolated. This is a remarkable way to describe a region that one can reach in a morning’s drive from the capital, Beirut. Yet there is no question that the feeling of isolation is real.’

This situation has not changed much since the project ended in 2004. ‘The Ministry of Agriculture as an institution has remained relatively impervious to both the process and the results of the Arsaal study,’ reports Brooks. For example, the major concerns in Arsaal, notably pastoralism and land range management, remain well down on the national ministry’s list of priorities. But there are some positive signs: ‘Extension officers now attend workshops given in Arsaal, and members of parliament from the region do take issues on a one by one basis to high levels for action.’

This tepid impact on national policy does not mean, however, that the project has not had a significant overall influence on how environmental policy is made. The municipal government has identified strongly with the Arsaal project and has adopted its goals. This is important because municipalities have much of the mandate to enact environmental legislation, though they often lack the resources to act on that mandate. Indeed, some current municipal officials previously held positions with the NGOs involved in the Arsaal project. Brooks also notes that local community organizations that grew out of the project have cultivated links to the political process, particularly at the municipal level.

Changing the research agenda

The Arsaal project’s biggest impact was felt at the points where research and policymaking intersect. The Arsaal example seems to have persuaded researchers and donor organizations in Lebanon to approach resource-use issues in new ways.

For example, one of the project’s primary influences over AUB—already one of the strongest research institutions in the Arab world—was to reinstate the role of fieldwork. Previously, most work had been conducted in the lab or on the AUB farm. Now, AUB researchers favour working in close contact with communities, in a way that links research findings with development outcomes. In addition, the Arsaal experience prompted AUB to create, in 2001, its multidisciplinary Environment and Sustainable Development Unit (ESDU). The unit is now delivering programmes in research, education and training, and outreach in two other areas of Lebanon. There are plans to eventually transform the ESDU into a regional centre of excellence in sustainable development.

Officials with the governmental Lebanese Agriculture Research Institute (LARI) also indicate ‘that the Arsaal projects have had an enormous influence on how they see their role and how they structure their research,’ recounts Brooks. Among the most prominent changes is the adoption of a more participatory model in LARI’s own research projects. International agencies like the regional International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas and Germany’s GTZ have also adopted major aspects of the Arsaal model.

While these changes at the institutional level may seem sudden and dramatic, back on the ground in Arsaal, change comes slowly and more incrementally. The work of new local organizations shows that there is a greater capacity at the community level, and this is being noticed, to some extent, at the national level.

‘Arsaal is on the map, though still considered remote and unimportant,’ concludes Brooks. ‘The marginalization of Arsaal will not end quickly, but it is less marginal today than at the time the projects were started, and that is an important indicator of policy influence.’

Changing the Face of Mining in Peru: The News is Both Good and Bad for Miners and Mining Communities

This brief is based on two case studies by Fernando Loayza Careaga.

Mining is a dirty, dangerous occupation, but never more so than when multinational mining companies set up shop in developing countries. Since these countries desperately need the foreign currency that the mining industry brings, they do not always enforce environmental and health regulations. Two projects in Peru, where mining is a major industry, illustrate the difficulties, and in one case show how the effective use of research can influence the policies of both business and government.

The Pacific coast town of Ilo in southern Peru has for neighbours two of the largest mines in South America, Cuajone and Toquepala, operated by the American controlled Southern Peru Copper Corporation (SPCC). For most of the past 50 years the mines have been very bad neighbours.

Ignoring the protests of municipal officials and the farmers in the nearby valleys, the mining company polluted the region’s air, fresh water, and coastal zones with impunity. Untreated mine tailings were discharged into the ocean, destroying marine life in the nearby Bay of Ite, and polluting the ocean as far as 11 kilometres offshore and at depths up to 60 metres.

Tens of thousands of tonnes of slag were dumped on beaches, extending into the sea at a rate of 40–60 metres every year. Sulphur dioxide gases from the smelter caused health problems for the local people, destroyed more than 20 square kilometres of the surrounding natural coastal pastures, turned the area into a desert, and damaged farmers’ crops inland.

Worse, the mines extracted high quality water in the high Andes, reducing the quantity and quality of water available downstream for domestic and agricultural purposes. Geological studies showed that the company’s extraction of water was responsible for a decrease in the flow of local rivers, as well as an increase in salts in the river basins.

Mobilizing for change

Things began to change in the 1980s when a local NGO called LABOR decided that international pressure was needed to redress the balance of power between the community and the company. In the words of Doris Balvín Díaz, a lawyer and a LABOR organizer: ‘Social and environmental conflicts in developing countries such as Peru do not take place under equitable conditions. Investors have more power than local communities and are supported by the state because they bring resources to the economy.’

LABOR looked for an opportunity to level the playing field. They found it in the form of the second International Water Tribunal (IWT II). The IWT II, supported by more than 100 European environmental organizations, has no legal authority, but has successfully relied on international publicity to get results. Supported by the local authorities, LABOR’s case was accepted by the Tribunal, which then asked IDRC to support the detailed research LABOR would need to present its case.

The Centre’s expectations of the project’s policy impact were fairly low, says Fernando Loayza Careaga, who evaluated the project for IDRC. ‘The feeling was that if they could assist LABOR in making a well-researched presentation to the IWT II, then the ensuing publicity might convince SPCC to improve their environmental behaviour.’ LABOR and its supporters, however, were much more ambitious. Balvín Díaz believed that a favourable finding would make the national government pay attention to the complaints of the local people, and change its lenient attitude towards SPCC.

LABOR had worked closely with the municipality of Ilo since the mid-1980s, and by the start of the 1990s had become the local government’s main environmental advisor. Two successive mayors supported LABOR’s cause. LABOR’s case was also supported by the Multi-sector Permanent Commission on Environment (MPCE), made up of representatives of local municipalities and state government departments, as well as unions and civil society groups. And it just happened to be chaired by the mayor of Ilo, Ernesto Herrera Becerra. It was MPCE’s role to oversee SPCC’s compliance with environmental recommendations. The Commission members wanted to see concrete action from the mining company, and they were not getting it.

A victory

Edmundo Torrelio, of the Ilo Valley Commission of Irrigators, pointed out that the valley farmers also had a stake in the management of the scarce water resource. The farmers’ persistent complaints eventually got the attention of the General Inspection Office of the Republic, and resulted in a major coup—the General Inspector agreed to testify before the Tribunal.

This brought the project national media attention. Three days before the IWT II hearing, the newspaper, Onda, reported, ‘The General Inspector of the Republic, Dr Luz Aurea Sáenz, said yesterday that during the last three decades some factors, such as lenient legislation and bad public servants, have allowed SPCC to impose its terms, to do nothing to solve problems, and to misuse water resources.’ Another newspaper, La Republica, quoted Dr Sáenz as saying that, while a favourable ruling from the IWT II would be only a moral victory, it would be acknowledged at the United Nations Conference on Development and Environment, held later that year in Brazil.

LABOR was able to put together a strong coalition of local and regional forces to support its case against SPCC before the IWT II. That case included the IDRC funded study. Additional evidence was presented at the hearing in February 1992, including a video and live testimony from Dr Sáenz and Mayor Becerra.

But Balvín Díaz and her colleagues realized that local support and a victory at the IWT II might not be enough. They would need political support at the national level to guarantee action. And they got it. Immediately after the Tribunal’s decision was announced, 50 members of congress came out in support of its findings. This was the result of intense lobbying in the preceding months by two local members of the congress, Cristala Constantiñidez and Julio Díaz Palacios, who was mayor of Ilo during the 1980s.

In its findings the IWT II jury condemned SPCC for its abuse of freshwater resources, its negligence in disposing of toxic slag, and for emitting enormous quantities of sulphur dioxide gases. It accused the company of taking advantage of lax enforcement of environmental laws and regulations, and of increasing its profits at the expense of the local community.

Concrete results

While the jury’s findings were everything that LABOR and its coalition had hoped for, it was in one sense anticlimactic. Just two months before the IWT II hearing, anticipating a negative outcome from the Tribunal, SPCC signed an accord with the national government committing an investment of US $200 million for environmental projects, and a further US $100 million for new technologies and equipment.

Since that time the company has built an earthquake-proof tailings dam so that tailings are no longer discharged into Ite Bay. The bay itself has been reclaimed, and the flamingos, fish, and shrimps have returned. Slag dumps on the shore near Ilo have been removed.

The company compensates farmers for damage to crops, and has established a fund for agricultural loans and technical assistance. Water recycling has been increased and SPCC no longer exploits water wells in the Ilo valley. A three-stage project to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions by 92 per cent was scheduled for completion at the end of 2004, but the government recently approved a two-year extension.

There have also been changes in public policy. Most significantly, the Government of Peru adopted a new environmental regulatory framework for mining activities. How much this

Box 10.1: High Altitude Mining—An Occupational Hazard?

was influenced by LABOR’s campaign depends on whom you talk to. LABOR staff and both the current and former mayors of Ilo believe that the Ilo case was critical in determining the new framework.

On the other hand, officials such as Luis Alberto Sanchez at the Ministry of Energy and Mines, attribute the reforms more to the privatization process and pressures from multilateral financing institutions. He concedes, however, that the mining industry’s legacy of pollution and environmental degradation played a role.

Assessing policy influence

Concluding his evaluation of the two projects, Fernando Loayza Careaga assessed the type of policy influence each project had, the factors that affected policy influence, and IDRC’s role in the project’s ability or inability to influence policy. Some of his conclusions are:

1. The overriding purpose of the LABOR case against SPCC before the IWT II was to influence corporate policies towards the environment, and to change the Peruvian government’s lenient attitude. LABOR correctly saw the IWT II hearing, and the attendant national and international media coverage, as an instrument to bring about change. In the case of the high altitude mining study, however, government officials remain convinced that CMS is not an occupational disease, and there has been no organized attempt to use the evidence provided by the researchers to confront this perception and identify the need for further action.

2. Two main factors account for the LABOR project’s success at influencing policy: the development from the outset of a strategy to disseminate the research results among key national and international stakeholders, and the ability to build community support around the issue. While the high altitude study did publish its results, there was insufficient follow-up, and neither the mining community nor the unions was actively involved in promoting a dialogue on the causes of CMS.

3. In both cases, the projects might have had a greater policy influence if IDRC had had a framework in place to assess a project’s impact after its completion. For example, disseminating LABOR’s study to a broader group of research institutions supported by IDRC could have had a great influence on the environmental regulatory framework in Peru, and possibly in other mining countries in the region.

Battling Brain Drain: East and Central Africa Needs More Sustained and Relevant Research to Succeed in Agriculture

This brief is based on a case study by Chris Ackello-Ogutu.

Policymakers in East and Central Africa face major hurdles as they try to create sound agricultural policies to fuel economic growth. Their need for good quality research is clear. But frayed lines of communication and the frequent departure of researchers mean project results sometimes don’t reach officials who could use them.

The road to a better future for East and Central Africa (ECA) runs through its member countries’ rural heartlands, where enhanced food production provides the best hope for alleviating domestic poverty and providing much needed export income. Although in the recent past several nations in the area have set ambitious plans for industrialization, ‘agriculture remains the most dominant sector in almost all the economies’ of the region, explains Chris Ackello-Ogutu, researcher with the Resource Management and Policy Analysis Institute (REMPAI), based in Nairobi, Kenya. This central role means that agriculture is key to achieving the economic gains upon which food security, poverty reduction, and social stability depends.

Warns Ackello-Ogutu: ‘Neglect of the sector in terms of national economic development strategies and in terms of coherent policy direction will lead not only to a weakening of agricultural institutions . . . but also to a decline of economic growth.’

The crucial role of research

This places significant weight on the shoulders of the ECA’s research community, which possesses the tools, and potentially the knowledge, to enable the region’s policymakers to wade through the complexities and arrive at workable plans for improving rural livelihoods. This responsibility is especially onerous given the multiple challenges facing ECA’s agricultural sector:

1. In the area of markets, recent trade reforms have increased farmers’ risk while not yet providing promised access to external markets. The region’s producers depend on a narrow range of low-value commodities, and have historically been hurt by price fluctuations and an over-reliance on rainfall for successful harvests. Now, under liberalization of domestic markets, they have become more dependent on agents, some of whom may take advantage of them. Meanwhile, implementation of new trading regimes promising open markets across eastern and southern Africa has been stalled, while access to developed country marketplaces remains limited.

2. Agricultural productivity remains low. This is due partly to low levels of innovation. There is a pressing need for new technologies (seeds, fertilizers, etc.) and new methods of dealing with constraints like water shortages. New institutional models (co-ops, marketing and extension services, etc.) are required to enable farmers to improve practices. Alternative models of agricultural finance would also offset the limitations of commercial banks and public lending institutions.

3. Upgraded infrastructure such as rail and road networks, storage facilities, electric power, and telecommunications would also boost productivity. Finally, higher levels of productivity also hinge on sustainability. Sometimes, resources have been degraded to the point where they cannot sustain livelihoods. The need for new resource sharing mechanisms is illustrated by the situation in Kenya, where the traditional formula for land division has reduced the size of holdings below the point where farming is viable.

