CHANGING APPROACHES AND METHODS IN DEVELOPMENT PLANNING: OPERATIONALIZING THE CAPABILITY APPROACH WITH PARTICIPATORY AND LEARNING PROCESS APPROACHES Gabriel Ferrero y de Loma-Osorio1, Ph.D. and Carlos Salvador Zepeda2
ABSTRACT In spite of the evident facts about the lack of effectiveness of development aid, and of the criticisms that the focus in blueprint approaches to planning have received from the early 80s, tools and methods based on predictive logic models and a project approach to development, such as the Logical Framework Approach and the Results Based Management, continue being the main approaches employed in development interventions. In contrast, there has been an effort to revolutionize these methods with alternative approaches based on the of the view of development interventions as learning processes where people participation is essential, where only learning through long-term experience may generate endogenous processes of human capabilities expansion. Using the Capability approach, this paper critically evaluates how methodologies and approaches proposed within the learning process approach fit in as better normative ways to expand the capabilities of the individuals and human collectives than the mainstream project approaches on development. Finally, a set of specifications for “design” of new management methods are proposed, using the joint rationale of the Participatory Learning Process and the Capability approach.
KEYWORDS Development planning, Participatory approaches, Learning process approach; Project Cycle Management, Logical Framework Approach, Capabilities Approach
1
Group of Studies in Development, International Cooperation and Applied Ethics, Valencia University of Technology (Valencia, Spain). E-mail:
[email protected], Tel. (+34) 660 38 22 57, Fax: (+34) 96 387 98 69. 2
Politics of Alternative Development, Institute of Social Studies (The Hague, Netherlands). Address: Gondelstraat 31, Room 1, 2586 ER, The Hague, The Netherlands. E-mail:
[email protected], Tel: (+31) 06 330 242 82 1
INTRODUCTION “Man, there are no unknown islands, Who has told you, king, that there are no unknown islands, They are in all maps, In the maps there are only known islands, And what island is that, that you search for, If I could tell you then it wouldn’t be unknown, Who have you heard talking about it, asked the king now more serious, No one, In that case, why do you insist in saying that it exists, Simply because it is impossible that an unknown island does not exist.” (Saramago, 2002, p. 20)
The concept of development has been growing and evolving in terms of theory and practice in the last three decades. Yet some of the ‘islands of knowledge’ which have been conquered by development theorists are still unknown, invisibilized or denied from mainstream practice. The maturity of the now wider and richer concept of development does not find its parallel in real current practice: the predominant approach, tools and methods used ‘in the field’ of development interventions, basically developed during the seventies and eighties responding to managerial needs and a `project´ vision of development (such as Logical Frameworks and Cost-Benefit Analysis), translate into practice a much more narrow idea of development. Moreover, relatively new instruments and approaches such as SectorWide Approaches and Results-Based Management (RBM) are still based on such narrow normative methodological approaches. The urgent need for explaining the failure of many development projects in practice adds to the need for theorizing and providing better theoretical frameworks, methods and tools for practicing development interventions. In this way, many development practitioners conscious about the complexity of expanding a multidimensional ‘human development’, are now claiming for a shift in the dominant approaches and methods because if the aim is to expand in a holistic way the capabilities and positive freedoms of human beings, their conceptual narrowness in practice is becoming an obstacle for a new, more meaningful and alternative development. Consequently, the focus of this paper examines first the current theoretical advances in the concept of human development and how the Capability approach has now provided an enriching platform or ‘space’ from which to evaluate the standard practice of development and also provide novel specifications for new approaches, methods and tools to use ‘in the field’. Using this approach, the argument of the second stage in this paper, will try to tackle why and where the current mainstream utilitarian approach known as the ‘project approach’ misses to fulfill the wider notion of development inherent to the Capability approach. The third stage of this paper, will then use the its enlightening perspective to evaluate the framework of Learning process approaches and Participation, as approaches which could have potential advantages to further the objective of wider development. By doing this it will finally engage in providing fresh specifications for a new design of methods and tools with a normative wider approach to development, by feeding from the theoretical frameworks of the Participatory and Learning process approaches (originated from the experience on the field by practitioners of development) and the Capability approach (originated by theoreticians and scholars developing the concept within the boundaries of practical rationality). Does the Learning process approach, and thus the family of methods and tools that come with it, meet the necessary requirements to operationalize the Capability approach? The search for the unknown islands of knowledge that connect development practice with theory will be the quest of this paper and will claim possibilities for its existence. We are not intending to provide the coordinates of these islands, or to describe them. We only hope to contribute to explore some of the possible relationships between the Capability approach and the planning and management practices, as shown in Figure 1 in terms of hypothesis.
