IDEV 3400 class & reading notes

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IDEV 3400 class notes & reading notes January 10th lecture: Reading notes: Duncan Green. How change happens. 9-27. Foreword: Ha-Joon Chang - Development is a practical feild guide, it is not always linear - Building Wells to generate powerplants, development covers a broad field - Power and systems approach: enables us to embrace the complexity and diversity of development projects - If we embrace that we change one part of a system, other systems will change also as everything is connect. When we understand that, we are already ahead of the others - Power cube helps to show imbalances and helps to figure out where the money, gender, and political power is. - Communities have a lot of the answers, knowledge, and rsouces to grow, fix, and change the surroundings. Overview : - A ‘system’ here is defined as an interconnected set of elements coherently organized in a way that achieves something - defining property of human systems is complexity: because of the sheer number of relationships and feedback loops among their many elements, they cannot be reduced to simple chains of cause and effect. - In complex systems, change results from the interplay of many diverse and apparently unrelated factors. Key words: 1. Systems thinking: 2. Cause and effect: 3. Human systems: 4. Linear planning: 5. Reflectivits: Main notes: - “the future is a dance between patterns and events” embracing complexity - Systems and complexity are two of the most helpful to grapple with the future and what it holds - Complexity: too many relationships and feedback loops of their elements to be reduced to simple ichains of cause and effect. It is impossible to predict the movement of any given person. But, there is order. - In complex systems, change results from the interplay of many diverse and apparently unrelated factors - To seek change, identify what elements are important and how they interact is crucial

- Factors like technological changes, conflicts, community action, and political involvement all interacted in surprising ways during the struggle of fishing communities in indias Bundelkhand regions, highlighting the unpredictable nature of how structures, agency, and the broader context interact. - Our tendency to view change through linear, preconceived plans leads to failure and missed opportunities. That is why plans fall apart when faced with unexpected challenges. - Most approaches to linear systems are fixed, replicable, and reliable - The author asserts that raising a child involved constant adaptation and learning without a definitive right way, relying on experience, advice, and mentorship, likening this iterative approach to navigating complex systems, step by step. - Systems are in a state of constant change, like a forest, through a cycle of growth, collapse, and regeneration, suggesting that activists should tailor their strategies according to the stage their political environment mirrors, understanding the connectedness of systems and the potential for both stability and vulnerability - Complexity and unpredictable emergent change is everywhere. systems, economics, and development: - Firms, ideas, and institutions obey the basic mechanisms of evolution. - There are parallels between economic process and evolution, likening firms and institutions to evolving organisms subject to variation, selection, and amplification. - They advocate for companies and activists organizations to embrace this evolutionary model, recommending a shift from static strategic planning to adopting a portfolio of evolving experiments to thrive in this dynamic system. - industrial policy boils down to ‘picking winners’ - laissez-faire policies leave it entirely up the market what will be produced and where. - Is systems thinking inherently pro-liberalization and anti-state intervention? No it is not, rather is emphasizes understanding complex interactions and outcomes, which leave room for diverse interpretations and applications, which includes both pro liberalization and pro intervention perspectives depending on the context - In complex systems institutions play a crucial role in maintaining fair conditions for dynamic interactions, suggesting that states and institutions should steer markets toward socially beneficial goals like equality and sustainability while retaining the markets dynamism, finding a balance that several states have achieved successfully. Crises as critical junctures: - Change in complex systems occurs in slow steady processes such as demographic shifts and in sudden, unforeseeable jumps. - ‘events’ that disrupt social, political, or economic relations can open the door to unthinkable reforms. - Major historical events, like the Great Depression, WW2, and the 1970s oil crises shaped institutional frameworks globally, promoting expanded government roles after crises and shifts between regulation and idealization of free markets impacting economic and political ideologies in various nations, including shifts in communists systems like china and Vietnam.

