Its worth noting that although it probably (definitely) increases the risks involved, building stuff isn’t always a distraction. Done in the right way it can demonstrate that beneficiaries/donors/governments/other actors do have meaningful choices, and as a result it can often both influence and enable the access to the range of powerholders needed for effective convening and brokering.

We’ve found in a recent Consortium delivered resilient Shelter and WASH project (which used the opportunities coming out of a disaster as a catalyst for change) that the hardware element ticked a lot of the ‘traditional’ and less traditional boxes (Value for money, Measurable, Reportable and Verifiable spending that fits some of the requirements for Adaptation funding, very visible impact on lots of people) while also getting the attention of communities, government and donors, and demonstrating that substantive change is possible in a rapidly worsening environment where its easy to believe that nothing can be done.

As a not insignificant additional benefit, being a large project it enabled us to pay for the meetings, staff and partner time needed for complex analysis, research, advocacy and strategic thinking.

By delivering successfully we have really bolstered our allies in the National Government (which on the whole sees non-government action as expensive and ineffective) and supported them in their own debates within government about the most effective ways to respond to massive gaps in realising basic rights. Our partners on the other hand, see the limitations of even successful delivery, and are actively exploring how they can leverage it through communities and other programs to make a genuinely strategic contribution.

Certainly won’t suit all situations, and its a long race after the official project ‘end’ to get the strategic changes needed, but the potential is real.

In terms of the questions you ask, take a look at the Good Governance Learning Network in South Africa, initiated by IDASA, a national (and indeed continental African) democratization NGO. However about 15 local democratization NGOs develop participatory tools that they use to make their local muncipal governments more accountable– and they share them with each other.

You asked, “but what distinguishes useful convening-type meetings from pointless NGO gabfests”? I don’t have a crisp answer, but I’d suggest that it lies somewhere in the contribution made to agency by the meeting. If either its participants have agency, and can therefore through the meeting start to align towards a collaborative reform process; or its participants do not have agency and acknowledge this, and spend time/energy in the meeting identifying pathways to inclusion of those with agency, it seems to me it will produce momentum.

If it is purely descriptive of “what should happen/what we recommend” or even “why it doesn’t happen” it will, in most cases, be choir preaching. Those are valued points, to be sure, but only as part of an event or process with responsibility to generate change, not if analysis or issuing recommendations for a vague audience of everyone that matters is the whole purpose.

This also suggests an avenue for the transformative approach you mention – the meeting shouldn’t consist only of those with agency, or it will not contribute to inclusion and in fact may reify exclusion. This is a tension within the with-the-grain idea.

Very curious to hear what others have to say about this, though. Thanks for sharing!

Multiple Equilibria for seeking to bring together interests and power in a more desirable way – and often supplying allocative and authoritative resources that can be drawn upon to upset the current probably.
Dynamics for acknowledging that the world is in motion and interconnected, i.e. to exist, even ingrained structures are continuously being reproduced and are linked far beyond the immediate policy context, and so needs a ’solution’ to be approached too.