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Figure 1: Development interventions and long term improvement of human capabilities in terms of Alkire-Finnis dimensions
Intervention Program
+/-
Long term Improvement of Human Capabilities (Dependent Variable)
+ 1. Dimension of Life- health vigour and safety A: Uses Project Approach (blueprint) type of tools and methods
B: Uses Learning Process Approach type of tools
+
+ +
+
5. Dimension BeautyEnvironment
+ + 6. Dimension of Integration/Spiritual Peace
2. Dimension of Knowledge 3. Dimension of Work/Play
7. Dimension of Agency
4. Dimension of Friendship
If the Capability Approach is to be put in practice it should integrate or use…
Source: using the notion of human dimensions in (Alkire, 2002a)
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND EMPIRICAL WORK: LEARNING FORM PRACTICE The empirical support for the reflections and proposals exposed in this paper trying to answer the research question is provided by the analysis of experiences ‘in the field’ in development processes in Central America and Morocco as study cases (three of them were development projects within the aid traditional practices), using long term participant an non participant observation (between a year and two years in each case), in-depth interviews and documental research, searching for triangulation in the research process (the main data of the study cases are shown in Annex 1). The paper has been written with an emphasis on describing the theoretical foundations of the several approaches being involved between development theory and practice, and trying to expose the links and relations between them. We are building both on the state of the art and on our empirical results, although we will not be following a traditional ‘theoretical framework-methods-results and discussion-conclusions’ paper scheme. We have preferred to try to build a coherent discourse and express like so, rather than making continuous references to the research results. The first case -the Initiative for Rural Development in Nicaragua- is a process that began in 1997 promoted by the Nicaraguan government and supported by several donors and agencies (mainly Spanish Agency for Development Cooperation-AECI and UNDP) in order to formulate a rural development policy with the maximum level of previous deliberation and discussion. A project was financed by AECI between 1999 and 2002 to support the process, which had several difficulties –the emergency context introduced by hurricane Mitch, but mainly the instability of agricultural ministry staff in charge, changed several times -. The process was also accompanied by several capacity building activities, and the output of this effort was a document called ‘Basis for a Rural Development Plan in Nicaragua’ (Iniciativa por el Desarrollo Rural de Nicaragua, 2001) with the synthesis of the debates and discussions and with a significant influence on rural development public policies and NGO interventionsi. Although its
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unexpected results and impacts were satisfactory, the donor rejected to continue its support to the process because of the lack of success in achieving previously designed visible outcomes and results. The second case -the Education and Work Project in the Industrial Park of Chalatenango (El Salvador) is a local economic development project. Focusing on youth unemployment and trying to reduce rural migration and violence, up to six little enterprises were constituted as cooperatives, and associated in an industrial park sharing several costs (as financial) and providing social benefits to members and to the three communities involved: access to primary education, vocational education and health services. The project was implemented completely by 1997, and in 2002 the six cooperatives were already producing. The third case – the DRI project in the Beni-Snasssen, Berkane (Morocco) - is an Integrated Rural Development project which took place in the north of Morocco, involving three municipalities and their authorities. The program began as the initiative of one of the majors, and tried to constitute a local development group to promote bottom-up local development projects in the territory. The process was very interesting taking into account the extremely complex institutional context, the gender strategy implemented and the negotiation and conflicts which emerged during the execution. Almost every indicator and goal of the project design was achieved, but unresolved conflicts (caused mainly by previous decisions concerning infrastructure location) and the lack of possibility to redesign the project ended in an abrupt break-off in the relationships between local actors and between local and international ones. In the first three cases described, the main research tools employed were participant observation (being part of the project staff with different roles), and in-depth interviews. In the last study case, - the Bajo Lempa Group in San Vicente-, non-participant observation was the main technique used. This case is a local development process itself, supported by several projects, based in El Salvador and seen under the light of the experience of the Grupo Bajo Lempa and its characteristic of being known as a social or popular ‘solidarity economics’.ii This experience is a grass-roots initiative of joint cooperation between the people of 51 communities in the occidental region of the country, in San Vicente. It started as an experience of ‘survival strategies’ among its people to develop later on in a ‘strategy for life’. Its mission and purpose has been to be an “association of associations” whereby their main focus is to put in the centre stage the human being and its quality of life in a holistic way. This organization envisions the overall effort of its economic, social and political initiatives and projects as an integrated and comprehensive vision of development according to their own values of solidarity, cooperation, equity and justice where the well-being and agency of the people is followed above everything else. (Montoya et al., 2005). A key aspect of this experience is that it was based and constructed on their principles and vision: the funding for their ideas of development and their own style of social, political and economic organization, production, etc. was sustained with the help of their own ‘lobbying power’ that the organizations such as CORDES and CRIPDES had in representing their own interests when advocating for funds and cooperation with powerful donors such as Oxfam America and USAID. However, dependency on donor aid was the last thing they wanted and therefore they set themselves to the difficult objective of ‘learning’ to be sustainable in the long run. From the social organizational experiences, they went to create economic organizations under the leadership of CORDES that would lead them to generate a family of interrelated social and economic projects whereby the key agents and subjects were the people themselves. A common characteristic of the family of projects that they created was that they were nonprofit, community-based, long-term creative initiatives. Their scope was not to be “financially sustainable” since the start, but rather that their criteria would fulfil their own vision and aspirations of the kind of life they wanted.
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I. WIDER HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: REQUIREMENTS OF THE CAPABILITY APPROACH When addressing development in practice, why should we take into account the capability approach and try to operationalize it with methods and tools that fulfill its requirements? What are the key elements that make the capability approach so distinctive and useful for development theory and practice? Would this impact development practice? The argument of this section of the paper will emphasize the idea that the legacy of the capability approach in development theory requires (and it is fundamental for) the design of new methods and tools that can actually provide wider development in praxis, and any design that complies with its logic should at least include the following aspects or requirements:iii 1.
