ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2005
In association with Development Policy and Practice
and the International Development Centre at the Open University
Milton Keynes, UK
7th-9th September 2005
Connecting people
and places: challenges and opportunities for development
DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT PARALLEL SESSIONS
ABSTRACTS
There are three parallel sessions:
C: September 8th, 9.00-10.30
D: September 8th, 13.30-15.00
E: September 8th, 15.30-16.45
The sessions will broadly cover different aspects of partnership.
PATRONS VERSUS WEBERIANS IN THE SRI LANKAN CIVIL SERVICE
Willy McCourt, Institute of Development Policy and Management, University
of Manchester
Patronage is often the reason why public reforms are attempted, and almost
equally often the reason why they fail. This article develops a view of
patronage broking in the public sector, and applies it to Sri Lanka, where
patronage has weathered several attempts at reform. Drawing on field research
in 2004, the author argues that the latest institutional reform, worthwhile
in itself, would be most likely to succeed if it addressed the perceived
remoteness of government that caused patronage to arise in the first place,
and also politicians’ expectation that the bureaucracy should be
able to respond to their constituents’ needs. Patronage is a political
problem that requires a political solution. The study also suggests that
‘ownership’ of policy reform is likeliest where there the
reform is an indigenous initiative, as it was in Sri Lanka.
This paper discusses the experience in Zambia with Sector Wide Approaches
for coordination between aid donors and between government and aid donors.
SWAPS are considered to be more succesful in Zambia than elsewhere. Typical
for the Zambian situation is that they have grown organically out of administrative
practices rather than being implemented from above as a consequence of
centrally formulated policies. The degree of success seems also to depend
upon growing from below in co-operative efforts. For example: the explicit
designation of a lead donor appears to be counter productive. Succesful
SWAPS are more than a basket funding arrangments and include other kind
of aid such as tied blance of payment support or project aid. Whereas
policy making on SWAPS tends to decree conditions for participation,
succesful SWAPS try to include as many partners as possible.
A CRITICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING
STATES CONCEPT: SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION FOR ISLAND PEOPLES?
Liam Campling, PhD Candidate, Department of Development Studies, School
of Oriental and African Studies
The 1994 Declaration of Barbados and the Barbados Programme of Action
(BPOA) was a watershed in the scale and scope of international cooperation
between small island developing states (SIDS). It was also the beginning
of a heightened international concern with the particularities of SIDS
developmental trajectories, constraints and opportunities. However, while
the Declaration opens with the affirmation that ‘sustainable development
programmes must seek to enhance the quality of life of peoples, including
their health, well-being and safety’, it does not affirm the centrality
of island peoples as key agents in this development. This paper argues
that for the genuine ‘sustainable development’ of SIDS a popular
democratic base of island peoples must exist within island societies that
in turn cooperate and coordinate – including material, political-social
and operational linkages – across the spatially disparate regions
of the global oceans. It is suggested that only through the heightened
consciousness of island peoples of linkages across oceanic regions and
their explicit incorporation as social agents to compliment and, if required,
counter international – read inter-state – negotiations and
strategies can contemporary forms of inter-island cooperation in the global
South be sustained.
The paper starts with a short outline of my conceptual framework: I utilise
critical theory within the discipline of international political economy.
Second, true to the critical approach, I demonstrate the historical development
of SIDS discourse and show that it has been influenced (and consequently
reformulated) by a multiplicity of international political-economic forces.
This emphasis on change should help us to draw out why particular aspects
of being a SIDS are emphasised at particular times. Due to its contemporary
hegemony in SIDS discourse I provide a more detailed sketch of the main
conceptual grounding of SIDS as presently conceived, this will incorporate
the key claims made by academics and policy makers for the economic and
environmental specificities of SIDS and their concomitant ‘vulnerabilities’.
In the third section I critically evaluate contemporary claims for the
particularity of SIDS. This sub-section will draw attention to the many
problems with the SIDS concept, such as policy-relevance, levels of acceptance
by development agencies, the in-built pessimism of the pro-SIDS literature
and intra-SIDS conflict over definitions. I then argue that there are
at least two highly significant distinctions that differentiate SIDS from
other small developing economies (SDEs), namely the permanent nature of
their geographical constraints and their associated extreme economic vulnerability.