4. Civil strife and government failures have diminished productivity, disrupted trading opportunities, created costly flows of refugees, and channelled aid money towards disaster relief and away from long-term development initiatives.

Leaks in the research pipeline

Given these and other stresses, policymakers at all levels need sound research to help them navigate through the maze of technological, economic, ecological, and social factors facing ECA’s agricultural sector. But the links between researchers, policymakers, and farmers are fragile.

’We lament the high number of technologies that lie in the shelves un-adopted by farmers,’ writes Ackello-Ogutu. ‘Similarly, adoption of recommendations coming out of agricultural policy analysis by researchers . . . remains at levels that are not acceptable.’ How can this picture be improved? To generate potential solutions, Ackello-Ogutu conducted a multipart evaluation.

One part examined six sample IDRC funded projects in three countries (Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania), hosted by the Eastern and Central Africa Program for Agricultural Policy Analysis (ECAPAPA). These projects’ policy-related outcomes were measured against stated goals and the requirements of governments and communities. Then, ‘key informants’ analyzed the project experiences as well as general trends on the ECA research landscape. They drew out themes affecting relationships between research and policy.

The sample projects were divided into two groups. Projects in the first group were geared to assess the viability of specific agricultural technologies. The following sketches provide the details.

The role of technology in poverty alleviation: Determination of farm household financial profitability in bean production in Kenya

The researchers highlighted a number of means for dealing with farmers’ low yields and bottlenecks in the bean marketing system. The remedies included providing farmers with information on fertilizer and certified seeds, arranging seed-sharing arrangements among farmers, and improving marketing. All team members left the project before the dissemination stage, so the project’s final report did not reach government agencies and was not acted upon.

Farm household profitability of Irish potatoes in Uganda

The project focused on the high cost of improved quality seeds. A series of recommendations outlined the need for cooperation between government agencies and the private sector, particularly in relation to the promotion of more and better seeds. These conclusions were disseminated in a workshop attended by legislators, NGO representatives, farmers, seed producer associations, and researchers. Influence over policy was exerted at several levels. For example, the private industry agreed to take part in new collaborations, and the government—on the basis of research produced by the project—selected potatoes as a strategic export crop.

Farm household financial profitability of maize/beans intercropping technological packages: A case study of northern Tanzania

One goal of this project was to inform policymakers and other stakeholders about the profitability of different patterns of intercropping using different inputs. Two workshops disseminated information to farmers, NGO representatives, and others, but did not include policymakers. Ackello-Ogutu found it difficult to discuss the results of the project since none of the researchers, including the team leader, wanted to take ownership of the project report. Although collaborators said that the recommended agricultural technologies have been adopted, discussions with farmers contradicted this claim.

Countering conflict

The final three projects in the case study dealt with conflicts involving natural resource management issues. Those projects are listed below.

Minimizing conflicts in natural resource management and use: The role of social capital and local policies in Kabale, Uganda

This project was an extension of other initiatives in Kabale aiming to support newly decentralized local governments, and build other forms of social capital to diffuse conflicts over resource use. Although the project had not ended by the time of the evaluation, project researchers report that findings were being implemented as the project progressed. A lack of progress reports, however, made that difficult to substantiate. The participatory, community-based approach involved and informed community members through focus groups, interviews, workshops, and meetings. Additional dissemination was accomplished through email, publications, and reports. The evaluator notes that one weakness of this project (like others) is its lack of a focused definition of the level and type of policy engagement it strove for.

Pasture and water use conflict between Karamoja (Uganda) and the neighbouring districts: Impacts and potential conflict minimization strategies

Chris Ackello-Ogutu describes Karamoja as ‘a region of constant social hardship, droughts, famine, livestock epidemics and general insecurity.’ A local preference for cattle has led to overgrazing. Modern weapons are now entering the area, and conflict has intensified. Using participatory methods, the project sought conflict minimization strategies and suggested natural resource management solutions. One conclusion is that an attempt by the central government to enforce disarmament of combatants would only worsen conflict; what is needed is local level resolution brokered by third parties such as NGOs, and common property regimes as a means of resource allocation. Due to deteriorating security, the intended dissemination workshops have not taken place.

Conflicts in access and use of water resources in the Tana river basin, Kenya

Competition for water (for horticulture, food production, and hydro-electricity) is a major concern in the Tana River Basin. The project produced policy briefs that outline the nature of those conflicts, examining the potential for a regime of plural water rights and summarizing users’ views of tradable water rights. Those briefs are intended to inform government’s new policies on the water issue. With the project not yet completed, key collaborators either emigrated, or took on other work within Kenya. Despite this, researchers said they made plans for a future dissemination workshop in Nairobi.

Seeing the trends and opportunities

Examining the sample projects—and also surveying broader trends in the ECA region—a panel of ‘key informants’ identified some important themes affecting the relationships between research and policy.

First, they suggested that donor organizations’ more direct role in supporting and helping to shape research projects in the region may have created a disconnect between policymakers and researchers. As regional governments have withdrawn funding from research institutions, international agencies have taken up the slack, creating closer links between donors and ECA institutions while possibly removing policymakers from the equation. This increasing donor influence may be framing research questions in ways that governments— which are hard pressed to deal with the immediate demands of poverty reduction, HIV/AIDS, and new global trading arrangements—may perceive as out of line with their own priorities.

Putting researchers and policymakers into direct contact at the design stage would not only ensure that policy concerns are factored into research design, but might also help overcome an apparent mistrust between the research community and the government.

One consistent problem is the glaring absence of gender considerations in any of the projects, despite gender being a critical issue in agricultural policy. This may be symptomatic of wider, systemic problems. Capacity may be one contributing factor, with economists and others who undertake agricultural research in the region lacking training to approach gender issues. Other daunting problems facing Africa may also cause policymakers to see gender as secondary, and to subsequently ‘put it on the backburner.’ The effects of ‘brain drain’ were apparent in many of the sample projects. As researchers move out of institutions in search of employment, the stability of research projects suffers, particularly at the latter stages (at which dissemination should take place) when most project staff may have migrated to other roles.

Financial considerations also factor into the stability of the research community. Individual projects generally receive a low level of funding, creating an incentive for researchers to quickly move on to other work when opportunities arise. Overall, there is a feeling that funding is divided among too many projects, a practice that also limits the scope of research and diminishes its appeal to policymakers. Modestly funded research often can only deal with smaller problems with a geographically limited impact, ‘thus making it difficult to come up with the generalizations that capture the big picture that a policymaker usually needs,’ writes Ackello-Ogutu.

Timely delivery of research results is also key to affecting the policymaking process. In this regard, the informants pointed out that ECAPAPA needs the increased institutional capacity, and specific policies in place to enable it to set benchmarks and accelerate the completion of time sensitive research.

11 Water Management

A River Runs through It: Cleaning Up the Dnipro River Basin in Ukraine

This brief is based on a case study by Iryna Lyzogub.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had the dubious distinction of being the most environmentally degraded of the former USSR republics. Efforts to alleviate the situation were hampered by an ingrained reluctance of officials and decision makers to share information or to take initiative. Overcoming such attitudes was one of the major obstacles faced by IDRC researchers when they undertook a programme designed to clean up the Dnipro River Basin. Patience, perseverance, and the willingness of key Ukrainian actors to adapt to new ways of thinking brought fresh hope for the rebirth of a historic waterway.

At almost 2,300 km, the Dnipro River (also called the Dneiper) is one of the longest rivers in Europe, and for more than half of its length it runs through Ukraine. More than 2,000 years ago the Greek historian Herodotus described the Dnipro as ‘ . . . by far the biggest and the richest river in nutrients . . . with the exception of the Nile in Egypt. . . . The water is clean and it tastes well. It is by far the most beautiful river.’ The modern Dnipro is no longer a natural source of fresh and clean water according to the authors of the book Preserving the Dnipro River (Shevchuk et al. 2005). They write, ‘Each year, industry, agriculture, and municipalities discharge enormous amounts of contaminated wastewater into the Dnipro. Every year, 5.5 million cubic metres of sewage are dumped into the water bodies of Ukraine, which includes 4.2 million cubic metres of contaminated sewage, 2.8 million of which is raw waste.’

Together with neighbouring Russia and Belarus, some 33 million people in 50 cities depend on the waters of the Dnipro River Basin. But they must share those waters with industrial and agricultural needs, as well as hydro-electric and nuclear power facilities. In only a few places does the river still retain the bucolic appearance described by Herodotus.

It was against this background that IDRC’s newly created Office for Central and Eastern Europe Initiatives (OCEEI) undertook the Environmental Management Development in Ukraine (EMDU) programme in the summer of 1994, in collaboration with the UNDP, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The programme was funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

A formidable task

From any perspective IDRC’s task was a formidable one, involving a wide range of activities from environmental education and training in project, and environmental management to trans-boundary pollution issues.

There were six components to the EMDU programme, which continued through a second phase until 2001. They were:

1. Water pollution control: a baseline water quality study conducted in collaboration with three Ukrainian institutes. This included some short-term training by a Canadian specialist and the provision of some critical lab equipment.

2. Water toxicology: demonstrating six simple, inexpensive but effective tests for the presence of toxins.

3. Information systems development: including national and regional systems as well as a national atlas of Ukraine.

4. A series of pilot projects: ranging from drinking water treatment technology to groundwater protection and shoreline rehabilitation.

5. Environmental audits and entrepreneurship: including both large and small industries.

6. Public outreach: developing various forms of media, including videos and television programmes to raise public awareness of environmental issues.

It was an ambitious capacity building programme, but if it was to succeed, the IDRC team needed to first overcome another kind of environmental issue—an attitudinal one. Ukraine in the early post-Soviet years was in a deep economic crisis, and the government was reluctant to pursue economic and political reforms. This was also ‘a period of psychological crisis,’ according to Vasyl Shevchuk, former Minister of Environmental Protection and Nuclear Safety, who served as chairman of the programme’s Ukrainian Management Committee (UMC).

Expanding policy capacities

During Soviet times, people learned that ‘initiative is punishable’, and this lesson proved to be difficult to forget, especially under conditions where the political situation remained uncertain. ‘People are inert, passive, and scared. They always lived in fear. It is difficult to change our generation,’ explained Kostantyn Chebotko, Head of the Hydrochemistry Department at the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute. Adding hopefully, ‘The next generation might be more efficient.’

There were other hurdles to overcome in addition to what many referred to as the ‘Soviet caution’. A law dating back to 1937 decreed that information about the water supply of cities was secret. Participants in the programme who revealed this information to foreigners faced possible legal action. Some Ukrainian research institutions were reluctant to share information, or insisted on being paid for it. And when it came to paying for anything, there was initially no functioning banking system. Transactions were made in cash or barter.

Ukraine was newly independent at this time and just beginning to change its political structures and processes. Not surprisingly, there were constant changes at all levels in the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, including several ministers. With every change new people appeared, with new views about what should, or should not be done.

Remarkably, despite all of the obstacles and the constraints, the programme achieved all of its objectives, and in the process established a lasting relationship between Ukrainian and Canadian scientists. It also had a positive influence on environmental policy and legislation in Ukraine. The key factor in the programme’s success proved to be the UMC, which from the outset involved senior decision makers from both the government and the research field. This was important according to Grygory Semchuk, a UMC member who was First Deputy (equivalent to Deputy Minister) with the State Committee on Construction, Architecture, and Housing Policy.

’The work of the Committee was not given to people who did not have power, who did not have influence. This provided a positive result. There was a psychological aspect as well. While considering a project, we discussed it and expressed our views with no fear,’ Semchuk said, adding that discipline and a systematic approach were also important.

The Committee worked systematically, therefore there was a positive result. Everyone knew that each last Friday of the month the meeting at Shevchuk’s office should be attended. If a person did not attend a meeting he would be removed. There was a discipline.

As chairman of the UMC, Vasyl Shevchuk was credited by many of the participants for the much of the programme’s success.

Almost all the projects as well as the EMDU programme as a whole, presumed policy influence from the very beginning. The active participation and involvement of decision makers was important, and resulted in a higher potential of influencing the relevant policies. And just as the involvement of government increased the potential for policy influence, the involvement of senior research people facilitated the links between researchers and decision makers.

Affecting policy regimes

One important effect of the projects funded through the IDRC programme was the revival of institutions that were failing because of lack of government funding. The protracted economic crisis in the Ukraine had seriously affected scientists—salaries were not paid, equipment was not purchased, and in winter many worked in offices that were only a few degrees above freezing. ‘The international programs, and the IDRC program in particular, gave us hope. These programs allowed us not to fall into despair’ said Konstantyn Chebotko.

Another participant, Olexander Kolodiazhny from the Space Research Institute, added that ‘This program allowed us to achieve a higher level of professionalism. We had to study GIS technologies and the Internet more precisely, and we learned remote sensing.’