Development as humanness: A multidimensional human-centred approach
Any method or tool that benefits from this approach normatively should incorporate the idea of “human flourishing”iv,that is, the ability to function well in life, to do and be what they “have reason to value” so that they can live full and creative lives (people’s positive freedoms) as the goal of development (Alkire, 2002b; Robeyns, 2005; Sen, 1999, p.8). This characteristic makes this liberal philosophical framework a human centered overall perspective, where “People are the real wealth of nations” (United Nations Development Programme, 2004, p.173). Innovatively, this idea helped to reframe how to think about development beyond mainstream economics and its utilitarian rationale (which reduced development to people’s incomes, assets, and utility satisfaction) by placing human beings as the ends of development and not only the means of economic growth (Sen, 1990, p. 41). Furthermore, from an anthropological and ethical perspective, capturing humanness makes it include notions of well-being and notions of “agency” (Amartya Sen) and “human dignity” (Martha Nussbaum) in such a way that demands the notion of human richness and diversity which is a basic part of every human being’s personhood (Benedetta, 2005). As a normative human-centered paradigm it prioritizes both a micro and macro analysis: on the one hand, it analyzes the individual’s well-being and agency; and on the other, it also furthers its scope to evaluate the ‘landscape’ of social arrangements that shape the individual’s well-being and agency. Hence, it is also concerned with the design of policies and proposals about social change in society that may affect the way human beings expand or contract their capabilities to do and to be what they have reason to value (Robeyns, 2005, p.94). It is this holistic exercise of “valuing human freedoms” which makes it also so hard to operationalize because of its broad scope and informational basis. Thus it may provide a useful framework to conceptualize and evaluate poverty, inequality or well-being, although in order to explain the causes of these phenomena it requires additional explanatory theories (Sen, 2001, p.56). 2.
Multidimensional and multi-level information to capture the details and colours of human development
Normatively the distinctive lenses from which this approach examines what is human development should, at least, concentrate in two categories: a) functionings and b) capabilities (freedom). As Alkire (2005, p.118) suggests this is vital because “…any account of capabilities that does not include both misrepresents this approach." The category of “functionings” refers to components or aspects of how a person lives, that is, the set of ‘beings’ and ‘doings’ that make up a person’s life and which are represented in the actions and activities that he/she engages in, and that encapsulates what he/she is. The various combinations of functionings that the person can achieve will depend on the freedom or the opportunities given in their social context and personal conversion factors. The second category is that of “capabilities” or “capability set” which represents the alternative sets of functionings (doings and beings) that the person could potentially achieve. The overall perspective of the person’s potentially achievable functionings reflects its capability set, and therefore, the plurality of a person’s positive freedom or opportunities to choose the paths of life that he/she desires.
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In addition to the latter, within the capability space of an individual there is also an internal plurality: it distinguishes well-being from agency, and both are crucial elements to explain it. Well-being is a standard of living related to one’s own life which may depend of the effect of circumstances that make the person better off (eg. The smile from someone you love). In contrast, the concept of agency refers to the ability of an individual to pursue the goals he/she values, for example when one commits itself to do something that may lead to outcomes or circumstances not necessarily beneficial to the person herself. In this way individuals should be analyzed in “at least four different spaces: well-being achievement, well-being freedom, agency achievement, or agency freedom” (Alkire, 2005, p.122) (See figure 2). Hence, what makes life valuable is the existence of effective opportunities for an individual to be both the architect and main actor of its own life. This suggests that one of the key requirements of the Capability approach is that it has to be provided with a multidimensional set of information about all the dimensions of wellbeing and agency of the valued capabilities, identified normatively by the people themselves, which necessarily requires people’s participation. For this approach, it is not enough to analyze the direct and intended consequences of an action, but also the “the unintended but foreseeable consequences –whether these be expansions of capabilities, contractions of capabilities, or tradeoffs”, including development interventions (Sen, 1999; see Alkire, 2005, p.123). Examples of information that development evaluations usually have excluded under the framework of the Project Approach is the effective impact in “‘human rights” or “religion-inner peace”, “beauty appreciation”, etc (Alkire, 2005, p. 123).
Figure 2: The capabilities of a human being have an internal plurality
Source: own construction
3.
Taking into account human diversity and social interactions
Another normative aspect of this approach is the recognition that people are never the same, intrinsically different and unique. In this way, it advocates to go beyond the utilitarian perspectives which make comparisons in the space of social primary goods because they inevitably fail to acknowledge the reality that different people need different amounts and kinds of goods to reach the same levels of well-being or advantage. Moreover, given this human diversity this approach also pleas to value how the circumstances (material and non-material) shape people’s opportunities to choose the ‘doings’ and ‘beings’ they value for their lives in different ways. In this sense, it is normatively not sufficient to know the goods or services a person owns or can use to know which functionings he/she can achieve because for every different individual there are specific personal and socio-environmental conversion factors that convert commodities into functionings, also influenced by the whole social and institutional context that affects the conversion factors and the capability set directly. Thus, it is crucial in this approach to reveal and understand “the context in which economic production and social interactions take place, and whether the circumstances in which people choose from their opportunity sets are enabling and just” (Robeyns, 2005, pp. 99-101; Sen, 1999, pp. 72-73). Thus, in this approach the context and its complexity are crucial when intending to expand human capabilities and agency, and may be even more influential than the goods and services provided by an organisation or development program. This new focus implies analyzing the individual’s possibilities for a flourishing life within a larger and richer picture of development, not just in theory (including a prescriptive program theoryv) but in its
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praxis. In this line of thinking Deneulin (2006) has argued that development policy needs to be shaped more thoroughly by the freedoms that people have reason to value, and that they should be considered as “fundamental features of human well-being and not as ‘choices’”. Like adding new colours to an artist’s palette, it goes beyond the otherwise monochromic image of development, based on the material ‘have’ or ‘have nots’ typical of the narrow utilitarian or neoclassical approaches. Its focus on the capabilities of the people liberates the analysis from ‘autistic’ procedures of analysis based on constricted informational basis and normative prescriptions of how to provide goods and services as main outputs of development interventions, almost automatically leading to effects usually referred as ‘increased quality of life’. In this sense, as Hill (2003) notes, development may be seen as a process of expanding freedom but also as a process of empowerment. What matters is that people are the subjects of their own lives, and not just passive objects of social welfare policies or development interventions. As Deneulin quotes from Sen’s work the “foundational building block of development lies in “the ability of people to help themselves and to influence the world” (Sen, 1999, p. 18) as cited in (Deneulin, 2005, p.75). 4.