The fourth section offers a critical assessment of a historical case study
in South-South cooperation – the New International Economic Order
– before moving to an interrogation of three contemporary conceptualisations
of South-South cooperation. I argue that in order for the SIDS concept
to be sustainable and, in turn, a mechanism for genuine cooperation, civil
society actors must be integrated as key players, despite the associated
difficulties and contradictions. Importantly, such a reformulation may
also improve the significance of the SIDS concept for those small island
peoples in the Third World who do not live in independent states but in
overseas territories, dependencies, etc. Despite the fact that social
issues beyond the economistic notion of ‘social capital’ have
now been largely disposed of in the contemporary conceptualisation of
SIDS ‘vulnerabilities’, in order for it to be a practical
strategic and tactical tool in international negotiations social forces
must be considered and incorporated (at least within the SIDS grouping).
Only then can SIDS provide a genuine and sustainable common-front in the
international system; an example of South-South cooperation that harnesses
the support of citizens as well as governments.
CHINA GOVERNMENT ROLES IN PPP MODES OF CHINA INFRASTRUCTURE
REFORM
Cheng Chen, International Development Department, School of Public Policy,
University of Birmingham
With the surprisingly economic development in China, public service is
confronting with the new challenges and need an urgent reform to keep
up with the social development. Since China began the progress of public
service reform from 1980s, the idea of cooperation with the private sector
and community has been put into the top of reform agenda. This idea was
evidently reflected in the various PPPs (Public-Private Partnerships)
modes in the infrastructure fields. However, problems emerged in the PPP
pilot tests in some advanced regions (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and
other costal cities). As the approach of public service reform transplanted
from developed countries, PPP confronted with the obstacles from China
institutional environment (economic, social, culture, and law factors).
Government, as the positive role in inducing PPP in infrastructure reform,
has to assume more responsibilities to resolve the problems in the process
of PPP integration. How to design the appropriate PPP framework when China
borrowed experience from other countries? How to arrange the framework
in different infrastructure sector? How to deal with the conflict between
public interest and the private profit goals?
Based on the discussion above, this paper seeks to explain that it is
imperative to establish an independent regulation framework to coordinate
the PPP process and what kind of role the government should play in this
task. In this paper, section one reveals the current situation of PPP
modes used in China infrastructure field and the main challenges happened
when PPP modes confronted with local institutional environment. Section
two examines the role that government has played during the process of
inducing PPP into Chinese infrastructure fields. Section three will focus
on the evaluation of current regulation framework that government has
built on the PPP modes, and explain that the urgent task that government
should assume is not only the policy support of PPP development as before,
but the establishment of an appropriate regulation framework to deal with
the conflicts between partnership modes and the local institution. In
this section, examples from the water sector will be used as the case
study.
FUNDING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA
O A Odiase-Alegimenlen: Senior Lecturer and Acting Head, Department of
Jurisprudence and International Law, University of Benin, Nigeria. (2005).
Nigeria has been an ongoing development project since independence. Its
major problem however has been how to translate development funding into
tangible growth and prosperity. Recent Human Development Reports released
by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), have placed Nigeria
low in terms of development. The paper examines ways in which the issue
of generating funding for developmental purposes has been addressed in
Nigeria. This is by evaluating the nature and sources of funding available
for the Nigerian development project. Other issues addressed include the
nation’s capacity for funding its economic development especially
in the light of dwindling oil revenue. It also addresses problems impeding
the translation of funding into development and economic growth. In addition
it focuses on issues such as external debt, corruption and misapplication
of investment/ development funds.
The funding of the nations economic development is contained primarily
within the budgets at all levels of government. The nations funding crisis
is traceable to its debt burden. Issues such as technology import or fabrication,
and imported investment capital are also factors, which impact on development
in Nigeria. Patently, poor funding in any State is linked to poverty,
which is the antithesis to development. The increased requirement for
funding, coupled with the need to focus on governance has rendered it
expedient for the government to disengage from exclusive funding of development.
It has involved the private sector through privatization of public enterprises.
While it is understandable why Government wishes to diversify funding,
it is at the same time vital that development is not left entirely in
the hands of the private sector. There must be partnership between the
public and private sector as well as between indigenous and foreign investors
for the nation to witness a balanced economic development.
The paper advises that while government is withdrawing from the exclusive
funding of the economy it must also bear in mind the ‘Fundamental
Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy’ which detailed
the state policy in respect of development of the nation and its peoples
in Section 16 (2)(a), as the ‘promotion of a planned and balanced
economic development as one of the aims of the political government of
the nation’. It is clear that the requirement that the nation’s
development should be based on democracy and social justice may not be
served by the massive withdrawal of government from funding. It notes
that if however the government feels it is absolutely necessary for it
to withdraw from funding development. It should at the same time withdraw
from the collection of petroleum revenue. A situation whereby government
collects almost all the available revenue in the oil sector, which incidentally
is the main revenue source of the nation, while at the same time refusing
to be the major financier of development in the nation, is patently unjust
and contrary to social justice. There is need therefore for a review of
the present system of allocation of funds to facilitate a proper economic
development in the nation. The value of integrity in the development process
is also important as without this any increased development funding would
be of no value.