The programme also brought together institutions that had never before collaborated, says Anatoly Yatsyk, a UMC member and director of the Scientific Research Institute for Water and Ecological Problems. ‘Everyone worked separately—my institute was working on water issues, other institutes dealt with different issues. . . . Within the IDRC program all of us united to provide a complex approach to resolve the problems of the Dnipro River,’ Yatsyk says.

The revival of the scientific institutions also stimulated an influx of postgraduate students and resulted in the publication of a series of textbooks based on the work done under the programme. The textbooks continue to be used in universities, and for training and retraining professionals in the field, according to Vasyl Shevchuk. For example, a textbook on hydro-ecology that is now widely used in university programmes in Russia and Belarus, as well as in Ukraine, was prepared and published as a direct result of the EMDU programme.

For more general audiences, a series of videos was prepared illustrating the problems facing the Dnipro River Basin and the work that is being done to clean up the river. Several of these have been broadcast on national television, and at the instigation of Dr Shevchuk hundreds of copies of the videos have been distributed to schools and ecological centres for young people across the country.

Broadening policy horizons

The programme also provided support for some innovative projects, such as the production of organomineral fertilizers from the sediments that result from drinking water treatment. Many countries burn these sediments, or dump them into the ocean, but Ukraine became the first country to develop a technique to convert them to fertilizer, according to Konstantyn Chebotko, who managed the pilot project. The project would not have been successful without IDRC’s financial support, and the high level of professionalism required under the EMDU programme, he adds.

Bringing the results of such projects to the attention of the international scientific community initially presented difficulties because Ukrainian research institutions did not use internationally recognized standards. Working with IDRC on the EMDU programme reinforced the necessity of introducing international standards in Ukraine. Learning international standards also enabled Ukrainian researchers to enter the international scientific community. Several researchers who were active in the EMDU programme have had their work published in international scientific journals and presented their results at international conferences.

Closer to home, the researchers have had the satisfaction of seeing the results of their work used as the basis for two pieces of national legislation: the National Programme on Ecological Rehabilitation of the Dnipro Basin and the law on Drinking Water Improvement. The programme was recently adopted by Ukraine’s Supreme Council, the Verhovna Rada. ‘This was our greatest political achievement,’ says Anatoly Yatsyk.

In addition, numerous regulations supporting the National Programme, such as the one for estimating surface water quality, were developed within the EMDU projects. And the work of implementing the National Programme continues as an increased environmental awareness brings closer cooperation between Ukraine’s scientific and government institutions.

Summing it all up, the programme’s then Regional Director in Kyiv, Myron Lahola, comments:

What I know for sure is that IDRC left a legacy here that Canadians are people that are easy to work with, are not only friendly but also diplomatic . . . who do things using a process of consensus building. I have heard this not only from Ukrainians but from other donor organizations. On a global scale, one of the most important things you can develop is trust and friendship between countries.

Box 11.1: The Canadians are Coming! The Canadians are Coming!

Making the Most of Scarce Resources: Wastewater Recovery and Urban Farming in the Middle East

This brief is based on a case study by Eman Surani.

Population growth, rapid urbanization, and the shortage of water have led to rising food insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa. People in the region address this complex set of problems by encouraging urban agriculture and by using recycled water to feed it. In Jordan and other countries, city farms are irrigated with ‘greywater’ drawn from showers, bathrooms, and sinks. This innovative response, supported by IDRC, has had a wide-ranging influence on public policy.

Although ‘urban agriculture’ has been practiced for as long as cities have existed, only in recent years has the world awakened to the importance of city farming in ensuring that people have enough to eat.

In fact, urban agriculture is booming. The UNDP estimates the number of city farmers at about 800 million worldwide. Most are poor or middle-class people who raise livestock and grow produce to feed their families and to generate extra income. In the process, they recycle waste, reuse water, and put idle land to productive use.

In the Middle East and North Africa, already one of the planet’s most arid regions, the amount of water available to each person is actually decreasing. This is due mainly to the rapid rise in population. The inventory of water is expected to decline to 725 cubic metres per capita per year (m3pcpy)—far below 1,000 m3pcpy, the benchmark indicator of severe water scarcity.

This dire situation is aggravated by increasing urbanization in the region. As more people move to the cities, more water is likely to be diverted away from agriculture and channelled into built-up areas for drinking and domestic purposes. Thus, the region may suffer increasingly from the related problems of food insecurity and water scarcity. This crisis is particularly severe in Jordan.

Jordan is a small country of about 5.2 million people. Its economy has been in decline for years. About 7 per cent of the population earns less than the international poverty line of US $1 a day. According to the UNDP, ‘Jordan’s high population growth and unprecedented urbanization rate threaten its recent economic gains. Its population growth is 2.7 per cent, and the proportion of its population living in urban areas, already 73 per cent, is expected to reach 80 per cent by 2015.’

These economic and demographic trends jeopardize the food and water security of Jordan’s poor, more and more of whom are found in towns and cities. According to the World Bank, high population growth over the past 20 years has pushed Jordan’s per capita water availability to below 198 m3pcpy. Clearly, water scarcity on such a dramatic scale is sufficient to impede development and to harm human health.

As a result of this crisis, attitudes towards water management in Jordan have undergone a radical shift. In the past, water was viewed as a free public good, but now everyone accepts that it has an economic value. Conservation, as well as wastewater treatment and reuse, are considered priorities, and so is research into these measures.

The IDRC’s urban agriculture programme has been supporting research and development activities that bolster the food security and incomes of the poor, while maintaining public health and a clean urban environment. As part of this initiative, during 1998–2003, IDRC sponsored a series of research projects to investigate the use of greywater in urban agriculture. These studies have had an important influence on water management policies in Jordan and elsewhere in the region.

What was done: The urban agriculture and greywater projects

The initial study was mainly a data gathering exercise. It compiled for the first time reliable information about the nature and extent of urban farming. Researchers focused on the capital city, Amman, and examined a range of issues with a view to suggesting policy changes.

Among the more interesting findings were that one in six Amman households practiced urban agriculture, that gender parity prevailed and the sexes performed equal portions of the work (unlike the men, however, most women went unpaid), and that untreated greywater was already being used by 40 per cent of farming households. Significantly, the study found that no policies or regulations specific to urban agriculture existed in Jordan, indeed that there was little official recognition of its benefits for strengthening food security.

A second project, conducted in the West Bank (Palestine), was primarily technical in nature. It sought to improve the design of a small-scale trickling filter for treating greywater for reuse in home gardens. The researchers tested ‘domestic wastewater treatment plants’—essentially, recycled plastic shampoo barrels with a filtration media of valley gravel and recycled plastic soft drink bottles. Using such cheap and readily available materials, an impressive average of 56 per cent greywater recovery was achieved.

Incidentally, this project also responded to cultural and religious concerns about the use of recycled wastewater by engaging local sheiks to advise the community on the advantages of greywater.

Meanwhile, during 1997–99, CARE Australia carried out a very successful pilot project in southern Jordan to test soil and water conservation techniques of ‘permanent agriculture’ or ‘permaculture’. An IDRC funded evaluation identified this project’s broad economic and cultural impact: it raised the income of participating families, promoted cooperation, enhanced a sound sense of home economics and marketing, and formalized awareness about water conservation and reuse. Notably, female participants reported feeling more independent and proud because of the income they generated, the skills they gained, and their enhanced ability to feed their families.

Finally, the ambitious Greywater Reuse Project in Tafila, Jordan, was inspired by the promising outcomes of the earlier three programmes and was designed to build on the lessons learned from them. It was carried out during 2001–03.

The immediate goal was to improve a system for reusing greywater in home gardens in Jordan. Its broader goals were to help the peri-urban poor preserve fresh water, achieve food security, and generate income, all the while protecting the environment.

The project’s achievements were far-reaching. It increased greywater recovery, and made greywater easier and safer to handle. It minimized environmental impacts by encouraging the production and marketing of cheaper organic soaps. It improved permaculture practices by enhancing irrigation systems, and by fostering the adoption of new crops more tolerant of greywater. In particular, it promoted policy changes that will encourage wider greywater acceptance in Jordan.

What was learned: The influence of research on public policy

In 2001, IDRC launched a strategic evaluation of the policy influence of the research it has supported. To assess the influence of the greywater projects, the Centre engaged Eman Surani, who surveyed the work done and outlined six concrete instances of ‘policy influence’.

Revision of housing codes and launch of national committee to formulate Greywater Reuse Guidelines

The initial project, the data gathering exercise, had a direct influence on public policy, as one of its startling discoveries was that laws and regulations governing city farming were non-existent in Jordan. This finding helped spur the process of policy setting that is underway.

The Greywater Reuse Project has gone a long way towards filling this policy gap. This effort led, for example, to a proposal to modify domestic building codes to allow greywater use without the need for plumbing modifications. In addition, it prompted the establishment of a new National Committee to formulate Greywater Reuse Guidelines.

Policymakers become communicators

In a form of indirect policy influence, government officials who were not involved in implementing these research projects, nonetheless became enthusiastic communicators of their findings. Specifically, officers with Jordan’s Department of Statistics, charged with designing its website, decided to add the results of the initial project to the home page for broader dissemination to the donor and research communities.

Replication of the model

The Jordan and Palestine projects were built stepwise, one upon the other, and in their turn they fostered similar efforts elsewhere in the region. Dr Murad Jabay Bino of the Inter-Islamic Network on Water Resources Development and Management (INWRDAM) observes, ‘The projects in Palestine and Jordan are now spreading to Lebanon, and Syria has expressed its interest as well.’ This replication effect is encouraged by a continually evolving project structure adapted to the cultural context of each country.

Within Jordan, replication has occurred because of key partnerships between INWRDAM, the recognized technical expert, and other agencies:

1. CARE Jordan installed the greywater system in all its projects. In five communities, 53 units were put in place by INWRDAM on behalf of CARE, in a scheme funded by the European Union.

2. INWRDAM signed a memorandum of understanding with the Regional Centre on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development for the Near East for cooperation in training people in the application of greywater.

3. Drawing upon INWRDAM’s expertise, a ‘water demand management unit’ is being established at the Water Authority of Jordan to help coordinate water issues for the country.

4. Again drawing upon INWRDAM, codes are being revised so that greywater can be used for the beautification of tourist attractions.

Hyderabad declaration

In November 2002, an important international meeting on the topic of wastewater use in agriculture, sponsored by IDRC and other organizations, took place in Hyderabad, India. Two major breakthroughs occurred.

The first was a commitment by the World Health Organization to consider new evidence— including IDRC’s reports on its greywater projects—in reviewing its guidelines for wastewater use in agriculture.

The second was the Hyderabad Declaration on Wastewater Use in Agriculture, a document drafted by researchers and practitioners representing 27 international bodies and national institutions from 18 countries. This statement expresses worldwide concern about ensuring safe water reuse, and sets out a common global agenda of building a wastewater ‘community of practice’.

Networks formed

These projects brought together, for the first time, governments, the private sector, and the research community. Naser Faruqui of IDRC observed that Jordan is a small country and so ‘all the individuals in the Jordanian research, engineering, and policymaking communities know each other and invite each other to workshops.’

While it is unusual for government officials and farmers to meet openly and to discuss issues of common concern, networking has occurred also at the local level, among policymakers, researchers, and beneficiaries.

Capacity building of policymakers

The IDRC-supported projects have trained, educated, and raised awareness levels of policymakers about greywater reuse.

For example, Jordan’s Ministry of Social Development is adapting lessons learned from the projects, and teaching new trades to the poor. In addition to plumbing skills and agricultural techniques, these include expertise in financial and administrative management, communications, and networking.

In addition, researchers have spread knowledge about their projects widely, and have briefed government officials, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other scholars and researchers.

Why it works: Factors affecting research influence on policy

Surani went to considerable lengths to analyze why these projects have been so successful in influencing policy, and also to identify the remaining challenges.

Indeed, work remains to be done. In Surani’s view, some factors that may have hindered the policy influence of these projects are: the failure to focus explicitly on gender equality as a core research theme and policy goal; the scarcity of funds for project evaluation; the ‘lack of a learning environment’ in some sectors of the Jordanian government; the insufficient use of the mass media; the administrative weakness of the Palestinian authority; and, initially at least, religious beliefs unsympathetic to the idea of wastewater reuse.

Despite these obstacles, the policy influence of these projects is clear. Many factors gave rise to this success: the strategic use of limited resources, in that lessons learned in one project were applied to subsequent projects; the warm personal links between IDRC and Jordanian partners; the awareness that these were not ‘ivory tower’ research projects, but that they offered immediate answers to pressing human problems; the sympathetic political environment in Jordan, long worried about the water crisis and receptive to scientific solutions; the reputation and credibility of the highly respected individuals and organizations involved in implementation; and the wide dissemination of research findings using different formats appropriate to different audiences.