Ranking the ethical priorities as a methodological path
Distinguishing that people are the means and the ends of development is the first ethical priority within the capability approach. Likewise, the ends of well-being, justice and development should be conceptualized in terms of people’s capabilities to function. Although some ends are simultaneously also means to other ends, this does not change the core idea: people function best when they have the freedom, or capabilities to function, that is when the barriers that deprive them to enhance their living conditions are erased by the right social and economic policies (See Sen, 1988, p.11; Sen 1990, p.41; Alkire, 2005, p.117) In this sense, as Gasper and van Staveren (2003) identify from Sen’s capability approach, there is a normative ranking of priorities within the categories of analysis used by this approach to measure development and equality: In first place, the most important is the category of capability, the set of life options a person is able to choose from because it relates to the notion of freedom; in second place, the category of functionings, or how a person actually lives; in third, utility, or feelings of satisfaction coming from the fulfillment of preferences, lower in importance since preferences have the risk of being created without much internal reflection or formed in situations of deprivation of information or options; and in last place, the category of goods/commodities, because it is only an indirect measure of well-being due to people’s different requirements. It implies notions of basic capabilities (basic for survival or dignity) and required minimum attainment levels. The positing of notions of basic capabilities (basic for survival or dignity) and required minimum attainment levels. While these notions are ones that most people already find reason to value, to explicitly emphasize them helps to guard against cases where a person’s reason leads instead to behavior that is damaging to the person herself or to others. 5.
Respecting people’s different ideas of the good life and identifying capabilities with active procedures of empowered participation
Operationalizing this approach requires that the methods and tools used to value the freedoms and capabilities of the people recognize explicitly that this is a process of value judgment. Consequently, an effective systematic participation must provide the appropriate space (or freedom) for people to evaluate for and by themselves their different ideas of the good life without a specific formula or recipe of what it should be. Indeed, this does not narrow the conception of the good life to a specific pre-established political model, rather it provides the necessary framework for public procedures in “prioritizing and threshold-setting as to which and whose capabilities are put first” (Gasper and van Staveren, 2003, p. 141; Sen, 1999, p.148). What kind of active participation should clarify what is it that ‘‘people have reason to value’’ and what is the hierarchical importance of the capabilities which are meaningful to them? Although Sen does not provide the logistics for this, it is certain that the methodologies advocated by this approach in terms of participation would stress respecting human diversity as well as respecting people’s
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different ideas of the good life (Sen, 1992, pp.42-46; , 1999, pp. 76-85). This is vital because, even in the case of two people with identical capability sets, their intrinsical uniqueness of being two different human beings, would mean that they would end up with different types and levels of achieved functionings and would inevitably make different choices (from their “x”, “y”, or “n” capabilities) following their different ideas of the good life (Robeyns, 2005). More recently, Deneulin (2006, Ch. 3) has argued that the aspects such as the socio-historical dimension of human freedom and agency, concepts of collective capabilities and of socio-historical agency should be incorporated in furthering the capability approach’s insights to development. Likewise, the capability approach is not satisfied with analyzing freedoms or opportunities that a person might hold only theoretically, legally or if these in reality are inaccessible to him/her, instead it focuses on the “capability set”, from which he/she can effectively choose and that provides him/her with freedom to achieve. But the freedom to achieve of each human being in a collective group has its objective boundaries in society: collective participation should deal with a discussion on value judgements, for another important aspect of freedom: it is a mechanism that can override and filter negative or harmful functionings from the people. The notion of freedom stated in the capability approach necessarily breaks with the rationale of the “free to choose” ideology of the type stated by Friedman (1980) because increasing choices per se do not necessarily lead to an increase in freedom (Sen, 1999). Having more has the risk of crowding out other valued capabilities such as ‘being able to live a peaceful life’ and may not reflect the individual’s capability of (1) using it, (2) if he/she values it or (3) even if he/she has effective access to it (there may be cultural, religious or political constraints for the person). (Alkire, 2005, p.121; Sen, 1992, pp.59-63). What is more important, is that the participation implied in the capability approach has to be meaningful and of high quality (not just quantity), which means that dealing with value judgments necessarily should address transparently the issues of power and control (Sen, 1992, pp. 64-66) This is why the notion of agency is a useful analytical category to link it with the empowerment for the people in critical and systematic participatory processes (Hill, 2003). In a more macro level, what it does not propose a priori is who should have the control in the way society is run (be this the state or market forces). It only sees them as the means to provide real and effective freedom for a person to systematically choose what he/she values. Converting the capability approach in policy-making criteria implies that there should be given normative priority to capability as a policy rule to promote freedom in its fullest sense and to provide the people the freedom to “make their own mistakes’’. This criterion of capability as a policy rule is different from an evaluative rule. What is important here is that in the process of policy formulation, capability should be the appropriate measure of how advantaged a person is, rather than just a measure of the person’s well-being itself (Gasper and van Staveren, 2003). 6.