TECHNICAL COOPERATION AND COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE: CONTRADICTORY
OR COMPLEMENTARY?
Hazel Johnson and Gordon Wilson, Development Policy and Practice, Open
University
Technical cooperation for development may be conceived as knowledge transfer,
knowledge production or knowledge co-production. Each of these conceptions
presupposes different kinds of social relation and social process. The
first is of expert to less expert and assumes a linear transfer of knowledge.
The second focuses on gains to the expert’s own knowledge through
technical cooperation and gains to the less expert’s knowledge as
different and separate processes, both in terms of the types of knowledge
and how the knowledge is produced. The third is based on a dialogic process
in which participants are all experts with different knowledges who work
together in a process of knowledge co-production. The latter can be seen
as similar to the idea of communities of practice, although communities
of practice (as the phrase suggests) involve knowledge co-production (or
shared learning) in order to bring about changes in practice.
These distinctions can be seen as a useful heuristic device to identify
different types of social relation and social process. However, in practice,
the three relations and processes identified all involve elements of power
and inequality. A question is whether attempting to reformulate technical
cooperation as building communities of practice can actively change both
how technical cooperation is conceived and enacted and also address power
relations. The paper reflects on this question in the light of recent
research into North-South municipal partnerships and earlier research
into NGO-community partnerships. It argues that power and inequality are
not ‘objects’ that can be permanently removed from social
processes. Rather they are ever-present challenges both to technical cooperation
and communities of practice. Addressing these challenges, the paper concludes,
involves reframing technical cooperation beyond knowledge-as-commodity
to be transferred, shared or appropriated to processes of learning, where
everyone is a conscious learner, and where due weight is given to the
positive aspects of difference between actors.
MANAGING DEVELOPMENT NORTH AND SOUTH: CHARACTERISTICS
AND PROBLEMS OF DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT IN WALES AND AFRICA
Alan Thomas, Centre for Development Studies, Swansea University
In previous papers I have developed three views of development management.
One was management in the context of development as historical change.
The second was management of deliberate efforts at progress, or development
tasks. The third was a style of management with a development orientation,
that is, an orientation towards progressive change. These were dubbed
management in development, management of development and management for
development. It was suggested that a combination of all three is needed
for a complete view of development management.
This paper compares development management in Wales and in Africa by
examining two groups of development managers. The African group consisted
of students on four professional programmes in development policy and
management, three in Southern Africa and one run from the UK. The Welsh
group consisted of practitioners in sustainable development in Welsh local
government. The comparison takes each of the three views of development
management in turn and asks to what extent the characteristics and problems
of development management are similar between Wales and Africa. It is
found that, although the context of development is very different, the
characteristics of development tasks are quite similar in Wales and in
Africa. The idea of management with a development orientation also works
equally for Wales as for Africa. Although the specific importance of various
values for development may differ, the problems with management aimed
at changing values have some striking similarities between the two contexts.
EFFECTIVENESS FACTORS IN PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTING DEVELOPMENT
PROJECTS IN EDUCATION
Paul N. Barry, and Willy McCourt IPDM, School of Environment and Development,
University of Manchester
The key role of education in enabling human, social and economic development
is relatively well explored and documented in development policy and practice
literature. The importance of the role of curriculum development at the
technical heart of the education process is also well understood.
For these reasons, in the last twenty years, technical cooperation projects
to develop reform or renew school curricula have played a frequent part
in multilateral and bilaterally funded projects in programmes designed
to improve educational quality in Ecuador and other less developed countries.
While improving educational quality may seem to be a relatively simple
matter, many such projects have been less than successful.
The failure of such projects presents a major challenge for development.
Similarly, understanding factors that may determine [or explain] success
and failure in such contexts presents a significant challenge for those
concerned with planning and implementing effective processes of change
in such contexts.
One such curriculum reform project was CRADLE, a bilaterally funded project
in public education in Ecuador. Despite considerable external political
and economic instability, the project was recognized by the British and
the Ecuadorian stakeholders as being effective.
This paper reports a recent attempt to account for the factors that determined
success in the case of CRADLE, considered from the perspectives of different
stakeholders and argues that systemic planning and implementation and
public-private sector partnership working were two key factors. It explores
two current frameworks for development management and explores a third
that views effective project leadership and management in terms of administrative,
technical and political capabilities.
Page last updated:
18 August, 2005
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