Surani highlighted two particular factors leading to success. First, much of the research demonstrated the politically attractive link between environmental sustainability and economic development, that is to say, between wastewater recovery and poverty alleviation. Second, IDRC took care to develop a long-term strategic plan and sponsored successive projects each built upon earlier work. According to INWRDAM’s Dr Bino, having carried out ‘a well-defined project with clear objectives... IDRC has good capacity to improve on the lessons learnt in future for follow-up projects.’

Searching for an Interim Irrigation Solution: Researchers in Syria Investigate Whether, under Some Conditions, Brackish Water Can be Used for Irrigation without Damaging Soil

This brief is based on a case study by Bryon Gillespie.

Economically dependent upon agriculture and facing a deepening water crisis, Syria needs to find ways to make its limited water go further. As farmers turn to irrigating with saline water, IDRC-supported researchers proposed that perhaps they should be allowed to continue—if guidelines for using brackish water can be established. But who are most likely to pay attention to the researchers’ findings: government officials, farmers, or regional agencies?

In Syria—as in neighbouring Middle-Eastern countries—access to water is a daunting problem.

The World Bank classifies the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region as one of the driest areas of the world. With a current region-wide availability of water estimated at 1200 m3pcpy, this group of countries hovers only marginally above the Bank’s benchmark of 1,000 cubic metres of available water per capita per year—a cut-off point below which countries are considered to have a serious water shortage. By this definition, Syria, one of the most severely parched countries within the MENA group, can already be considered to be in crisis: its current water availability is calculated at 432 m3pcpy—far below the World Bank’s demarcation point for water scarcity. And the situation appears destined to deteriorate further. Pressure from a young and growing population and the demands of an economically crucial agricultural sector are expected to lower Syria’s available water to a mere 160 cubic metres by 2025.

Given the pressures that are already being felt, Syrian farmers have been implementing several adaptive measures that, in the long run, may make matters worse. For example, the digging of new wells—most of them illegal—has contributed to a decline in ground water levels, as wells are pumped faster than they can be renewed. Farmers are also increasingly using brackish water to irrigate their crops, a practice that is likely to increase the salinity of the soil and in turn lower agricultural productivity.

Farmers’ survival tactics

Higher salt levels in the soil are normal in the arid climatic conditions typical of Syria’s deserts and steppes. Crystallized salts are left at the soil surface—at the interface between the land and air—as water is drawn upward through the soil and evaporates into the atmosphere. In the past this has not posed serious problems: under the traditional Syrian system of crop rotation, which leaves the land fallow for extended periods, levels of salt in topsoil have remained relatively low.

Recent changes in agricultural practices, however, have altered the picture. Intensive agriculture involving more frequent crop rotations has increased the volumes of water moving through the soil, thereby boosting its salinity. The salt content of soil and groundwater have also been increased by the growing practice of ‘flood irrigation’, whereby large volumes of water are pumped onto fields, creating standing pools that eventually percolate down through the soil. This has resulted in more salt finding its way into underground reservoirs and wells. In turn, the increasing salinity of groundwater, which is used for irrigation, has become a key contributor to the elevated salt levels in the soil.

The implications of this trend are profound and disturbing. Syria sees a robust agricultural sector as central to its plans, both for food security and for future economic growth. Those plans would fall apart, however, if increased soil salinity led to decreased productivity of agricultural lands.

Yet at the same time, it would be unrealistic to expect farmers to simply stop irrigating with brackish water. For some, it is the only type of water they have. It is estimated, for example, that over 70 per cent of Syrian farmers use flood irrigation and that many continue to do so after their wells have become saline.

Given that these practices are so firmly established, the Brackish Water Project set out to investigate if there were circumstances under which saline water could be safely used for irrigation. The group hoped to establish parameters that would instruct farmers and government on how to use brackish water without threatening the environment, or significantly diminishing the productivity of the soil (and, by extension, farmers’ livelihoods). In doing so, they would formulate a ‘bridge’ strategy where current practices could be continued, in a modified form, until more permanent solutions to MENA’s water crisis are found. Such a strategy would be of interest not just in Syria but across the region.

Water, public policy, and IDRC

For IDRC, supporting the Brackish Water Project was a natural fit, because the project’s goals intersected with at least two of the Centre’s ongoing thematic interests. First, IDRC has a history of supporting research on water that focuses on small-scale, decentralized, local level solutions. IDRC’s small-scale orientation meshed with the approach of researchers from the International Centre for Agriculture in Dry Areas (ICARDA), Syria’s University of Aleppo, and Canada’s McGill University, who undertook the research. The Syrian government had also expressed its interest in small-scale, demand-side approaches to water through its promotion of efficient sprinkler and drip irrigation technologies.

Another long-term interest for IDRC is the question of how research can inform and influence government policy. On this front, however, it became increasingly clear that the project’s potential was constrained by the nature of the Syrian political system, and by a policy formation process that some of the foreign researchers connected with the project described as ‘opaque’ and difficult to understand.

In the best of circumstances, policy-oriented research can stimulate vigorous public debate, allowing for different options to be aired with, it is hoped, the best choices filtering upward to the attention of the bureaucrats and politicians who set the national agenda.

But this is unlikely to happen under a political system such as Syria’s. As Bryon Gillespie, who evaluated the policy influence of the project for IDRC, states, ‘Policy decisions are made at the top, and are not offered for public scrutiny.’ Any opportunity to influence how top officials make their decisions comes through the apparatus of the ruling Ba’th party, rather than through the country’s six-party, 250 member elected legislature (which is generally taken to operate as a ‘rubber stamp’), or civil society organizations.

Since the current regime came into power in 1970, Syrian agricultural policy has reflected the country’s Soviet-inspired, centrally managed economic model. Recently, however, President Bashar Al Asad, who assumed power in 2000, has instituted limited economic reforms. The bureaucracy’s role has changed from simply commanding that quotas be met, to providing farmers with technical advice and offering financial incentives, for example, by having marketing agencies buy strategically important crops at preferential prices.

What kind of research role?

Despite such cautious steps towards liberalization, policy formation in Syria remains largely insulated from outside input. This appears to have limited the scope of the Brackish Water Project. Gillespie observed, for example, that, ‘I saw no social research, nor any research which looked into agricultural policies.’

More broadly, the role and value of research within the Syrian system remains an open question. Gillespie noted, for example, that several experts he had spoken to remarked that ‘in Syria it is frequently the case that the technical reports [produced by the government’s own research agencies] get shelved and go unread at higher levels.’ Others, however, say that research can be effective when it is targeted to questions that officials are actively considering. While researchers will generally not be invited to contribute to the actual formation of policy, they are sometimes enlisted in a supportive role, providing technical advice on what means will be most effective in achieving already formulated goals.

’Influencing the policy comes as you find technologies or recommendations that respond to the needs of the decision makers at the time when they want to formulate policies,’ says Dr Theib Oweis, Senior Water Specialist with ICARDA.

Oweis suggests that donors sometimes place too much emphasis on the direct impact of research on policy formulation. ‘Not everything requires policy changes,’ he says, ‘although we know that policies are instrumental in making changes.’

Researchers also have to make sure that even the terminology they use aligns with the government’s broader political objectives. For instance, the phrase ‘water demand management’—commonly used by IDRC sponsored researchers—is problematic in Syria. The government believes it shifts focus towards domestic consumption and away from issues of international access to water. The phrase is therefore seen as undermining Syria’s case for access to water that has brought it into competition with Turkey, Iraq, and other neighbours.

Practical and political influence

Despite the apparent impenetrability of Syria’s policymaking process, there was one occasion where the Brackish Water Project’s research did appear to have a direct influence on policy. Research examining the variables that affect the impact of saline water on soil indicated that salt accumulation is most severe in heavier clay soils. After these findings were presented at a conference where Ministry of Irrigation officials were present, a decree was issued forbidding farmers to irrigate high clay content fields with drainage water, which is likely to have high levels of salt.

Other than that, the project’s influence has so far been felt outside the sphere of formal policymaking. Researchers reported, for instance, that after the findings of a master’s thesis funded by the project—which showed, among other things, that the sham 6 variety of wheat is most resistant to the effects of salt—the demand for sham 6 on the black market increased in the area where the experiments took place. This indicates that the research helped change farmers’ outlook and influenced their practices.

Gillespie suggests, however, that the most significant impacts of the project fall under the rubrics of ‘expanding policy capacities’ and ‘broadening policy horizons’. For example, several young Syrian researchers, whose research and graduate studies were supported by the project, are now employed by the ministries of agriculture and irrigation. Bringing their knowledge and experience to their current positions, their presence indicates an effective expansion of research capacity within Syrian institutions. It also promises to bring new perspectives into the culture of the Syrian research community. For example, the researchers’ experience of conducting experiments in farmers’ fields—rather than at isolated research stations—was new in Syria.

Some signs of change?

A similar expansion of capacity took place when one of the senior participants in the project was appointed—coincidentally, rather than as a direct result of the project’s work—to the position of Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform. In his new role as minister, Dr Noureddin Mona instituted a series of reforms intended to elevate the stature of research within the ministry. While Mona was minister only for a short time, it is possible that the ascent of members of the research community into decision-making roles may lead to a new reality where research becomes a stronger contributor to policy formulation.

Gillespie considers the most important impact of the Brackish Water Project to have occurred on the regional stage. The creation of the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA), headquartered in Dubai, speaks volumes about the growing currency of the idea that standards can be established for the safe use of brackish water—an idea that was not part of the debate on the mid-east water shortage before the project first held it up to scrutiny.

Changing Water Policy by Degrees: A Project Initially Ignored by Government Has become Part of a Paradigm Shift

This brief is based on a case study by Tracy Tuplin.

When Tunisia set its sights on averting an approaching water crisis, it concentrated overwhelmingly on increasing supply. An IDRC-supported research project with a focus on demand did little to change this. But the project seems to have contributed to a longer-term shift in outlook. Today, it also provides a reminder of the need to communicate technical findings in ways policymakers understand.

Tunisia is an economic success story—but excessive demands on the country’s limited water supply may compromise that success.

With annual growth rates reaching as high as 5 per cent, Tunisia saw its per capita income increase more than five-fold between 1960 and 1997. Meanwhile, the proportion of its population living below the poverty line dropped from 22 per cent to 6.2 per cent between 1975 and 1995.

Advances such as these have catapulted Tunisia out of the ranks of underdeveloped countries. Now considered an ‘emergent economy’, three-quarters of Tunisia’s population are classified as middle class. This positive economic portrait and generally equitable distribution of wealth have also helped Tunisia avoid the political instability that has plagued many other countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa. One remarkable feature of Tunisia’s accomplishments is that they have occurred despite a water shortage. With an annual water supply of 430 cubic metres per person, Tunisia is well below the World Bank’s definition of a water-scarce country, that is, one with less than 1,000 cubic metres per person.

Now, there are clouds on the horizon. Agriculture and other sectors that have propelled Tunisia’s growth have been developed with little regard to water efficiency, raising the prospect of a depletion of water stocks that could trigger a crisis. The government took aim at this problem in a policy paper released in 1990, but its solutions focused mainly on the costly process of developing new supplies. References to water conservation remained vague and unconnected to the government’s broader strategy.

Expanding the equation

IDRC saw an opportunity to broaden the policy debate in Tunisia. Around the same time that Tunisia released its policy paper, the Centre began a research programme on Water Demand Management (WDM) strategies, that is, looking primarily at demand rather than supply.

Researchers believed that Tunisia clearly stood to benefit from this kind of approach. Since most of its new water supplies had been identified or developed, the potential for Tunisia to meet future demand by boosting supplies was limited. More promising were the avenues being opened up by researchers like Professor Mohammed Salah Matoussi of Tunis University, a rising academic star who was beginning to explore the roles that economic mechanisms, such as tariffs, could play in promoting water conservation.

In supporting Professor Matoussi’s research, IDRC saw the potential for Tunisia to benefit both environmentally and economically. An IDRC study of the project (written by Tracy Tuplin, based on research by IDRC’s Sarah Earl and Bryon Gillespie) recounts that: ‘The principal objective of the WDM in Tunisia project was to develop an integrated water demand management strategy in Tunisia that would result in more effective use of limited water resources, prevent rationing in the face of eventual shortage, and delay heavy infrastructure investments to increase supply.’

IDRC also hoped that any success it achieved with WDM in Tunisia would serve as an example to other countries in the region.

An intention to influence policy

From the outset, the plan was to achieve those goals by directly influencing policymakers. Tuplin writes that, when the project’s parameters were first defined, ‘significant time was spent on . . . reviewing strategies to ensure the work would inform water policy in the region.’ It was clearly understood that there should be ‘more focus on policy implications rather than the development of economic models.’

For a while, it appeared that the project would make its mark in Tunisia’s policymaking arena. Partway through the project’s lifespan, internal IDRC documents showed considerable enthusiasm for results such as the citation of the project’s research in government reports, and an apparently new interest by bureaucrats in issues like tariff systems. One report concluded that: ‘This has been a highly successful project that physically succeeded in drawing attention to the demand side of water management.’ Yet entering the home stretch, much of the optimism faded. It became apparent that the primary result of the project would be the publication of academic papers, to which policymakers paid little attention. What caused this dramatic shift? Years after the project ended, Earl and Gillespie’s interviews both with the project researchers and the Tunisian officials shed some light on the matter.