Space for values and motivations: overcoming the homo economicus rationality “Development may be better described as at least comprising freedom and justice, and more enlighteningly as involving also the growth and maintenance of the value of caring for others.” (Gasper and van Staveren, 2003)
The capability approach seen from the ethical and humanistic perspective of Martha Nussbaum’s and Des Gasper works (Gasper, 2004; Gasper and van Staveren, 2003; Nussbaum, 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2006a, 2006b; Nussbaum and Glover, 1995) normatively sets as key to provide an effective space for values or motivations such as solidarity, compassion, identity, cooperation, altruism, habit and sympathy, variables that tend to be overruled in mainstream economics, or are simply regarded as non-necessary information, merely instrumental to achieve the objectives and goals of projects and programs. “The formation of values and the emergence and evolution of social ethics are also part of the process [of
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development analysis] that needs attention, along with the working of markets and other institutions” (Sen, 1999, p. 297). The space for this kind of values is important, because viewing persons as agents implies accepting, understanding and taking into account their humanity. Consequently this makes it necessary to obtain information about the complex set of values that construct their humanness and they value as important. Human beings are diverse, and much more so, in the arena of social goals and commitments that motivate them, this is why the capability approach, on behalf of its own coherence emphasizes people’s expression in public discussion about the kind of human model of motivation that they may value. The normative flexibility of the approach makes this framework attractive to universalize and has direct implications for the actual model of homo economicus (Alkire, 2005, p. 125). A comparison of what this approach sees as the best social states or its underlying ‘utopia’ is illustrated in table 1. Table 1: The capability approach “challenges the fundamental basis of welfare economics as well as its schematic model of rational economic man.” Questions to take into account the generation and allocation of productive resources to define social states 1. What kinds of information are necessary in order to define social states? 2. How are more valuable social states to be distinguished from less valuable? 3. What rules or principles guide (or constrain) the procedures of attaining/sustaining social states?”
Utilitarian type of approaches* (ie. Project or blueprint approaches)
Capability approach
Social states should be defined by sum-rankings of individual ordinal utility
Social states should be defined primarily in the space of human capabilities although other kinds of information will pertain
More valuable states are those where greater aggregate sums of ordinal utility define a better social state
a) More valuable states are those that have ‘expanded’ valuable human capabilities, b) The determination of which and whose capabilities are valuable and their relative weights should be subject to explicit scrutiny and public discussion over time a) The single rule of social utility maximization is insufficient b) Plural rules, based on practical reason, apply.
The principle of maximization when aggregating utility
Source: Based on (Alkire, 2005, p.126), See also: Sen (1997) *Bergson-Samuelson Welfare Theorem
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Popularize it! : Being user-friendly and practical in order to operationalize the capability approach “Theories that are not user-friendly do not spread. (…) Operationalization [of the capability approach] may well be more art than science.” (Alkire, 2005, p.116, 129)
Finally, the last requirement that should be respected of any methodology that pursues the operationalization of the capability approach is that it must be user friendly, and empirically easy to practice in order to popularize its use by everyone. The reason behind this is that in reality the more it is accessible for the real actors and stakeholders of development, the more it empowers and expands the agency of the people and contributes overall to their well-being. Precisely because it is the weakest part of the approach that the issue of operationalization of the capability approach has sparked the most recent academic debates, both at a macro and micro level. The capability approach may have been successful in influencing the tip of the academic pyramid in which the concept of development has evolved, but in terms of the methods and tools used in development interventions it has failed to be as influential. There are no clear paths in which to advance. For development practitioners it has not been easy to understand, even less apply this ‘framework of thought’ in development interventions. Sabina Alkire (2002a; 2005) has sustained these ideas and criticized the fact that the capability approach has been lost in translation
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because of its internal complexity and broad scope in information and analysis, and warns about the risk of having a similar fate such as the Basic Needs Approach.vi As a platform of analysis of development interventions, the foundational work of Alkire (2002) in ‘Valuing Freedoms’ and Manu Mathai´s contributions (Mathai, 2003) may serve as inspirational examples of efforts to tackle in micro-development interventions the requirements of the capability approach. For Alkire the focal problem was how to identify the impact of which ‘valuable’ capabilities a development intervention had expanded or contracted. This supposes both a theoretical as well as a practical challenge: how will value judgements be managed? Will the methodology used comply with the principles of pluralism, incompleteness, and freedom of choice that the approach pursuits? Alkire constructs a credible operational framework of ethical rationality and practical reasoning that may be operational and potentially universal in which to identify the relevant capabilities of the people. Moreover it does so trying to respect the dynamics of value judgements and respecting the agency of the people. Both for Alkire and Mathai, John Finnis’s work (1980; 1983; 1990a; 1990b) is fundamental to identify the human being’s “basic reasons of action” in order to construct ‘dimensions’ in which to map the human impacts in contracting or extending their capabilities. Dimensions of human development are, in Sabina Alkire’s work, operational ways to translate the capability approach in micro-development interventions and form the basic skeleton of the participatory exercise that she develops through three case studies in Pakistan. Later on, Mathai, furthers this trend with an extension of her work and adds Manfred Max-Neef’s (1992; 1991) and Finnis’s contributions to build a “FMNA” matrix . These efforts try to be universal by focusing on the need for practical-reason-based rationality, which makes it universal and goes beyond technical rationality which it includes. It is adequate for decisions that require the decision-makers to weigh or value “otherwise incommensurable ends –for example empowerment or income” (Alkire, 2002a, p.201).The case studies use cost-benefit analysis to represent the principle of efficiency or ‘technical’ rationality. It is also required that the methodology has an intrinsic relationship with the agents putting as the central element of the how to do it issue, the participation.
