Workshop: 'Key researchable problems' - Social and Political Change

This workshop was held on 16 October 2003 at ODI, London. It was attended by over 70 people, including Paul Spray and Sarah Holden from the Central Research Team at DFID.

You can read the minutes of the meeting online below, or view them (together with a list of participants) in Word format.

Minutes of DSA/DFID – Research Consultation, Thursday, 16th October 2003

1. A DSA consultation on DFID’s forthcoming research strategy was held at ODI on Thursday, 16th October 2003. Seventy three people attended (Appendix 1). The meeting was chaired by Simon Maxwell, President of the DSA.

2. Simon Maxwell opened the meeting. He said the principal objective was to enable DFID to consult with DSA members about both the process and the content of their forthcoming research strategy. The opportunity would also be taken to deal with related topics, particularly concerning the ESRC and HEFCE.

DSA Research Guide

3. By way of introduction, Simon Maxwell drew attention to the guide to research capacity in the UK and Ireland, currently being constructed on the DSA website. 86 institutions had so far signed up to participate in this guide, which provided an important platform for discussions with all funding bodies, and a shop window for development research in the UK. He encouraged any institutions not yet signed up to do so as soon as possible.

ESRC

4. Allister McGregor introduced the discussion of ESRC matters. He reminded participants that the ESRC was a major funder of social science research in the UK, with a budget expected to reach £127m by 2005/6. Its funding windows included research centres, networks, research programmes and research fellowships, as well as individual grants. Full details were on the ESRC website.

5. Allister McGregor wanted to draw attention in particular to the process of choosing thematic priorities, which governed some, though not all, of ESRC funding. This was a careful and extended exercise involving interaction between researchers, users and the council of ESRC. Researchers were able to propose ideas through three “virtual colleges”, and the best of these were taken forward to the research priorities board, involving researchers, users and the private sector, and then to the ESRC board. The ESRC itself put considerable effort into working up proposals, which could then be tendered as centres, networks or programmes.

6. Allister reminded the meeting that ESRC provided a good deal of funding for development-related research, for example, the Centre for the Study of Globalisation at Warwick, the Well-Being centre at Bath, the World Economy and Finance programme, and programmes on ageing and NGO’s. Calls were currently out in the area of economic performance and development. There was a strong emphasis on multi-disciplinarity and on cross cutting work.

7. As the DSA representative to the ESRC, Allister was a member of the virtual college on politics, economics and geography. He had been collating ideas for the current research priorities exercise, and had received 38 ideas from 17 sources. These could be grouped in 5 clusters: (a) international order: governance systems and institutions; (b) international trading systems; (c) poverty reduction: what works; (d) histories and meanings of development; and (e) conflict and development: post conflict reconciliation.

HEFCE/RAE

8. Allister also briefed the meeting on DSA engagement with the research assessment exercise, particularly the response to the Roberts Report. This work had been co-ordinated by Colin Kirkpatrick. The DSA submission had called for a development studies sub-panel to be established in the next research assessment exercise. The DSA response to Roberts would be posted on the DSA website.

9. A short discussion followed on issues to do with the multi-discliplinarity of development studies.

DFID

10. Paul Spray then introduced a discussion about the DFID research priority exercise. He reminded participants that the central research team sat within the Policy Division of DFID, but had a somewhat different mandate. Policy Division consisted of a number of short term teams and was mostly concerned with developing policy specifically relevant to DFID. The research programme had a longer term vision and was focussed on producing public goods for the wider community. The research programme had been reviewed in depth by a team led by Martin Surr, whose report was on the website. [View Richard Manning's letter in response to DSA's comments on the Surr report.] He himself had been appointed as the new head of the central research team and had been tasked with producing a research strategy by Christmas 2003. In preparation for this, he had commissioned a number of short background papers, also available on the DFID website [to view these reports, search for "new research strategy" from the DFID website]. These addressed 5 main themes from the Surr report:

1. How to look at DFID operations as part of the international effort, including with respect to priority setting;
2. How to locate DFID funding of development research in relation to other UK funding (including HEFCE and ESRC);
3. How to leverage public/private partnerships in development research;
4. Issues related to communication and dissemination; and
5. Capacity building in developing countries.

Paul said that a sixth study was underway on DFID’s convening capacity.

11. Paul reminded the meeting that the current spend on research was about £75m p.a., but this would rise. The 2004/5 budget was fully committed, but he expected there to be more space in 2005/6: at present, only £25m had been committed for that year.