The interviews reveal researchers’ critical view of their counterparts in government—with government officials similarly disdainful of the researchers’ approach. This state of mutual distrust conforms to theorist Nathan Caplan’s ‘two communities’ hypothesis, which holds that the research community and the bureaucracy are often separated by significant differences in behaviour, expectations, and perceptions.

One Ministry of Agriculture official acknowledges that such a cultural divide does exist in Tunisia. He suggests that the rift could be mended if there was more contact between the two groups at dissemination events, and if both sides modified their approaches. Academic researchers, he says, need to do a better job at summarizing their research (so that busy bureaucrats can read them), and should take on more applied research. Policymakers, on the other hand, should communicate more clearly the problems they need to have answered.

Indirect impacts on policy

Does the failure of the researchers to forge a direct link with policymakers mean that the project was a failure?

The way that events have unfolded since the project ended suggests that the likely answer is ‘no’. Within Tunisia, water demand management has become a supporting plank in the government’s water policy—one of the three interlocking approaches to managing this critical resource. More broadly, the Water Demand Management Forum (WDMF) has moved the issue to centre stage, through conferences involving participants from eleven countries in the region. A cornerstone of WDM is the role of economic analysis and economic instruments in promoting conservation. While this approach is now widely accepted, it was new when Professor Matoussi championed it in Tunisia in the early 1990s.

All this indicates that, in the longer term, the Tunisian researchers’ ideas did filter into the policymaking sphere.

Evert Lindquist has examined the ability of research to influence policy through circuitous, indirect means. One of those means is expanding policy capacities, that is, facilitating the creation of knowledge or competence in individuals or organizations that can later be put to use in some other context.

The WDM in Tunisia project clearly created such an expansion of capacity by allowing Professor Matoussi, a leading innovator in the application of economic theory to water management, to refine his approach and methods. The project also supported a number of graduate students examining the same issues. Cumulatively, this support led to Professor Matoussi’s ideas having a sustained presence in the country and in the region. Writes Tuplin: ‘IDRC support to this project helped to create the first group in Tunisia with the capacity to analyze water issues from a quantitative economics perspective.’ Lindquist also notes that research can have a longer-term influence over policy by broadening policy horizons. In other words, researchers can put new concepts into circulation that may stimulate policymakers to frame issues in different ways or engage in different types of debates. Again, there is evidence that WDM in Tunisia did this. As David Brooks, the IDRC project officer during the latter part of the project observed, its emphasis on water demand brought policymakers into contact with an approach that seemed radical at the time it was first raised.

Through their involvement in water networks, however, project participants were able to advance the idea that water demand is not a fixed factor, as it had been assumed, but a variable that would respond to economic pressures. Within Tunisia, team members have interacted with the National Society for Water Exploitation and Distribution (SONEDE), while regionally Professor Matoussi has been active in the Water Demand Management Forum, which has made policy influence one of its major concerns.

Looking for direct links

But are these indirect influences on policy the best that researchers could have hoped for? Was it inevitable that WDM in Tunisia would fall short of its goal of directly influencing policymakers during the project’s tenure?

Earl and Gillespie’s post mortem of the project provides some instructive ideas about how productive links between researchers and policymakers can be cultivated. Their findings indicate that this project’s failure to reach policymakers in the short-term was likely not because the task was too daunting, but rather because the right strategies were not followed.

There was, for example, no clear plan on how to communicate the research findings. Highly technical documents were not translated into popular language that would have made project results understandable to non-mathematicians. Although workshops were held, they were aimed primarily at academic audiences. Similarly, the researchers’ papers were published in academic journals, some of which were not available in Tunisia. All this was compounded by restrictions on internet access, which scuttled plans for a project website.

In turn, the failure to develop a communications plan appears to have deeper roots in the project’s design. The team was dominated by specialists, and lacked a member specifically responsible for dealing with policymakers. Additionally, since researchers were offered minimal compensation, the ability to publish academic papers became a more important reward for their work. Translating their findings into policy-friendly language was not something the researchers saw as their role.

Tuplin writes that norms have changed since WDM in Tunisia was launched. Now, IDRC and its partners pay more attention to the policy and communications dimensions of projects. ‘Today,’ she suggests, ‘IDRC may look for “policy entrepreneurs” or people able to advocate change and adept at reading the environment both inside and outside government.’

Overall, what has become clear is that drawing out the policy implications of research, and communicating them to the people who steer the ship of public policy are not things that will happen on their own. Rather, they are crucial tasks that must be planned and budgeted for, from the outset of research projects. Writes Tuplin: ‘Research alone, no matter how good, is not enough to draw policymakers’ attention to important and relevant issues.’

12 Health and Education Reform

Influencing Education Policy in Guatemala: Groups Seek to Improve Education Opportunities for Indigenous Peoples and Women

This brief is based on a case study by Bienvenido Argueta.

Increased funding for education is a key component in the efforts of the government of Guatemala to put the country back on its feet. Ensuring that indigenous groups and women get their fair share of any increases was the goal of concerned civil society groups. With support from IDRC, they researched and published a proposal for a more equitable distribution of education funding that would overcome systemic discrimination.

Guatemala’s Peace Accords were designed to lay the foundation for a lasting peace, ending 36 years of domestic armed conflict. Under the Accords, the guerillas agreed to disband and the government committed to constitutional and electoral reforms, resettlement projects, and recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples, among other things. It also committed to increase spending on public education.

Education is of critical importance for Guatemala, where over 40 per cent of the population is under the age of 15, and the population is growing by more than 2 per cent annually. The Peace Commission and the Parity Commission confirmed the need for increased education funding in order to transform the country’s education system to reflect, for the first time, cultural differences in the population. Indigenous communities have traditionally been seriously under-represented in education spending, and as a result they have the highest illiteracy and dropout rates in the country.

Education became a major issue during Guatemala’s 1999 general election that saw the ruling National Advancement Party (PAN) defeated by the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG). A diverse collection of civil society organizations launched the Gran Campaña Nacional por la Educación (Grand National Campaign for Education) and circulated a nationwide petition calling for a large increase in the education budget. The petition gathered some 150,000 signatures. Subsequently the government did increase the education budget, but by about half the amount demanded. The petition may have had little effect on the national budget, but it did have an impact on public opinion, and concerns over education policy.

Twenty-year plan

Those concerns were reflected in the new government’s 2000–2004 Education Plan, which included an explicit policy of increasing the Ministry of Education budget to 3 per cent of GDP. This policy was adopted by the Consultative Commission on Educational Reform (CCRE), which includes representatives of the government, universities, schools, teachers, churches, Indigenous peoples, and the private sector. The Commission was also tasked with drafting a National Education Plan for the next 20 years.

Among the members of the Commission were two organizations that had played key roles in the Gran Campaña: the Coordination Office of Mayan Organizations in Guatemala (COPMAGUA) and the Standing National Commission on Education Reform (CNPRE). Both also served on the CCRE Executive Council. Working together, CNPRE–COPMAGUA were determined that the perspective of Guatemala’s Indigenous peoples should have a prominent place in the discussion of education funding. They turned to Canada’s IDRC for support in generating a proposal for a more equitable distribution of educational expenditures from an Indigenous perspective—‘considering the exclusion, poverty and discrimination that the Mayan people of Guatemala has historically suffered.’

The project had three broad objectives:

1. To analyze the planning and execution of the education budget from the perspective of the Indigenous peoples. To meet this objective, the project called for a research report that would identify weaknesses in the education budget structure and pinpoint target population sectors and geographic areas for educational investment.

2. To formulate a proposal, based on the Indigenous perspective, to influence budgetary planning and execution in the context of education reform and the long-term National Education Plan.

3. To influence policy by enhancing the quality of the proposals submitted by CNPRE and COPMAGUA delegates, and by reinforcing Indigenous participation in the education reform debate.

Broader perspective

Although the original emphasis of the project was on ethnic discrimination in the education system, during the course of the project its perspective was broadened to include gender equity. This constituted a fundamental amendment to the concept and design of the project.

Ethnic discrimination in Guatemala’s school system can be observed through various educational indicators. For example, the illiteracy rate for the Guatemalan population as a whole is 31.3 per cent. Breaking that number down, however, reveals that for the non-Indigenous population the illiteracy rate is 21.4 per cent, while for the Indigenous population it is almost double at 42.5 per cent. Statistics on academic failure—a particular problem in rural areas—show the highest incidence in the regions with the greatest percentages of Indigenous people.

The education statistics also revealed another inequity to the researchers. The gross school enrolment rate for boys from 1993 to 1998 was 93 per cent, but for girls it was 82 per cent. The composition of the student body for the same period was 54 per cent boys and 46 per cent girls. These statistics convinced the researchers to add a gender perspective to their research. There were some objections, particularly from Indigenous people, who felt that it would be more important to generate strategies and actions to eliminate ethnic discrimination than to worry about the gender issue.

On the other hand, the government and private sector research centres felt that both these issues should be subordinated to the traditional budget categories, and to a more global poverty reduction strategy. They argued that any special treatment for one group must necessarily come at the expense of the rest of the population.

Many obstacles

Dr Bienvenido Argueta, who evaluated the policy influence of the project for IDRC, following its completion, says that once the project got underway the researchers ran into a number of obstacles. First was the difficulty in accessing reliable sources of information. ‘Databases, education statistics and budget figures generally take no consideration of ethnic and gender issues,’ he says. The second problem was the limited time available to complete the study in order to have an impact on the education budget. He points out that it takes time to build alliances, to inform and mobilize key sectors of the population, and to present proposals properly.

Finally, simply identifying decision makers in the field of education finance policy was difficult. This was ‘because of the dynamics of national politics in recent years, with the constant turnover in senior government positions, and a steady shift of power from the executive to the legislative branch’, according to Dr Argueta. The Planning Unit of the Ministry of Education, for example, had seen four directors come and go in the space of 18 months. The Ministry’s draft budget was not only scrutinized and cut by the Ministry of Finance, it was also completely overhauled by the Finance Committee of Congress.

Despite these issues, the project team produced and published a report entitled ‘Financing of Education in Guatemala’. It included several analyses of education budget planning and execution, and projections disaggregating—to the extent possible—investment by gender and ethnic group. Accompanying the report was the ‘Proposal for the financing of education in Guatemala with an emphasis on ethnic and gender equity.’ The report and the proposal were delivered at a public event in the presence of the Minister of Education and the CCRE.

Strategy was weak

The CNPRE–COPMAGUA team recognized that their dissemination strategy for these publications was weak, says Dr Argueta, and that they did not have an adequate plan to forge broader partnerships with the various Indigenous groups in Guatemala. This was true of the alliances in the CCRE and in the Gran Campaña, where the proposals were more easily negotiated with the teachers’ union and the University of San Carlos of Guatemala. This situation was due, among other things, to the lack of experience, and the technical and financial limitations of CNPRE–COPMAGUA. Also, the research team itself did not feel that it was involved in the dissemination strategies.

The weaknesses in terms of outreach and dissemination were further highlighted by the fact that there was no specific strategy targeted at women’s groups, or any attempt to build a broader alliance on gender and ethnic equity, according to Dr Argueta. ‘The communications strategy placed no particular emphasis on women’s groups. In general, the absence of strategies for reaching women’s groups was repeated with respect to men’s groups.’ And most seriously he notes: ‘It is obvious that there was no proper approach made to the Congress, or to officials of the Presidential Office for Planning and Programming (SEGEPLAN) and the Ministry of Finance.’

Most of the attempt at policy influence was directed towards the technical staff of the Ministry of Education. At the same time, people who bring pressure on the government through civil society organizations, such as members of the CCRE and the Gran Campaña, were made more aware of the need to incorporate ethnic and gender issues into the education budget.

Dr Argueta’s evaluation concludes that the major changes during the project were of a technical nature, especially in the institutional strengthening of CNPRE and COPMAGUA. ‘The study and the proposal took about one year, which means that the political, economic and social impact was not evident in the short run,’ he says. ‘Nevertheless, the fact that marginalized sectors of the population are participating more actively in the public policy debate is recognized as a step forward for Guatemalan democracy.’

Some lessons

The analysis of policy influence in this case study is based on Evert Lindquist’s typology of policy influence, as presented in his paper Discerning Policy Influence: Framework for Strategic Evaluation of IDRC-supported Research.

Expanding policy capacities

The greatest learning was represented by the acquisition and strengthening of the capacities of CNPRE, COPMAGUA, and the research group, for justifying and preparing anti-discrimination policies. As a result they were able to generate information and produce knowledge, both in the research and in the proposal. They learned to introduce new concepts and issues on the agenda for debate by players who had previously little to say about the issue. In this respect, says Dr Argueta, they were able to influence other research centres with the capacity to do research, and to propose courses of action to the government relating to public policy. Even IDRC programme officers involved with the project say that they learned some fundamental lessons especially about working with the grass-roots Indigenous organizations.

