How are citizens’ movements getting more active in Asia? Lessons from a 10 country dialogue

Yesterday’s post discussed two of the case studies from last week’s Asia Development Dialogue on active citizenship. Today’s installment covers my more general thoughts  on the discussion, based on some final reflections I was asked to give at the end of the day.

First, I felt pretty privileged to be able to eavesdrop on a conversation between activists, political leaders and academics from 10 Asian countries: a women’s rights organizer from Myanmar seeking advice from a women’s leader from muslim Southern Thailand on dealing with ethnic conflict; a woman mayor from the Philippines asking a Cambodian leader if she had considered expanding her work on nurturing grassroots women’s political leadership to other countries. Fascinating.

A Thai academic described the overall aim as shifting the perceptions in Asia, so that when poor people speak up of, those in power hear ‘Voice’ rather than ‘Noise’. There is clearly a high level of active citizenship in Asia, and that is linked to, but certainly not synonymous with, the existence of competitive electoral politics (eg China, or yesterday’s post on Vietnam).

There was a big focus on working with local government, where a partnership of equals with civil society organizations seems more feasible (national governments in capitals often seemed a long way away in these conversations).

There was a place for individual leadership, with some charismatic women mayors from Philippines and Thailand addressing the gathering. But individuals are embedded in political and social systems, so understanding what is going on (and what is possible) requires a good power analysis of the drivers and blockers of active citizenship – that was present in some cases, not in others, where the obstacles to enhanced voice were portrayed as purely technical, rather than about power and politics.

There was also a clear link drawn between active citizenship and gender rights, with a prominent role for women’s leadership, not least when repression blurs the boundaries between the private and public spheres, and women emerge from their roles as wives and mothers to lead human rights organizations (the case from Southern Thailand reminded me a lot of Argentina’s Mothers of the Disappeared).

So how best to build active citizenship? Some lessons from the day:

Analysis is critical: understanding the incentives of those in power, what kinds of evidence or pressure persuades them to listen, what language to use.

Implementation Gaps: often, success emerges when civil society organizations and their allies  identify such gaps between policies or laws, and practice, and deliberately target them.

Insider v Outsider strategy: getting the balance right. Depending on the political and social context, that may mean getting government representatives on your advisory board (Vietnam PAPI) or working with sympathetic officials (Indonesia). But sometimes more confrontational approaches are needed, raising the difficulties of managing cycles of conflict and collaboration in the growth of citizen-state relations.

The nature of alliances – this meeting seemed to privilege vertical alliances (between state, civil society and private sector) over horizontal ones (building large coalitions of CSOs). Is that a feature of AC work in Asia, or just a coincidence of the case studies chosen here?

Finally, a long and difficult conversation on the role of ‘Effective States’. Sure enough, many people in the audience disliked my use of the term, with its echoes of autocracy and repression. My response was that the desire for ‘democratic developmental states’ is understandable, but at least in the early stages of development, there is not much evidence for their feasibility. It does seem that there is a trade-off between economic take-off and human rights, and we need to think about that.

Overall, I was struck by the optimism in the room, given my previous posts about the closing down of civil society space in so many countries. In Asia, this is happening in some places (Cambodia), but elsewhere the room for citizen action is actually expanding (Myanmar). People detect an upward spiral, with the occasional backlash by governments merely a sign of the inexorable rise of active citizenship in the region. Hope they’re right.

As for the event itself, it’s easy for a ‘dialogue’ to produce little more than speeches and ‘conference building measures’. I don’t know the ADD process well enough to judge, but the combination of a cross-sectoral approach and serious case studies seems promising. The challenge at these events is to get people to really exchange views and try and understand the very different worlds present in the room, rather than just bigging up their own project (there were remarkably few admissions of failure in the presentations) and talking past each other. You probably need to lock them away for more than a single day to really make that happen. The ADD moves on from here to engage with decision makers and start generating ‘so whats’ – worth keeping an eye on.

Building Active Citizenship and Accountability in Asia: case studies from Vietnam and India

Last week I attended a seminar in Bangkok on ‘active citizenship’ in Asia, part of an ‘Asia Development Dialogue’ organized by Oxfam, Chulalongkorn University and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. It brought together a diverse group of local mayors, human rights activists and academics, and discussed a series of case studies. Two in particular caught my eye.

In India, Samadhan, an internet-based platform for citizens to directly demand and track their service entitlements under national and state government schemes, is being piloted in two districts in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. The pilot is supported by the UN Millennium Campaign and implemented by the VSO India Trust. Here’s the blurb from the case study:

‘The way Samadhan works is simple. Citizens can file a complaint into the Samadhan system through phone calls, SMS, or the web about any delayed entitlements owed by the government. Once their complaints are filed, the computer registers it by location, time, date, type, and other classifications. A local administration official then reads the complaints and deems an appropriate course of action. Citizens can then track these complaints through their registered number via website or SMS. Once it has been resolved, the citizen receives a message indicating that action has taken place.