II. THE PROJECT APPROACH: THE MAINSTREAM ORTHODOXY IN THE APPROACH & METHODOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE What is it that makes ‘mainstream’ development practice a ‘narrow’ approach? The concept of ‘development intervention’ and specially the word ‘intervention’ already reminds us that development is also about relations of power. The ‘intervened’ are subject to the methods and tools of the ‘interventionists’ that come with knowledge and approaches ‘developed’ somewhere else, and more often than not, imposed into them (Haas, 1992; Mosley, Harrigan, and Toye, 1991). The scripts of knowledge that are used to frame the patterns of interventions in development have something in common: the holders of knowledge and power frame the nature of the approach through policies, programmes and projects and put a normative veil into the way development should be practiced. Yet the most pressing problem does not lie in the evolution of the concept of development, which has been outstanding in theory, but rather on the praxis of it. People have not been in the center of development interventions (Korten, 1992) and furthermore, they have mainstreamed and co-opted its now wider meaning with narrow and superficial rhetoric (Kothari, 2005; Nederveen Pieterse, 2001). The praxis of development has been ‘lost in translation’ so it will be argued in this paper mainly because of three common features: i) development praxis in reality is conceived and practiced by and for human beings, in unequal and multilayered relations of values, power and knowledge, usually within a non-inclusive aid system (Groves and Hinton, 2004); ii) development praxis has the characteristic of being done in environments of complexity, uncertainty and unpredictability; and iiii) the normative approaches to development have failed to grasp
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the multidimensional features of ‘being human’ and what it means to expand development as ‘good change’ to and from the perspective of our own humanity (Chambers, 2005). In this section of the paper, the project approach will be analysed as the main representative of mainstream interventions of development. From it, the analysis will focus on the basic unit of development interventions which are usually enclosed and defined as ‘projects’. It is within this basic unit of the ‘project’ that the visible hand of development aid has made its impact in the human lives of the ‘intervened’. It is this approach which has been dominating the whole aid chain for the last few decades, and consequently their outcomes. (Korten and Klauss, 1984) What is striking about the evolution in the trends of development cooperation is that the project approach to development, although widely used and criticized has not been redesigned to ‘put the people first’ in its methodological tools (Cernea, 1995 [1985]). On the contrary, its general focus still concentrates on the means rather than the ends of development always favouring a more utilitarian, narrow interpretation of the concept of development. These methods and tools of the project approach are still primarily used in leading donors and NGOs. Many scholars have criticized the lack of effectiveness of the project approach in expanding the capabilities that the people have reason to value, but the question has always remained: are there any alternative frameworks to change the approach of development practice? Are recent innovations within the aid technology such as Sector Wide Approaches or Results Based Management a real paradigm shift towards a people centred approach? 1. From the project as an instrument to the project as an approach used in every planning level The relevance of development projects is exposed in scientific literature since Hirschmann´s in “Development Projects Observed” (1967). The birth of the development project as a unit of action in development cooperation was acknowledged due to their rising popularity in practice. As it is well known, the use of the project as an aid instrument was generalized during the sixties with a special role in its spread of USAID and the World Bank, as Baum and Tolbert state: “project approach has been in its own the main contribution of the Bank to development process in the world” (Baum and Tolbert, 1986, p. 22). As Gittinger would remark whilst the rising popularity of development projects “projects are the key instruments of development” (Gittinger, 1988, p. 3) The fundamental characteristic of this approach is that the project and its cycle (identification, formulation, implementation, supervision, finalization and evaluation) is considered the basic unit of action in development. Given the central importance of development projects since the sixties, when infrastructure, civil engineering and industrial projects were the main types of projects, and probably given its strong methodological and documental apparatus associated to engineering practice, the project manner of preparing all kinds of development interventions begins to be employed in a progressive form in the design and management of programmes, policies and plans in general. In this way, the last few decades, the project has gone beyond its instrumental dimension and has become an approach by its own merits. As Gittinger acknowledges “there are various types of activities that, alternatively could be considered as programmes, that could fit in an effective form to the project format” (Ibid. p.9) If we define ‘approach’ in wide sense as the set of principle and ideas which lead the attention to specific aspects of a problem in coherence with previous assumptions, which include an interpretation of its the nature in order to solve it properly and the recommendation about the strategies and methods more appropriate to do it, we can define the project approach as “the application of the principles, methods, techniques, documents, ways of organizing and instruments that are part of the design and management of projects in any level of intervention (policies, plans, programmes and projects)” (Ferrero y de Loma-Osorio, 2003, p. 172). It is important to remark that the methodological foundations of project approach car be tracked from engineering project management tools and methods, and its