Broadening policy horizons

The researchers point to a growing understanding of the rationale underlying financial programmes and qualitative programming in education. The qualitative analysis of the education sector required the establishment of goals and effective financial programming, which in turn demanded new concepts and new approaches. In addition, with respect to education funding, there was a favourable environment for communication and negotiation with various players in civil society. The research group also noted that it was very difficult, but at the same time very instructive, to address financial analysis from the gender perspective.

Affecting policy regimes

One of the fundamental lessons had to do with the process of giving legitimacy to policy by making it responsive to the national interest, and not only to sectoral and party groups. This required skills of a different kind in order to have political influence. In turn, this involved a process of learning how to simplify the communication of complex qualitative analyses and hard data taken from the budget and education statistics. The team also learned to prioritize issues, to identify the ‘who, what, and how’ of preparing and executing the budget. They also deepened their skills in preparing ‘power maps’ for influencing policy, although these still have to be refined.

The TEHIP ‘Spark’ Leads to Better Health: Integrating Research and Development was Key in Tanzania

This brief is based on a case study by Terry Smutylo and Stephanie Neilson.

The Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Project (TEHIP) is a research and development partnership involving Tanzania’s Ministry of Health and Canada’s IDRC. It was established to test innovations in planning, priority setting, and resource allocation at the district level. The results make a powerful case that using research to make health spending more proportional to the prevailing burden of disease can have a significant, positive impact on health outcomes.

With a per capita income of CA $370, Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world and, like other countries of sub-Saharan Africa, has seen a series of grim health indicators worsen. Conditions such as malaria, tuberculosis, malnutrition, anemia, and HIV/AIDS have cut a deadly path across the continent, and national health systems have buckled under the strain. In Tanzania, as in other countries, economic deprivation and the health crisis feed off each other. The lack of resources makes Tanzanians more vulnerable to the effects of illness, and diminishes the government’s ability to fund health services. Succumbing to sickness, in turn, reduces citizens’ capacity to generate income. This dual burden does not make Tanzania unique, but it does make the country a fitting home for a demonstration project that has sought to determine if finding better ways of allocating health care resources could help revive moribund health systems and save lives. Originally known as the Essential Health Interventions Project (EHIP), the project found its initial inspiration in a hypothesis—contained in the World Bank’s ‘World Development Report’ of 1993 (WDR ‘93)—that quite modest new investments in health care could have significant impact if those funds were applied to cost-effective health interventions targeting the most significant causes of death and disability. WDR ‘93 proposed that merely raising developing countries’ health care spending to around $17 (US $12) per capita (an infinitesimal portion of the $3,900 per capita spent each year on health care in Canada, for example) could lower the burden of disease rate by 25 per cent, if the new funds were applied where they would have the greatest impact.

Tanzania, which was in the midst of health care reforms involving the devolution of planning responsibility from the centre to the district, applied to become the host country to test the WDR ‘93 hypothesis. With that, EHIP changed its name to TEHIP, and the programme was reoriented as a collaborative joint venture between the Republic of Tanzania and IDRC, housed within Tanzania’s Ministry of Health (MoH), and combining the efforts of local researchers, international advisors, district health planners, health facility clinicians, and whole communities.

Local level action

The TEHIP team focused its work in two districts: Rufiji and Morogoro. TEHIP’s primary functions were to facilitate the generation of research, and to develop a series of tools and strategies that would help those districts’ District Health Management Teams (DHMTs) allocate funds and design packages of health interventions that more directly responded to evidence about the local ‘burden of disease.’ To generate the evidence, TEHIP supported local District Sentinel Surveillance (DSS) Systems, which used enumerators to regularly collect data from households in the districts, thus providing up-to-date vital statistics.

TEHIP also developed a series of computer-based planning tools to help DHMTs understand the relevance of that DSS-generated evidence to the health planning process. For example, the ‘Burden of Disease Profile Tool’ simplifies and communicates complex information on local burden of disease by transforming it into easy-to-read graphs, tables, and charts. Instead of presenting the burden of disease by specific disease categories, the profiles emphasize the proportional burden addressed by various essential health interventions.

The ‘District Health Accounts Tool’ graphically shows how individual spending commitments coalesce as an overall plan, whether they conform to Ministry requirements, where the funding is coming from, and how proportionally it is being spent. DMHTs used those tools to adjust their budgets so that less would be spent on treating marginal illnesses that had previously consumed an amount of funding disproportionate to their impact on mortality. As a result, new investments could be made in areas like the treatment and prevention of malaria and, because malaria and childhood diseases were shown to contribute greatly to local mortality rates, the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses.

Parallel with the provision of these planning tools, TEHIP provided small amounts of top-up funds that DMHTs could apply to what they saw as major weaknesses in the district health systems. This led to the implementation of new initiatives, such as the Integrated Management Cascade that breaks the health system into tiers and local clusters. This ‘cascading’ organizational structure facilitates the supervision of health facilities and gives them easier access to drugs, lab tests, emergency consultations, and other services provided from higher levels. Funds were also applied to rehabilitating health facilities, with communities themselves providing labour and some of the materials.

The role of research

As these actions suggest, research was not a discrete or self-contained element of TEHIP’s work, but part of a combined, interlocking ‘research and development’ agenda that used research data as raw material, contributing to the creation of concrete and timely improvements within the health system. In this respect, TEHIP was unique among IDRC-supported projects: it was one of the very few projects to have the funding and mandate to move its research findings forward into the development stage. In the field, this clear link between research and development set TEHIP apart from typical research projects, giving TEHIP a higher level of credibility among busy health workers who might otherwise have seen the arrival of researchers from the capital as a fruitless distraction, or a drain on their time.

Employees, struggling to keep an overstretched health system functioning, knew that ‘the goal of TEHIP’s approach was not just to produce some papers for The Lancet’, remarks TEHIP project manager Graham Reid. ‘It was actually working with a living system, in context, working with people, and trying to influence a health system that was already in the process of being changed.’

Stephanie Neilson of IDRC’s Evaluation Unit, who interviewed a wide variety of workers within the Tanzanian health system, agrees that the practical orientation of the research encouraged a ‘buy-in’ to the project’s goals and methods by participants, ranging from ministry and district planners, to village health workers, to individuals within communities. ‘The way it was often articulated to us,’ she says, ‘is that this wasn’t the kind of abstract, theoretical research where people come in, try to prove something, and then walk away. They were trying to do something that would be valuable and useful to people on the ground.’

’What people in Tanzania’s health sector really identify with TEHIP are the planning tools—particularly the burden of disease and resource allocation tools,’ she says.

They are things that give people a greater capacity to go about their work. In the communities, people really associate TEHIP with the rehabilitation of health facilities. That whole exercise gave people the resources, skills, and tools to maintain their own health facilities, and it told people in the communities that the goal of TEHIP was to actually improve the system.

In fact, the research and development functions of TEHIP were so closely intertwined that it was often difficult to ascertain where one left off and the other began. Staff were organized in an integrated team structure, for example, where the researchers and the development specialists were highly aware of and highly dependent upon each other’s work. Forming a kind of continuous ‘feedback loop’, the development side depended upon a steady stream of research to determine whether the tools and strategies were working, how they could be improved, and what new interventions might be needed at the next phase of work. Researchers crafted their agendas around the practical requirements of developing and implementing those new tools and strategies. The research component was divided into three modules examining:

1. Health systems—how planning took place and how the health system operated;

2. Health-seeking behaviour—how, when, and why community members sought health care, and what their experience was; and

3. Health outcomes—what level of health and burden of disease existed.

Ongoing work in these three areas of inquiry allowed researchers to submit new innovations to continual evaluation: were new developments changing the way planners plan? Were they improving the public’s experience of the health care system? Were they improving health outcomes and reducing mortality? And where should we go from here?

Multiple layers of influence

To assess whether TEHIP succeeded in influencing public policy in Tanzania, Terry Smutylo and Stephanie Neilson looked at a number of possible types of policy influence. Evaluators considered whether TEHIP had helped expand Tanzania’s policy capacities (for example, by increasing the ability of Tanzanian health officials to use research), whether it had broadened the range of debate around research and policy issues, and whether it had an impact on the actual policies that were adopted by the government.

Stephanie Neilson remarks that while all those forms of influence are important, an area where TEHIP had, perhaps, its most profound impact was in broadening the debate and altering the dominant thinking on the use of research in policy formation. ‘It was said to us by many people, on numerous occasions, that the idea of planning based on evidence has influenced the way the health sector operates,’ she says. ‘Not only that, but it has crossed boundaries, seeping into other areas like education.’

Dr Gabriel Upunda, Tanzania’s Chief Medical Officer, agrees that there has been a shift in perspectives and practice across the entire decision-making structure. ‘We have learnt the use of data in making decisions’, he declares.

Fortunately, the outlook of our National Institute for Medical Research is now oriented in the same way. This means that, whenever there is a decision to be made, there is evidence on which to base that decision. I can go to the politicians and tell them ‘you have this to decide, and here is the information that we have from a scientific point of view’.

One obvious reason why decision makers appear to have embraced the use of research in policymaking is that the introduction of evidence-based planning has been associated with a dramatic improvement in health outcomes in the demonstration districts. In the four years following the introduction of evidence-based planning (and with financial top-ups amounting to only US $1 per capita per year) child mortality rates have fallen by 46 per cent in Rufiji, and 43 per cent in Morogoro. In the same period, Rufiji’s mortality rate for adults between 20 and 50 fell by 18 per cent. These results make a powerful case that using research to make health spending more proportional to the prevailing burden of disease can have a significant, positive impact on health outcomes. This dramatic demonstration was arguably the most critical factor in promoting a new ‘culture of planning’ within the Tanzanian health system.

Capacity and content

The evaluation team also found that TEHIP significantly influenced workers’ capacity to use research and policy content. A great deal of health planners’ increased capacity to use research in support of policymaking was attributed to the provision of the planning tools. The tools provided a critical link between research and planning by expressing data in a simple form that DHMTs could use in their daily work (for instance, through charts that translated mortality figures into ‘intervention-addressable shares’ of Burden of Disease). ‘It wasn’t until TEHIP came here that we used the information [generated by household surveillance],’ said one district team member. Another interviewee told the IDRC evaluation team that ‘before, the Ministry talked about information, but they didn’t see how they could use it, didn’t see how they could display it. Now they do.’

The ongoing impact of TEHIP is also reflected in recent changes in Tanzanian health policy. By helping to facilitate the presentation of relevant mortality information, for instance, TEHIP helped move malaria higher up on the agendas of both the districts and the Ministry of Health, which intensified its national anti-malaria campaigns by increasing the promotion of insecticide-treated bed nets. It also switched to more effective anti-malarial drugs. The lasting impact of TEHIP can also be seen in the Ministry’s endorsement of strategies, such as the Integrated Management Cascade, and its creation of a ‘basket’ of funds—modelled after the TEHIP top-up that funded innovations such as the management cascade, and the facility renovations. The Ministry now provides these funds to Tanzania’s other districts by pooling its health sector contributions from international donors.

Expanding future influence

The loudest note of caution was sounded by interviewees who feared that TEHIP would be swallowed by the ‘project trap’—that the influence of TEHIP would cease after the project had wound down. They also feared that the Ministry would not adequately promote the use of the tools and strategies throughout the country. TEHIP has developed an ‘exit strategy’ involving the Zonal Training Centres operated by the MoH that will train trainers on the use of the tools. They will, in turn, be sent to other districts.

Clearly, TEHIP has created linkages between research and policy formation in a number of different ways. The real test of its influence, however, will be whether TEHIP’s approach and its specific innovations (such as the planning tools, which are portable and adaptable to other national contexts) will move beyond the demonstration districts to bring improvements to health systems in the rest of Tanzania and, indeed, to other countries facing similar circumstances.

13 Networks and Innovation

Patience Brings Rewards: The Lessons of the Asian Fisheries Social Science Research Network

This brief is based on a case study by Robert Pomeroy.

Sometimes it takes years of effort to achieve a positive result. In Southeast Asia, IDRC embraced a long and patient commitment to building capacity for social science research in the fisheries industry. This strategy has succeeded: it has trained a whole generation of scientists whose impact on policymaking will be enduring.

Since the early 1980s, serious problems have troubled Southeast Asia’s fisheries sector. Although both fishing and fish farming are time-honoured occupations in the region and they provide people with the cheapest and most popular forms of animal protein, most fishing households are mired in poverty. In spite of loans and subsidies, and other government programmes designed to aid the fisheries, and in spite of advances such as motorized boats, better gear, and improvements in aquaculture techniques, most small-scale producers have remained desperately poor.