The key contribution of Samadhan is that it saves time and increases efficiency for both the citizens and the district administrations. Traditionally, the process of grievance redressing was a lengthy and tedious undertaking. Citizens were required to submit a written application in person at the district headquarters during weekly public hearings. The onerous cost of travel alone can be burdensome to citizens who often have limited resources and time. Now, through Samadhan, citizens can file a complaint with a click.’

It’s early days yet – the complaints are coming in, but the investigations are just getting going (see screengrab from the website). The obvious question is ‘why should officials take more notice of an online complaint than they do of poor people turning up in person?’ There is a huge assumption inherent here that the state wants to hear and redress complaints. When asked about this, Praveen Kumar G, VSO’s India programme manager, said that the primary pressure is political – the fact that the complaints are in the public domain fosters scrutiny and pressure, because bureaucrats are pulled up by their elected bosses if they’re underperforming. But he conceded ‘If we have district leaders who want to do this, it’s easy. If they’re opposed, it’s very difficult.’ Quite. I also assume there is UN dosh funding the government staff required to read and respond to the online complaints, which raises issues of replicability.

The other project is the Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI), from Vietnam (why does everything interesting always seem to come from Vietnam?). This is a public index that ranks local government performance. It piloted in 3 provinces in 2009, but now covers the whole country.

The methodology is rigorous (a lot of international experts are advising). Local researchers are recruited and trained to interview a carefully selected sample of 13,000 people all over Vietnam on their experience in dealing with local government in areas such as health and education, the level of petty corruption, and participation.

According to Giang Dang, of CECODES, one of the organizers:

‘The researchers arrive at the village and show a list of names to the village head and say ‘we want to talk to these people’ – they insist on those names, even when the leader says ‘he lives a long way from here, why don’t you talk to this guy who lives closer and is more knowledgeable’.

‘When Vietnam opened up, the two things that arrived first were beauty contests and Coca Cola. So we decided to organize beauty contests. Most opposition came from the contestants in the beauty contest – the public servants.’

Besides the rigour of the research methodology, the secret of PAPI’s success lies in the way it actively recruits champions inside thesystem. Its advisory board has representatives from the National Assembly, ministries, government inspectorates and academia. A key role is played by the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF), a mass organization of the Party which supports the project, and ‘opens doors – the VFF goes all the way down to commune level’.

The results are already impressive: ‘higher ranking provinces are keen to keep their position and feature their ranking in all their documents. Some of the lower ranking provinces are starting to set up task forces, and asking us for advice on how to improve performance.’

USAID in Thailand visited PAPI last month and are interested in replicating the project in Thailand (an interesting transfer from a less to a more open political system).

Dr Dang thinks another key to PAPI’s acceptance is that it is run by local researchers, and so is not subject either to the whims of the aid industry, or accusations of foreign meddling in Vietnam’s internal affairs (the project was initiated by UNDP, which is seen as fairly neutral). He thinks this kind of intra-Vietnam comparison between provinces exerts more traction than cross country comparisons, which can be dismissed on the grounds of Vietnam’s unique conditions.

‘There has been a positive response from the public, but we do get some hostile phone calls from officials – ‘who the hell are you to do this!’. At the end of the day, it’s about pressure, and the naming and shaming gets media and creates pressure. We have to make a wave big enough to move the province.’

The interesting question here is why hasn’t this model replicated more? According to Dr Dang, China has something similar, but run by the Party, and Mexico has a comparable project, but that’s about it. He says it took two years of piloting to get the methodology right, find out what way to ask the questions etc and that that approach would have to be repeated in any new country. Funding may be an issue – in this case it comes from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), which seems particularly good at these kinds of long term experiments. Given the response from local government, I wonder if PAPI could become self financing, offering to help the laggards catch up in exchange for a consultancy fee? That raises issues of neutrality/money contaminating the research, but I imagine these could be resolved.

The Democratic Developmental State: Goal, Utopia, or somewhere in between?

There’s nothing more disturbing than belatedly realizing that you’ve written two papers in close succession that contradict each other. Does it make you an open-minded liberal, or just a confused dimwit? Judge for yourself based on these two papers: one, an internal paper for Oxfam, tries to capture and update the argument of From Poverty to Power that development arises from the interaction of active citizens and effective states. The other, a chapter for the latest Commonwealth Secretariat annual  ‘Commonwealth Good Governance’ is much more cautious about the difficulties in achieving a ‘democratic developmental state’, born of precisely that combination. I suppose you could argue that they represent the clash between respectively optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect. Or that I’m really out of my depth. Either way, it’s been niggling away at me for years. See what you think and if anyone can shed light on how to reconcile the will and the intellect, bring it on.