12. Paul said that DFID was moving towards a model that looked rather like the development research centre model in social sciences, or the “Knowledge Programme” funding previously implemented by the health research programme. This would mean funding coherent and problem solving sets of work, probably in the range of £500,000-£2,000,000 p.a. The funding would be to consortia, including institutions in developing countries.

13. Paul said that DFID’s experience was that centres or programmes of this kind could work very well. A key condition for success was a high degree of engagement with DFID and good research management by DFID.

14. The corollary of this philosophy was that the responsive window for smaller grants would shrink significantly. A programme of responsive grants in the range £100k-£300k had some strengths, but also entailed very high transaction costs. DFID did not have the resources to administer this well. Small grants had already been eliminated in some programmes (for example, agriculture, health) and were unlikely to survive elsewhere. There might however be a budget line of £1-2m p.a. for “horizon scanning”.

15. The immediate task, then, was to identify a first “salvo” of topics that could be included in the research strategy. Paul said the process was flawed, especially because it takes much too little account of users’ views: DFID hoped to have a better process next time. But for this round, there was urgency. Paul emphasised that ministers required a clear indication of what problems would be tackled by the research programme before they would release the money.

16. Complementing the presentation, Sarah Holden reported on an initial call for proposals launched by DFID in August. She said that there had so far been six hundred proposals made to DFID. It had not yet been possible to carry out a detailed analysis, but there were three main clusters around service delivery, poverty and new technologies. She said that the four main criteria would be applied to further selection: relevance to the Millennium Development Goals; long term; an international dimension; and playing to DFID comparative advantage.

17. All this generated a good deal of discussion, most with regard to process rather than substance. Among the main points made with regard to process were:

1. DFID’s commitment to research and consultation was welcomed.
2. Many participants were uncomfortable with the speed of the process and the lack of consultation with users. A clear message needed to be given to ministers that research funding could not be planned in quite the literal way implied by trying to identify a number of key researchable problems. Research was necessarily uncertain. It would be much better to acknowledge this from the beginning and build the case for research on the past record of poverty reduction rather than expected future outcomes.
3. A very strong defence was made of a small grant, responsive window. Many participants said that it was essential to support blue skies thinking and use small amounts of money creatively to develop new research areas. The key concern was in the mid-range funding of £100-500k. If DFID did not have the capacity to manage such a programme itself, then its own experience suggested that management could easily be contracted out.
4. DFID was asked to think carefully about the emphasis it was placing on capacity building in the south. Previous experience has shown very clearly how expensive it was to do this. Ideally, separate funding would be provided, perhaps through country programmes. In general, research should be integrated into all country programmes.
5. With regard to public/private partnerships, the point was made that seed-corn money was needed to establish these. It was very difficult for researchers to interest the private sector when they came to the table empty-handed. It was suggested that challenge grants might be a good way to resolve this problem.
6. Some important points were made about network research and the need for DFID to fund networks.
7. Finally, there should be another consultation before the strategy was finalised.

18. When it came to substance, the general feeling of the meeting was that it would be difficult to have a substantive discussion until more analysis had been carried out of the six hundred proposals already received. However, a number of specific suggestions were made:

1. Migration and people-trafficking (with special reference to gender)
2. HIV/AIDS
3. Development trajectories, especially of successful countries
4. Decentralisation
5. Water in Africa
6. NGO’s
7. Deep social changes, for example, ethnicity
8. Fair trade/Investment rules
9. Urban growth
10. Disease

19. A specific suggestion was made that the preparation of the research strategy should be separated from the detailed consultation on research topics. The research strategy, needed by Christmas, could be relatively general. That would then give more time for DFID to organise a consultation process similar to that managed by the ESRC.

20. It was emphasised that many of these research ideas needed multi-disciplinary work. It was important to make connections to the other consultation meetings DFID was organising.

21. In conclusion, participants emphasised that they were anxious to help DFID with its research strategy. They understood the timing constraints involved. Paul Spray did not think another consultation would be possible in this round, though it would be sensible to bring together two or three people from each of the consultation meetings to work more closely with the DFID team.

22. Simon Maxwell ended the meeting by emphasising that participants believed deeply in the transformative power of research, and in the contribution of research to poverty reduction. He also reminded DFID colleagues that the UK led the world in development research, and that this capacity needed to be protected. He quoted Yeats:

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

Simon Maxwell
20th October 2003