In the so-called capture or harvest fisheries, many factors have contributed to keeping incomes low. The common property nature of the resource has meant that there is no individual incentive to limit the catch (‘If I don’t take the fish, somebody else will’); inevitably this has led to overfishing. Meanwhile, traditional forms of regulating access to fishing grounds have broken down with the arrival of highly mobile vessels. Moreover, fuel and other inputs have become more costly. Population growth, combined with a lack of alternative jobs in rural areas, has pushed many more people into an already crowded business. Finally, there has been little state support for a marketing infrastructure that would welcome the small-scale operator.

Meanwhile, in aquaculture—a husbandry activity where productivity can be improved through better technology and increases in inputs—a few large and successful enterprises have competed with many smaller and marginally profitable enterprises. The advantages of large size and corporate know-how have meant that much of the growth in aquacultural production has come from a relatively small number of farms.

Not only has each fisheries sector had its special problems, but they have competed with one another for territorial resources such as mangrove swamps and shallow water lagoons, for a share of the consumer food budget, and for government and private investment.

The quest for information

Both overfishing and the environmental degradation of coastal resources have concerned the region’s governments. Issues of food security, rural development, employment, foreign earnings, tourism, and the environment have all put fisheries and coastal resource management high on policy agendas.

Unfortunately, in the early 1980s, much of the scientific research being undertaken on these issues was biological in nature, even while people were beginning to recognize that the real solutions were social, economic, political, and institutional in nature. Too little of the right kind of information was available because too few social scientists were conducting fisheries research in the region. Economists in particular had scant professional interest in these subjects. Consequently, no programme of economic and policy research was being carried out either by government fisheries agencies, research centres, or universities.

Meanwhile, policymakers increasingly demanded better social science information. These demands were being met by a growing dependence on countries outside the region for this type of education, consultation, and research. Clearly, Southeast Asia needed its own capacity to undertake social science fisheries research.

So it was that in 1983, under the coordination of the International Centre for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM) in the Philippines—and with funding support from the IDRC, among others—the Asian Fisheries Social Science Research Network (AFSSRN) or the Network was launched. The Network’s mandate was to overcome the lack of social science research capacity in Southeast Asia through a combination of formal and informal training, scholarships, research activities, information exchange, seminars, workshops, and staff exchanges.

During the period of IDRC funding, which lasted until 1996, the Network went through four phases. Its membership grew, and the emphasis of its work shifted from straightforward capacity building to the provision of social science research for policy purposes. All the while, its activities were closely coordinated by ICLARM.

In 2001, IDRC launched a long-term evaluation of the policy influence of the research it has supported. This ambitious exercise aims to improve the design of specific projects and programmes where public policy may be an objective, and so to give better focus to IDRC’s overall strategic plan.

Part of the evaluation process reviews a series of rich case studies. IDRC engaged Dr Robert Pomeroy to assess the policy influence of AFSSRN. He carried out this study mainly by interviewing members and associates of the Network.

History of the network

Dr Pomeroy outlined the development of AFSSRN and the gradual shift in its mandate.

Initial capacity building, 1983–86

The charter members of AFSSRN were universities in Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The Network’s initial focus was economics, and its broad objective was to build long-term social science research capacity in Southeast Asian institutions in fisheries and aquaculture.

It had three specific goals:

1. To help institutions strengthen their capacity to carry out research. Its methods were direct funding and technical support for projects, the training of researchers, and the planning of large research programmes.

2. To build enduring research capacity by fostering training in fisheries economics. The affiliated institutions offered graduate and undergraduate courses in such areas as fisheries management, and the economics of aquaculture.

3. To encourage stronger professional links and working relationships among these institutions and policymaking bodies.

Expansion and consolidation, 1985–88

Six new institutions from Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines joined AFSSRN. The Network continued where it had left off in the opening phase, funding research projects, hosting workshops and courses, and encouraging links among researchers and policymakers. By now, however, the emphasis had shifted slightly towards policy issues. Most of the Network’s research projects during this period dealt with the economics of aquaculture, marketing, and small-scale fisheries management. Since many of the fish resources of Network member countries were already exhausted or threatened, research on the economic and social consequences of fisheries management, particularly in villages and households, was regarded as crucial for finding policy solutions.

As it happened, although the stated objective was to provide information for the design of better fisheries policies, little actual research on policy analysis was carried out. It was felt that such an analysis would be premature because the basic applied research and social science skills of Network members were not yet fully developed.

Review of progress, 1988–94

By now, AFSSRN comprised 14 teams with 80 researchers in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The general objective was to develop social science research capacity as a partner to the ‘hard’ sciences in aquatic systems management.

This phase also concentrated on the publication of research findings. It also introduced a national networking programme to connect AFSSRN members and other national fisheries organizations. And it put greater emphasis on generating results useful for formulating development policies and management strategies. A shortage of research in the capture fisheries led to the creation of a research and training programme in 1990—funded by IDRC—joining the efforts of AFSSRN and Canada’s Simon Fraser University.

A review of AFSSRN’s entire history, carried out during this period, concluded that the Network had succeeded in its goal of pulling together economists and other social scientists to promote research and training in the social science aspects of fisheries and aquaculture.

The review also found that the Network had improved members’ research skills, supported their research endeavours, helped them connect with other researchers in the region, and expanded the pool of trained researchers. The review further concluded that although the actual impact of Network activities on fisheries policy and management had been modest, AFSSRN had helped members develop their capacity to address these issues.

Emphasis on policy, 1995–96

In this phase AFSSRN extended its membership to Vietnam.

Much of the Network’s focus continued as before, but policy-relevant social science research became a central goal. Members had achieved the necessary skills base and so could concentrate more on research related to decision making.

While this shift was taking place, it was recognized that members needed other new skills if their emphasis was now to focus on developing management-related policies and programmes. Networking, education, and training were therefore accorded higher priority.

AFSSRN made an extra effort to publish its research reports, over 50 of which had been generated since 1983. It developed a publications series and distributed the reports in the region, in particular to policymakers.

1997 and beyond

After the IDRC funding ended, members were concerned that the activities of AFSSRN would cease. With support from ICLARM, the Network became part of the Asian Fisheries Society.

The Network continues today. Its members meet at regional meetings, and there is an AFSSRN news section in ICLARM’s quarterly publication NAGA.

Influencing public policy

Until its final phase, the Network was not designed explicitly to have an influence on public policy. Instead, its early objective was to build national research capacity to address important social science issues in the management of fishery resources in the region. As it turned out, however, its networking, training and education, research support, and information dissemination activities did influence policy.

AFSSRN played a large role in helping to expand policy capacities in the region, in particular by developing new talent for undertaking issues-based research and analysis. In other words, the Network helped improve the institutional framework surrounding policymaking.

AFSSRN also helped broaden policy horizons. It introduced new ideas to the agenda, and nourished dialogues among researchers and decision makers. In other words, the Network helped improve the intellectual framework surrounding policymaking.

The Network achieved its policy influence in a number of overlapping stages:

1. Before the Network was launched, fisheries social scientists in the region had a low skills base and almost no capacity to undertake policy analysis. The Network first provided training and education in the basics of social science research. This foundation exposed members to new concepts and methods, and helped them advance their careers.

2. Research projects supported by the Network helped members gain more experience in using the new concepts and methods. The small grants provided by the Network for research projects often produced important results with policy implications.

3. As Network members gained more confidence, the level of research improved, and many of the projects produced policy recommendations that were used by both public and private sectors.

4. Network involvement advanced the careers of members. Many early members have become senior officials in universities or government fisheries departments, where they now direct public policy. In all cases they attribute their advancement, in part, to membership in the Network.

5. The collegial relationships that have been developed through networking have linked researchers and policymakers. These connections have been critically important in influencing policy in all Network member countries.

6. Network members have published research results in all the important peer-reviewed scientific journals. These articles serve as the foundation for developing new policies on fisheries and aquaculture not just in the region, but worldwide.

7. Having achieved this skills base, scientific maturity, career advancement, self-confidence, and partnership with policymakers, Network members became better able to conduct policy analysis, and began to influence policy.

8. In a region that at one time was obliged to import its social science expertise, Network members began to act as consultants and started advising others on projects, including policy projects, throughout Asia and around the world.

Dr Pomeroy’s study concluded by underscoring two important points. First, IDRC’s capacity building networks in Asia, such as AFSSRN, have had wide and lasting impacts. The lives of many people have been improved as a result of these efforts. Second, these networks have succeeded in part because IDRC has had the patience to support them, sometimes for very long periods of time, until their objectives were met.

Before the AFSSRN it was difficult to find economists working on fisheries issues in Thailand. We did not have good economic information on which to make decisions. We relied on biological information, but that only gave part of the information that we needed to make good policy. Now, in part as a result of the AFSSRN, we make more informed policy. (Prayot Supavivat, Department of Fisheries, Thailand)

Originally I would just do research for research’s sake. My audience was not the policymaker. Now, being in government, I better understand the need for good research to inform my decision-making and I better understand why the AFSSRN was pushing, through training, the need for us to do policy-relevant research. I request our researchers, both in government and in academe, to do research which I can use to support or not support decisions. (Victor Nikijuluw, Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Indonesia)

Promoting Traditional Knowledge: Indian NGO Influences Policy at the State, National, and International Levels

This brief is based on a case study by Leanne Burton.

The Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI) has documented and disseminated more than 10,000 grass-roots innovations and traditional practices in India’s agricultural sector. By enabling farmers to share their knowledge, SRISTI has deepened awareness of labour-saving techniques, and other innovations. At the same time, by introducing new ideas to politicians and bureaucrats, encouraging networking, and educating researchers, it has had an impact on policy at the state, national, and international levels.

Faced with rapid population growth, food shortages, and widespread poverty, many developing countries embarked on a ‘Green Revolution’ in the 1960s by producing high-yield crop varieties, increasing irrigation, and expanding use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In India, the Green Revolution led to expansion of farmland, double-cropping, intensive irrigation, and hybrid seeds. In so doing, it swept aside much of the focus on traditional seeds and crop varieties, herbal pesticides, and organic farming.

While the changes helped India produce enough food to feed its people, they created new challenges. The new agricultural policies mainly benefited large commercial producers, which could afford to buy fertilizer and hold out for best prices, and which had better access to subsidized credit and irrigation. Traditional agriculture, and the farmers who practiced it, were largely left behind.

By 1989, an informal group of academics, farmers, scientists, and others known as the Honey Bee Network emerged. Just as a bee moves among flowers collecting and distributing pollen—doing good without causing harm—members of the Honey Bee Network moved among local innovators to document and disseminate their knowledge in local languages, ensuring that the originator received some benefits.

At its heart, the Honey Bee Network sought to improve the socioeconomic conditions of knowledge-rich but resource-poor farmers and other rural dwellers. The Network believed it was crucial to acknowledge and, if possible, reward innovators for their creativity. Moreover, it believed that formal and informal sciences were complementary: traditional knowledge could expand the frontiers of science, which in turn, could enhance or build upon local creativity.

By the early 1990s, the Network needed to consolidate and institutionalize its work, a desire that led to the founding of SRISTI in 1993.

IDRC’s partnership with SRISTI

Strengthening grass-roots capacity and innovation

IDRC provided core support for SRISTI’s first phase (1993–96) through the auspices of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA), enabling the new non-governmental organization (NGO) to evolve from a volunteer-based network of researchers and activists into a more structured and permanent organization. Phase I had four objectives designed to strengthen the capacity of grass-roots innovators: protect intellectual property rights, experiment to add value to innovators’ knowledge, evolve entrepreneurial ability to generate returns from this knowledge, and enrich the cultural and institutional basis for dealing with nature.

By the end of Phase I, SRISTI was recognized for its innovative leadership. More than 1,000 groups had become members, including many farmers. SRISTI had documented and disseminated more than 5,000 innovative practices in six Indian languages through such tools as the Honey Bee Newsletter.

Expanding to the national level

Phase II (1997–2000) built on SRISTI’s early work, emphasizing value-added stages of innovation, as well as material and non-material incentives for innovators. It expanded the organization’s scope beyond farmers to include natural resource management, rural production, and cottage industries. It also sought to pay more attention to women’s knowledge.

’By the end of Phase II, SRISTI had documented an additional 8,000 local innovations and had validated or improved several of them, including herbal pesticides, and veterinary and human plant-based medicines,’ says Leanne Burton, who evaluated the public policy influence of SRISTI’s work. ‘SRISTI developed and tested various reward and compensation schemes, and had struck a royalty-sharing agreement with a private company interested in three veterinary drugs.’

During Phase II, SRISTI also worked with the Government of Gujarat to scale up grass-roots innovations by establishing the Gujarat Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN). At the same time, to graduate its activities from the state level to the national level, SRISTI collaborated with the national government to set up the National Innovation Foundation (NIF).

Women, wisdom, and well-being

At the end of Phase II, an IDRC consultant evaluated the project, which helped identify its limitations and gaps. As a result, in its current phase (2000–present), SRISTI’s overarching theme is ‘Women, wisdom, and well-being: local knowledge and value addition of biodiverse resources of women in India’.