- Friedman’s instruction ‘to keep alternatives alive and available’: progressive activists also need to build trust and connections among the key individuals who could implement the desired change. The world is complex: - A reflectivist, Ben Ramalingham once said should “map, observe, and listen to the system to identify the spaces where change is already happening and try to encourage and nurture them.” - We cannot simply understand and plan everything in advance, if each situation is different - which it will be - so must be the response. - Principles for how to bring about change: be flexible, seek fast and ongoing feedback, success is often accidental, undertake multiple parallel experiments, learn by doing and failing, identify and discuss rules of thumb, convene and broker relationships - Effective convening and brokering requires understanding who should be invited to the table. Which players have, or could have, their hands on the levers of change? Positive deviance: - An alternative to business - In the power of positive deviance, the authors empahisize its application globally in diverse contexts, where success against odds is identified by looking for outliers. - They also stress the importance of community involvement in discovering these outliers for meaningful behavioural change, as it provides ‘social proof’ for sustainable transformation, cautioning against reliance solely on external expert investigations for creating toolkits. - Positive deviance capitalized on a hugely energizing fact: for any given problem, someone in the community will already have identified a solution. - It focuses on people’s assets and knowledge, rather than their lacks and problems. - Postive deviance remains an outlier in the aid business, even though it works well, it stands apart from the usual methods used in aid work. - The common way of finding problems, creating solutions, and sharing them is tough to change - Ironically, experts often contribute to this challenge - When confronted with a community of a group who aren't following the norm, follow them. It will push you further into success that you would think. - Summary: - systems thinking challenges traditional planning and how we work, urging activists to understand systems before acting - We must grasp the stop-start nature of change in complex systems and be humble, learning from mistakes and others - Embracing uncertainty while keeping our drive is crucial for changing the world - Once we understand systems, we won’t want it any other way Jan 10th Class Notes: - Handouts for fellow students to follow along with presentation

- Presentation slides and written document - Create good development project name - How we all define development: - Duncan green poverty to power blog - Global dough, global North, decide a geographic location - Websites provide good insights into development projects - World bank, NGOs, non profit organization websites, see what projects are being funded right now. - Focus on a project that a organization I working in right now. Go to bug organizations websites and narrow down from there Week two: managing and planning change - Interrogating the relationship between development and planned social change. Powercube activity. Readings for week two: January 15th & 17th Bennet and Jessni: Monitoring and Evaluation - Frequently asked Questions - Monitoring: An ongoing “observation.” it measures perform, and against pre-act levels. It is usually performed internally. - Evaluation: a systemic and deeper assessment. It is performed at the end of a project cycle. It examines what happened, and also why and how it happened that way. And what will be done to improve performance. The best evaluation is action oriented. - There are 7 major steps in carrying out an evaluation. - (1) Define the purpose and parameters of the evaluation - three major benefits of evaluation: evaluation for accountability, to demonstrate that the project has made efficient use of its resources. Evaluation for development- to gather lessons learned, of an understanding of successes and failures - that will then be used for improvements, replication of success, and avoidance of mistakes. Evaluation for knowledge- to enhance knowledge on particular subjects. - (2) identify key stakeholders- primary and secondary assess. - (3) define the evaluation questions- the users information determines what questions should guide the evaluation. Questions must be framed so it can be answered on the basis of empirical evidence. Measurable outcomes should be able to give you a path to your answers. - (4) select appropriate methods- below - (5) collect data - evaulatiom should be based on empirical evidence and follow a systematic procedure for gathering and analyzing data- whether it is quantitative or qualitative- to maximize credibility and reduce possible bias. Methods of data collection include: performance indi ztors, formal surveys, rapid appraisal methods, which includes key informant interviews, focus groups, community group interviews, direct observations. And mini serveys. The ideal design for evaluation. Is limited by “real world constraints.” which are time, budget, resources, political and data