Excerpt from How Development Happens

‘Why focus on effective states? Because history shows that no country has prospered without a state than can actively manage the development process. The extraordinary transformations of countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Botswana, or Mauritius have been led by states that ensure health and education for all, and which actively promote and manage the process of economic growth. After twenty years of erosion by deregulation, one-size-fits-all ‘structural adjustment programmes’, and international trade and aid agreements, many states are weak or absent. But there are no shortcuts; the road to development lies through the state, and neither aid nor NGOs can take its place.

Why active citizenship? Because people working together to determine the course of their own lives, fighting for rights and justice in their own societies, are critical in holding states, private companies, and others to account. As an integral part of ‘development as freedom’, active citizenship also has inherent merits: people living in poverty must have a voice in deciding their own destiny, rather than be treated as passive recipients of welfare or government action.

True development emerges from the interaction of effective states and active citizens. Economic growth is not enough if it comes at the expense of other freedoms. The system – governments, judiciaries, parliaments, and companies – cannot deliver development merely by treating people as ‘objects’ of government or other action. Rather, people must be recognised as ‘subjects’, conscious of and actively demanding their rights, before true development In its full sense can come about.’

Excerpt from ‘The democratic developmental state: Wishful thinking or direction of travel?

“We are left with an unpalatable conclusion. While effective states, in the Commonwealth as elsewhere, are historically a sine qua non for economic development, measured in terms of income per capita, active citizenship and democracy are equally essential to achieve development in the wider sense – an accumulation of freedoms ‘to do and to be’ (Sen, 1999).

But there are likely to be trade-offs between these two goals, even though its nature and extent is probably changing over time, in response to cultural shifts on attitudes to human rights, technological changes in access to information, decentralisation and the partial encroachment into national political spaces of international governance norms. High levels of growth are more likely to be achieved with the sacrifice of some freedoms, and vice versa.

Yet, at the very least, it seems plausible that the transition from an exclusive to an inclusive state can occur earlier in a country’s development trajectory than in the past. Aid can help or hinder this process (and most likely do both). Moreover, on this occasion, the author hopes his analysis proves unduly pessimistic, and that Mkandawire’s fiery optimism carries the day:

The experience elsewhere is that developmental states are social constructs consciously brought about by political actors and societies. As difficult as the political and economic task of establishing such states may be, it is within the reach of many countries struggling against the ravages of poverty and underdevelopment. The first few examples of developmental states were authoritarian. The new ones will have to be democratic,and it is encouraging that the two most cited examples of such ‘democratic developmental states’ are both African – Botswana and Mauritius (Mkandawire, 2001).”

Any thoughts?

Book Review: how citizen action leads to national change

When discussing social change (or anything else), there’s no substitute for good case studies. They inspire and provoke new thinking, helping us move beyond platitudes and generalizations, and they stick in the mind as islands of reality in a sea of social science blah.

‘Citizen action and national policy: making change happen’ a new book edited by John Gaventa and Rosemary McGee of the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Sussex, published this week in the UK, offers not one case study but eight, picking them apart for the lessons they contain on how social action can lead to lasting change. They include some cause celebres, like South Africa’s Treatment Action Campaign, and some lesser known examples such as Mexico’s maternal mortality movement, or Turkey’s campaign to reform the penal code to respect women’s rights. I used several of the studies in draft form for From Poverty to Power. A declaration of interest – John is chair of Oxfam GB’s Board of Trustees.

The book asks ‘Under what conditions does citizen action contribute to more responsive states, pro-poor policies and greater social justice? What is needed to overcome setbacks, and to consolidate smaller victories into ‘successful’ change?’ And based on the case studies, it comes up with 7 ‘propositions’ on how such changes occur.

Proposition 1: Political opportunities are opened and closed through historic, dynamic and iterative processes. While political opportunities create possibilities for collective action for policy change, these openings themselves may have been created by prior mobilization.
[My translation: change processes are unpredictable and slow]

Proposition 2: Civil society engagement in policy processes is not enough by itself to make change happen. Competition for formal political power is also central, creating new impetus for reform and bringing key allies into positions of influence, often in synergy with collective action from below.
[My translation: change emerges from a combination of insider and outsider activity]

Proposition 3: While international allies, covenants and norms of state behaviour can strengthen domestic openings for reform, they can also be the subject of fierce domestic opposition. Successful reform campaigns depend on careful navigation to link international pressures with differing and constantly changing local and national contexts. In respect of mobilizing structures, the identity and positioning of change agents and their ability to form and sustain broad alliances:
[My translation: Be careful! External pressure can easily provoke a nationalist backlash.]