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expansion during the sixties as an emerging “design science”, rather than from specific management approaches developed ad hoc to development interventions. The generalization of the project approach has been important in terms of methodology. It is because of their increasing population in the landscape of development cooperation that the methods used within them have proliferated into the superior scales of planning. This transfer of the project approach to superior levels of planning into the methodological terrain configures a joint interrelation between the pure activity of planning and the project approach, until they become the same thing de facto. Nowadays the project approach is being employed throughout all levels of planning. Moreover, the majority of development projects in international cooperation that follow the principles of the project approach, have some characteristics in common (Ferrero y de Loma-Osorio, 2003, p.168): a) They encircle a set of actions previously designed and defined in certain detail, oriented to a specific development objective, represented by a logic model which links causes and effects from inputs to results; b) There is a formal document which contains the latter model and all the information in a manner that allows its implementation by another organization different from the one who designed the project. Usually, these documents become contractual commitments in international tenders; c) The implementation of the project consists in the execution of the planned activities and the obtainment of the aimed results, by means of the budgeted resources; d) Thus a sequence of phases and stages is required to go from the initial steps, through design activities, to implementation and evaluation; e) The actions are oriented to the benefit of a collective group of people previously established, usually denominated as the “beneficiaries of the project”, not necessarily participants in the process of its implementation. 2. The project approach as a blueprint approach The majority of the authors identify the classic project approach as the denominated “blueprint approach”. Bernard Lecomte (1986, p. 10), for example, analyzes in depth the concept and reach of the project approach, and characterizes the project as an instrument where the blueprint of its commands is one of the three dimensions that coexist in it (the blueprint, the phase structure or cycle and the temporal institution in charge of executing the “plan” of the intervention). For Korten (1980, pp. 496-497), the project approach is a blueprint approach due to its classic or traditional approach on projects, that holds an interpretation on how development interventions are supposed to function when they are implemented. The success of the project is assumed if prior to its implementation there is a detailed and careful planning, which leads to link the project approach to two central hypothesis which shapes its ‘blueprint’ nature: a) Planning is a design activity where the designers are given a profound knowledge of the situation, that may be applied through a rational process, and b) there are no external factors that interfere with the implementation, given that the problem encountered is stable (Friedmann, 1987). The blueprint characteristic in the project approach is so strong that it is not unusual to find analogies between the project theory and the engineering projects where the project approach could be translated as a “document approach” or literally a “plan approach”. As it is described by Korten, the planners (designers), based on the previous experiences or studies that the investigators provide, develop (design) in detail the best possible project in terms of cost-effectiveness in order to reach some results of development, reflecting the design in documents or “plans” necessaries for its implementation for other technical team supposedly qualified for it. From the managers and organizations carrying out the project, it is expected that they should execute it within that framework or set of instructions just like “a contractor would follow construction blueprints, specifications, and schedules”. (Korten, 1980, p. 496). External evaluators will measure at the end of the project cycle the changes in the target population and will identify and communicate to the planners the registered changes in relation to the planners, so that the plans can be revised.
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The downside of the project approach is its difficulty to characterize the project stakeholders as active and autonomous human beings who are the real owners and main designers of the development initiatives (not interventions). In terms of roles, in the evolution of the project approach the ‘counterparts’ and persons that participate on the project are given a script a priori of their own roles. The project approach is in synthesis a blueprint approach, when it has these recognizable characteristics: a. Its essential component is a previous design of the intervention technically detailed to the maximum, both in the definition of physical systems as well as the organizational ones, and of a detailed design of execution. b. It assumes the possibility of predicting the relations of cause-effect between the means employed in the project and its effects. It assumes that it is “possible to predetermine the set of relations of cause-effect that convert resources, knowledge and technology in a desired and sustainable human change.” (Fowler, 1995, p. 145) cited in (Gasper, 2000, p. 28). c. Given the required technical details, it usually is presented as an external planning, prescriptive in technical terms and management (Mosse, 1998, p. 6). d. It implies a heavy emphasis on engineering desk design. e. Last but probably the most important, the formal deviations from the original design during the execution of the project are implicitly associated to a bad management or a wrongly designed project, so this must be avoided. Although a margin of error is permitted, this has to be clearly noted in the plan itself, which is adjusted to the parts that preserve the structure as an integrated unit (Friedmann, 1987, p. 189). Following the definition of ‘evaluation’ given by the DAC (OECD, 2002, p.21)vii, the fundamental reference of an evaluation in the orthodoxy of development is therefore, the project’s own initial design, especially on the achievement of the objectives and results preestablished (an advance in the case of monitoring), according to the criteria of pertinence, efficacy, efficiency, impact and sustainability or viability. In this orthodoxy, Cost-Benefit Analysis continues to play an important role when assessing efficiency. Indeed, when agencies evaluate their own performance in development interventions in practice, their measure of “success” or “failure” is still mainly anchored on measurable, clear-cut, short term results. In this sense, the reasons given by these agencies of development for interpreting that a project has ‘failed’ lie externally to the logic of the project approach: the guilt is not found on the rationale of the approach and its subsequent methods & tools implemented but rather in how these have been used by its ‘users’ (Ferrero y de Loma-Osorio, 2003, pp. 234-245). Whether the project approach in development is in its essence equivalent to a blueprint approach is one of the controversial discussions within scholars and practitioners. On the one hand, defenders of the project approach and its methods argue that during the 90´s the blueprint approach is no longer in use because the project approach has learnt to be used in a more flexible way, has incorporated effectively the critical factors of success in developmentviii (Eggers, 1992, p. 5) and participatory methods have been incorporated to appraisals, monitoring and evaluation practices. On the other hand, most critics argue that ultimately the project approach is already a blueprint approach itself, and can not be otherwise. There are intrinsic elements and principles in the project approach that induce blueprint attributes to it when used in development and aid arena One of the main issues to be reviewed to answer the previous question is the evaluation of the methods employed or recommended by approaches and their use in development context.