The organization has challenged its members to develop innovative solutions to reduce the drudgery associated with women’s work. To that end, it has worked with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) to distribute several labour-saving technologies, including a modified water pulley developed by a local farmer. In addition, as planned in Phase II, SRISTI is working with women’s NGOs like SEWA, to launch state-wide searches for female innovators.

In its 2002 interim report to IDRC, SRISTI noted that it had documented several hundred traditional practices and innovations in Gujarat; supported further thesis work on women’s knowledge; documented women’s knowledge of vegetative crops, less well-known uncultivated foods, medicinal plants, livestock management, and human health; and organized women-only village meetings, among other activities.

Assessing policy influence

Research can influence public policy in several key ways: by expanding policy capacities, broadening policy horizons, or affecting policy regimes.

Expanding policy capacities

SRISTI has expanded policy capacities by improving the knowledge of key actors, developing innovative ideas, improving capacity to communicate ideas, and developing new talent for research and analysis.

By documenting and disseminating more than 10,000 grass-roots innovations and traditional practices, SRISTI has improved and expanded the knowledge of diverse public. While its primary audience has been farmers, other innovators, students, and children, it has used media to spread its ideas both nationally and internationally. It has also invited different actors, for example, politicians, academics, NGOs, to collaborate.

‘It is impossible to know how much of this information is being absorbed by the various actors’, says Burton. ‘However, there is evidence of some filtering through. SRISTI has put forward an agenda, with information to support it, and it is this framing of information that makes it useful and useable for policymakers.’

With respect to innovative ideas, SRISTI continues to develop original concepts, as well as to test and expand them. For example, it has proposed ethical guidelines for accessing and exploring biodiversity, as well as a ‘prior informed consent form’ to help innovators protect intellectual property.

Creative communication has been an integral part of SRISTI’s strategy. The Honey Bee Newsletter combines technical and cultural information with the human appeal of personal stories, humour, and challenges. Beyond the newsletter, it has compiled databases on CD-ROM, and produced videos and posters in local languages. For illiterate villagers, it has produced interactive, picture-based computer kiosks. ‘SRISTI has learned the power of a story, and will often use these to impress upon more remote audiences the human face of its work,’ says Burton.

SRISTI has developed new talent for research and analysis by establishing the Sadhbav Sristi Sanshodhan Laboratory; this collaboration with the SADHBAV Foundation brings added value to local knowledge and green technologies. In addition, it set up an in-house herbal lab to conduct experiments with herbal pesticides.

SRISTI’s success in expanding policy capacities has been often attributed to its storehouse of relevant research, and empirical evidence. ‘Groundwork has been key to the influence of policymakers—documentation, providing evidence of the creative thinking happening at the grass-roots level, and scientifically validating this knowledge,’ affirms V. Sherry Chand, a professor with the IIMA.

Broadening policy horizons

’SRISTI works simultaneously at all levels of government,’ says Dr Sudershan Iyengar, director and professor at the Gujarat Institute of Development Research and a SRISTI board member. He adds:

It has been able to identify issues requiring central government attention, those possible to address at lower levels, and has then pursued both courses simultaneously. By ensuring that there is a national element to its work, SRISTI makes the point that what is possible in one state is possible in all states of India.

At the state level, SRISTI has developed an effective relationship with the Government of Gujarat. In 1997, the organization invited government representatives to its International Conference on Creativity and Innovation at the grass-roots. Follow-up meetings with government led to the creation of the Gujarat Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN, a registered trust with a 12 member board, including several state officials).

GIAN helps local entrepreneurs to access funding by acting as a go-between for innovators and government/business institutions. Among GIAN’s achievements: it has signed agreements with several national entrepreneurship schemes; pursued collaborations with educational, research, and training institutions, and NGOs; and mobilized resources (financial, technical, administrative) for more than a dozen innovations at various stages of the development and marketing process. At least another three GIANs are planned for various parts of the country.

At the national level, in response to appeals from SRISTI, the Department of Science and Technology established the National Innovation Foundation (NIF). It is closely linked with SRISTI and GIAN, and enhances the work of these two organizations. NIF acts as a national register of grass-roots innovation and traditional knowledge, and helps to develop and market innovations, linking innovators with formal science and technology.

At both the national and international levels, SRISTI has contributed to the debate about intellectual property rights (IPR) for biological resources. It has organized or taken part in various workshops and consultations on topics such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, and worked with Indian stakeholders to help the national Ministry of Environment and Forests to develop a new policy for accessing and conserving biological resources. With respect to Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), it co-organized a consultation in 1998 with the World Intellectual Property Organization and farmers on IPR protection.

SRISTI’s renewed commitment to gender-based projects has had an impact on partners such as SEWA. ‘I have worked with rural women for a long time, but I am now beginning to appreciate how women do things differently and why,’ says SEWA’s Reema Nanavaty. ‘Previously, SEWA’s focus was on women’s access to resources; now we are also considering how women use these resources differently and why. There is more critical analysis.’

Another component of broadening policy horizons has been establishing networks between formal and informal science communities. NIF now has a Memorandum of Understanding with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the Indian Council of Scientific Research. In addition, grass-roots innovators have taken part in the Indian Science Congress.

Affecting policy regimes

SRISTI, along with GIAN and NIF, has affected policy in India, but successes have resulted from the influence of its president, Anil Gupta, rather than specific lobbying. Professor Gupta’s involvement with both SRISTI and NIF has helped the two organizations enjoy a close relationship. Following NIF’s invitation to a pre-budget meeting to share ideas on how to support innovation, for example, Professor Gupta provided the draft text for the Minister’s 2002 budget speech, which announced the creation of a venture capital fund for grass-roots innovators.

’SRISTI’s policy impact has been at the level of ideas,’ suggests Sherry Chand. Several key officials at both state and national levels have expressed support for SRISTI’s work, and acknowledged its impact on them personally. At the state level, the Ministry of Agriculture in Gujarat follows SRISTI’s practice of rewarding innovators. At the national level, in addition to influencing the budgetary process, Professor Gupta helped draft India’s biodiversity bill. At the global level, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) now conducts research on several herbal pesticides that SRISTI helped identify.

Conclusions

’SRISTI has seen—and continues to see—policy influence as a means to an end,’ says Burton. ‘The organization’s primary goal is to protect and value indigenous knowledge, and over time it has realized that sustainable and widespread progress on this front requires policy support.’

For Burton, SRISTI has had intermediate policy influence in two fundamental ways. First, by working with partners and through its own experience, SRISTI has increased its capacity to conduct research, analyze information, and communicate with a variety of actors. Second, it has enriched the policy arena for others by introducing new ideas, encouraging networking, and educating researchers who have then taken up new positions in related areas.

‘Both the state and national governments have created space for SRISTI to pursue its policy work,’ says Burton. ‘This is uncommon in India, and is concrete evidence of—if not widespread impact at the policy level—some impact on the thinking of policy officials, and perhaps the beginnings of a more meaningful government response.’

14 Information and Communication Technologies for Development

Bringing It to the Senegalese People: A Participatory Approach has Helped Research Influence Public Policies

This brief is based on a case study by Khamathe Sene and Ramata Thioune.

In the small Senegalese town of Kouthiaba, dozens of pastoralists have turned out on a Sunday morning for the weekly market. All are trying to attract buyers to their livestock. They are also busy swapping information on pastures, diseases, and other essential matters. Some of these pastoralists now have new information and communication technologies at their disposal to obtain this information—the first time in Africa that these technologies (ICTs) have been used for such purposes. The main objective is to demonstrate—mainly to decision makers—that these modern tools can really help to improve pastoralists’ living and working conditions.

These days, some pastoralists track their herds using cellphones and Global Positioning Systems (GPSs). In three trial zones, herders have been taught to read and prepare geographic maps by working with GPS devices linked to satellites.

Several of these herders have also been equipped with cellphones to speed up the information exchange, and to provide them with an ‘early warning system’ for impending disasters. Also, some have received training in accessing information on the Web. A site, built in July 2003 and nicknamed ‘cyber shepherd’, offers maps showing which grazing areas are occupied and which have green vegetation, together with an estimate of the number of animals that can be pastured there without risk to the environment and its resources. It also provides information on ways to treat animal diseases.

This is the first time in Africa that this combination of ICTs has been used for tracking livestock migrations. The main objective is to demonstrate—mainly to decision makers—that these modern tools can really help to improve pastoralists’ living and working conditions.

The pilot project is supported by the IDRC through its Acacia Programme Initiative: Communities and the Information Society in Africa.

Risks and influence

IDRC was one of the only international agencies prepared to allocate funding for the establishment of ICTs on the African continent in the 1990s. Over the years, through Acacia, IDRC has invested more than $40 million in research, demonstration, and evaluation projects on key ICT issues. These include how ICTs can be used to reduce poverty, policies to bridge the digital divide, and the development of local content and knowledge (www.idrc.ca/acacia).

There is an expectation in many IDRC programmes and projects that the supported research will influence public policy at the national and local levels. In 2001, IDRC’s Evaluation Unit carried out a strategic evaluation to observe whether and how the research IDRC supports influences public policy and decision making. The Acacia programme was selected as a focus and case studies were prepared on the Acacia experience in Senegal, Mozambique, South Africa, and Uganda. Khamathe Sene and Ramata Thioune carried out the Senegalese study.

The Senegalese experience

The Acacia programme began in Senegal in 1997, but the beginnings of what might be called a national policy for ICTs was apparent as early as 1985. At that time, the National Telecommunications Company (SONATEL) was established, reflecting the determination of the Senegalese government to give priority to development of the telecommunications sector.

It was not until 1996, however, that the government issued its first statement on a telecommunications development policy. In its Ninth Economic and Social Development Plan, published in 1997, the government set forth a strategy for strengthening access to information and promoting social communication. The Plan declared that ‘information and communication technologies can no longer be regarded as a luxury for the elite, but must be seen as an absolute necessity for development.’

The strategy, however, was still no more than a vision for the future. As the Sene and Thioune study points out, there was no official national strategy for introducing and using ICTs to resolve the country’s economic and social development problems.

The study suggests that since 1997 the national and international context has changed considerably, with growing awareness of the role of ICTs in development, and increasing efforts to introduce ICTs into key development sectors. A minister of communications, a computer expert by training, was appointed; he had set up the parliamentary network on ICTs with help from Acacia in 1999. The Senegalese president suggested that the costs of telephone service should be reduced and his ICT counsellor announced that the mobile telephone market would be opened to an independent operator. In 2000, the prime minister declared the government’s intention to use ICTs to communicate more closely with citizens, and he announced that the implementation of the administrative information and communication system would be accelerated.

That same year, the main features of a national policy for democratizing access to ICTs was announced. In 2002, the Telecommunications Regulation Agency was created as an independent regulatory body responsible for ensuring fair and healthy competition for the benefit of consumers, telecommunications operators, and the Senegalese economy in general, and for accelerating the development of communications. The country now has some of Africa’s most highly developed telecommunications infrastructure.

Today Senegal’s 30 administrative subdivisions are connected to the central network through a digital transmission link, and all rural administrative centres have access to telephones. The network for data transmission, launched in 1988, gave enterprises access to databanks, and allowed them to connect to foreign networks. The country has 14 Internet service providers, 12 of them based in Dakar.

As the Sene and Thioune study points out, ICTs are accorded an important place in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), reflecting the vision of development championed by the Senegalese government that is responsible, among other things, for the ICT aspects of NEPAD. But the study adds:

. . . despite the favourable policy indicators and the fairly coherent view of the role of ICTs in development, Senegal does not yet have a coherent and integrated ICT policy. The emphasis is still on a sectoral approach. Moreover, implementation of these sectoral policies themselves appears to have stalled, although the education sector seems to be making progress in integrating ICTs into the education system and the Ten-Year Education and Training Plan assigns an important place to the technologies.

ACACIA’s role in Senegal

Preparation of the Senegal Acacia Strategy (SAS) began in 1996 under the aegis of IDRC, and at the instigation of Alioune Camara, IDRC programme officer in Dakar. Various national and local institutions representing government and civil society, researchers, and development players were involved. The Senegal initiative was approved by IDRC in 1997. The SAS objective was to encourage the establishment of an independent framework for concerted action in the ICT field—a framework that would provide the political authorities with a solid basis for their ICT policy.

The study notes: ‘In Senegal, Acacia sought to encourage a national strategy for adopting and integrating ICTs in support of development.’ The SAS thus became part of the institutional framework for decentralization and empowerment of development players, in a context where decisions regarding the introduction of ICTs were haphazard and uncoordinated.

From the beginning, policies were the key topic of debate: regulation, incentives, access issues, as well as the role of the private sector.

At the programming level, the Acacia initiative is participatory, and it has a two-pronged strategy. First of all, it seeks to influence policies by supporting the introduction of a regulatory body and an independent framework for coordinating ICT activities. On the other hand, as a research programme, Acacia seeks to develop scientific arguments that policymakers can use for integrating ICTs more thoroughly into the country’s economic and social fabric.