indicators. The constraints need to also be mentioned in the designs as well as in the reports. - (6) analyze and interpret data- Raw data must become “usable, accdxzibls summaries, and reports that add to the body of knowledge about project success and promise change in attitudes, skills, and behaviour.” Qualitative data is difficult to analyze. But descriptive and content analysis offers the solution. - (7) use and communicate results- a typical evaluation report structure looks like this: executive summary, introduction and background information, description of the evaluated interventions, findings, conclusions and recommendations. Annexex. - The steps are similar to research designs and protocols. - Step 5 and 6 need to be repeated often as monitoring requirements of A project. - What is evaluation criteria: there are five international criteria used to evaluate development assistance- effectiveness, impact, references, sustainability, and efficiency. For each criteria used there should be a list of questions that reveal the extent to which the objectives are met. - In a participatory evaluation, the entire process involved all the project's stakeholders and the use of a facilitator. This seeks to be practical (responds to the needs, interests, and concerns ofprimary users), useful, formative (they seek to improve programme outcomes), and empowering. - Formative vs summative evaluations: formative takes place while activities are still underway. They correct flaws or unintended consequences or capitalise on positive developments. Summative evaluations occur when all activities have ended, they are carried out when it is too late to make changes. They assess whether or not initial goals have been used to collect data about outcomes and strategies. - Process evaluation: focusing in the ways in which activities have been planned and carried out in addition to studying outputs and other results. - progress evaluation: the extent to which a project is meeting its goals, measured against progress benchmarks. - Impact evaluation: examines a projects total efforts, both positive and negative, the intended and unintended at the end of the project cycle. - Baseline data: provides a portrait of a situation before the implementation of any activities. Pre determined benchmarks against which change and progress can be measured. - How to determine causality: recording change, attributing cause. A non exposed control group can give an idea of show the target group might have faced without the interviews. However, it will not be possible to determine whether deliberative activists were solely responsible for changes. - Logical framework approach: also called a logframe, is an application of RBM. They assess the causal relationship- the links between cause and effect- between inputs, processes, outcomes and impacts. Used to clarify objectives and guide implementation. Log frames are useful when carrying out a formative evaluation or progress evaluation, especially in rectifying shortcomings. They are notorious for

linear relationships between inputs and outcomes and attribute causality without taking into consideration other excused factors. They are favoured M&E approaches. - Modular matrices- a self awareness tool. Reveals elements that should of should not be aligned. These exercises help evaluatiors judge. To what extent their outputs contributed to their desired impacts, or geared towards their target audiences, and their outputs were aligned with significant events. - Rapid outcome assessment (ROA): episode studies of specific policy changes and assessing their relative importance. Case study analysis of research projects impacts, and outcome mapping approaches. Created to assess the contribution of a projects actions and research on a particular change in policy or the policy environment. However, it can it be used to capture economic impacts of research through policy change. - Outcome mapping: An alternative approach to evaluation. Rationale was the acknowledgment that causality and impact for any projects are extremely difficult to assess. There are three stages for outcome mapping: international design (vision, mission, patterns, outcome challenges, progress markers, strategy maps), outcome and performance (monitoring acitivies, outcome journals, stragety journals, performance journals), and evaluation (execution plan). Jonathan Murphy: The Rise of Global Managers, 18-40. - global managerialism describes the partly planned and party spontanydevelopmenf of a global system of human management. It is characterised by: a scientistic construction of the managerial mandate, elevation of economic discourse into unchallengeable fact, the occlusion of ideological differences through absorption, calumny, and evasion, managed participation masquerading as democracy, interweaving of private and public interests and administrations, exclusive networks in place of formal bureaucratic hierarchy, deepening and broadening transition eliege ties, conflict management through incorporation of opposition, Labour flexibility enforced through transnational markets, forces as last resort, and the seepage of managerial discourses and practices into remote and hitherto marginal corners of the world. - The term justifies eletie diminatiin and grossly unequal resource distribution. - It is ideology and post ideology. - It is a methodology of domination in the process of becoming, - It has expanded through the qualitative acceleration of tech innovations permitting real time virtual communication and accelerated global capital flows, maagerialmaginadh, and community. Roots of global managerial theory - James burnham drew attention fk the drive for social dominance for power and privilege for the position of filing class by the social group of class of the managers. - He argued that a managerical class was dominafi g life in New Deal America, communist Russia, and fascist Germany. - The new managerial elites shared a corporatist, scientific, and totalizing perspective, for which traditional democracies had no answer.

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