Proposition 4: Successful policy change occurs not through professional advocacy alone, but involves complex and highly developed mobilizing structures which link national reformers to local and faith-based groups, the media and repositories of expertise. Such structures are built over time, deeply grounded in the societies where they are found, and linked to the biographies of those who lead them.
[My translation: You can’t just turn up and start campaigning. Context is all]

Proposition 5: Alliances between social actors and champions of change inside the state are critical to make policy change happen. Social mobilization structures provide opportunities for state-based reformers to generate change from within, just as political opportunity structures provide spaces for social actors to do so from without. [My translation: Insiders need outsiders and vice versa]

Proposition 6: Policy change on contentious issues requires contentious forms of mobilization. Contentiousness is a dynamic and contingent concept. Successful collective action must also be dynamic, with the ability to frame issues carefully, adjust to changing circumstances and audiences, and draw upon a wide repertoire of strategies. Concerning the nature of policy success itself:
[My translation: You need to be able to make nasty as well as make nice]

Proposition 7: ‘Success’ can be understood in many different ways, especially among the different actors in a broad-based campaign or social movement. In general, robust and sustainable changes require campaigns which link the national to the local and which pay attention to the processes of empowering citizens and deepening democratic governance as well as to effecting policy change itself.
[My translation: How you win matters]

Gaventa and McGee identify some further implications, including some bad news for the bean counters: ‘The nature of such change is dynamic, iterative and may take many years to achieve. Progress at one moment can lead to setbacks the next. But success on one front also creates spaces, coalitions and repertoires, which can contribute to change on other fronts. This view challenges fundamentally approaches which are more linear in approach, or which believe that policy fixes for severe development and democracy problems will occur quickly or predictably according to predictable models that fit neatly into time-bound project cycles.’

They also remind us that we don’t live in a world of cosy win-wins: ‘change on fundamental issues requires contention and contestation’, which is academic-speak for ‘sometimes change will require a punch-up, rather than dialogue and consultation.’ The combination of this conclusion with that on the need for broad alliances is interesting – campaigners need to know both how to work in alliances with very different kinds of people, and how to fight. Most of us temperamentally prefer one or the other.

Not surprisingly, as I drew on it so much, the book is very compatible with ‘From Poverty to Power’, arguing that national change is critical, but needs to be underpinned by international action and ideas. And a nice big endorsement for the combination of active citizens and effective states:

‘National policy change is vital for achieving more just and fair societies, as well as for inclusive services and inclusive democracies. Yet it will not emanate from the state alone, but from the synergistic effects produced by the actions of organized citizens. Just as political opportunities create possibilities for effective citizen mobilization, so too does organized citizen action create new possibilities for state reform.’

It’s in the space between citizens and states that a lot of the interesting stuff takes place. A really useful book.

Does Grassroots Activism Work? Two new collections of case studies

NGOs talk a lot about empowerment, voice, agency, grassroots mobilisation etc but it sometimes sounds a little woolly and you can’t help wondering if it actually amounts to much more than talk. Still those doubts. Two new collections of case studies, from the Institute of Development Studies and Oxfam, provide a gold mine of real life examples. Read More …

How did the book go down in Obamerica?

Just got back exhausted from an intense two week tour of the US organized by the hyper-efficient Kristen Prince at Oxfam America. Highlights included an afternoon on Capitol Hill in West Wing Wonderland discussing the book with Congressional staffers, big and enthusiastic turnouts at the Gates Foundation, Northeastern, Georgetown and Brandeis Universities and the World Bank (where we broke our sales record), a presentation to some Silicon Valley types at Stanford (I’ve never had valet parking outside one of my talks before…), and an enjoyable knockabout with Lant Pritchett at Harvard’s Kennedy School (Lant’s a climate change denier – he doesn’t deny it is happening, but thinks we shouldn’t spend any money on it. He was part of the misleadingly named ‘Copenhagen Consensus‘, which mercifully seems to have dropped off the map of late). So what emerged from this extended road test with about 1000 of the USA’s best and brightest? Read More …

Launching From Poverty to Power in East Africa

I recently returned from a whirlwind launch trip to Uganda (where Fountain Publishers are the publishers), Kenya (where the distributor is Legacy Books) and Addis Ababa. Crucially, from my point of view, this was the first systematic presentation of the book to audiences in developing countries, so I was fairly nervous! Read More …

So what do other people think of the book?

I’m nearing the end of the initial series of launches + discussions with NGOs in the UK (CAFOD, Christian Aid, World Vision, WaterAid, ActionAid) and at DFID (the UK’s development ministry). What’s emerging (apart from powerpoint poisoning)? Read More …

I just read four novels in a row…

….. without a single interruption from development, economics, news, or the appositely named ‘grey literature’ of papers, reports and all the rest of the stuff that pours into my inbox every day. Yep, I’ve been on holiday. Actually, the supposed detox of reading fiction proved to be an unplanned exploration into the links between individual citizens and politics – there appears to be no escape. Read More …