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3. Putting a project approach into practice: the ‘logical framework approach’ and logic model based methods… and blueprints Since 1969, when the consultant team Fry Consultants, Inc., and later, through the same team in Practical Concept, Inc. by the leadership of Leon Rosenberg by order of USAID as a Herb Turner initiative (Solem, 1987) developed the first logical framework, the project approach has long been based in theoretical logic models. This can be defined as the representative models of the change processes, program theory or theories of change (Scriven, 1991, p. 286), which traditionally includes the forecast of the causal relations between the components of the intervention, and tries to explain the project behavior relating its elements with the pretended effects. In this way, the logic models are “a way of presenting and sharing the understanding of the relations between the inputs needed to operate a program, the activities that are planned and the changes or results that are expected to achieve.” (W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2000, p.1). Moreover, the logic models can be characterized according to the part of the program or project that is being emphasized in the method, distinguishing between theoretical models (corresponding to the Logical Framework Approach, LFA), direct effects models (corresponding to the Results Based Management, RBM) and activity models (corresponding to the Program Logic Models, PLM). Logic models have their roots in the Management by Objectives (MBO) a management approach popularized in the fifties by Peter Drucker, that afterwards evolves to what was called “performance management” in the eighties in the field of public management (Wiggings and Shields, 1995, p.2). The MBO actually forms the backbone of the managerialism movement which emphasized the idea that management in the private sector should be set to explicit standards concentrating on the measurement of performances and controlling the results obtained (Rhodes 1995 as cited in Gasper 1997, p.23) The managerialism movement emphasized the need to establish a methodological tool clear, precise, operational and preferably one that permitted to be quantified. These characteristics inspired the development of the Logical Framework and other models such as the PPBS (Planning, Program & Budgeting System) related with management and military planning where similar targets were needed “in contexts characterized by strong central authorities and by control around a clear set of objectives, even an only dominant objective: the maximization of benefit or military victory.”(Gasper, 2000, p.25) The key instrument used in mainstream development interventions has been, and undoubtedly continue being the logical framework approach (LFA). What is distinctive of the project approach is that it has made of this tool its basic pillar which, used during the project cycle both as the representation of the project and as a method to solve the main design and implementation problems, constitute the Project Cycle Management method (PCM-LFA) used all over the world operationalizing the project approach . The ‘logical framework’ is employed and defined in two clearly different ways. On the one hand, the tool is characterized by the use of graphical representations of the logic model of the intervention through a square matrix of four entries (including the external influences as hypothesis) called, appropriately, logical framework of the intervention, without specifying any method associated with the construction of the model. This particular feature is the “documental” (or blueprint!) use of the logical framework. The matrix representative of the model, called “Matrix of Project Planning” (MPP), Project Matrix or simply “logframe” is the centre of the later management through the project cycle and this is, consequently, the centre of the tool. On the other hand, and first introduced by German GTZ in 1987 as “ZOPP method”, this approach associates the logical framework with a systematic, methodological apparatus and structure leading to a definition of the matrix representation of the logic model, including a set of analytical stages (stakeholder, problem, objectives and strategy analysis) and design stages (deduction of the final logframe from the outcomes of analysis) (See figure 3). The evolution of the Logical Framework can be modelled in a five generation description, as shown in table 2.
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Figure 3: Logical Framework Approach as a method and as a document
PHASES
OUTPUT
STEPS
ANALYSIS STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Stakeholder table
PARTICIPATION ANALYSIS
Problem Tree
PROBLEM ANALYSIS
Goals Tree
GOAL ANALYSIS
Project Strategy
STRATEGIES ANALYSIS
INDICADORES
FUENTES DE VERIFICACIÓN
HIPÓTESIS
INDICADORES
FUENTES DE VERIFICACIÓN
HIPÓTESIS
INDICADORES
FUENTES DE VERIFICACIÓN
HIPÓTESIS
OBJETIVO GENERAL
PLANNING
OBJETIVO ESPECÍFICO
VERTICAL LOGIC
RESULTADOS
ACTIVIDADES
OBJETIVO GENERAL
OBJETIVO ESPECÍFICO
HIPÓTESIS AND INDICATORS
RESULTADOS
ACTIVIDADES
FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS
OBJETIVO GENERAL
OBJETIVO ESPECÍFICO
RESULTADOS
ACTIVIDADES
INDICADORES
FUENTES DE VERIFICACIÓN
HIPÓTESIS
OBJETIVO GENERAL
OBJETIVO ESPECÍFICO
LOGFRAME
RESULTADOS
ACTIVIDADES
Source: (Ferrero y de Loma-Osorio, 2003)
Table 2: Generational description of the evolution of the logical framework Generation
Description
First Generation (1970-1980)
It is characterized by the exclusive use of the planning matrix (logframe) and corresponds with the initial phase of implementation of the method by the United States cooperation agency (USAID).
The Second Generation (19801990)
Is characterized by the incorporation of the planning method in a structured group of steps and phases for the definition of the matrix, with the creation of the ZOPP (Zielorientierte Projektplanung) by the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ), moving the emphasis from the document to the elaboration process.
Third Generation (1990-1995)
Characterized by the use of logframe within the project phases and steps, as the Project Cycle Management method (PCM-LFA). Its main dissemination is made by the European Union and its members.
Fourth Generation (1995-..) Fifth Generation (2000-..)
Claim to use LFA and PCM in a more flexible way, accompanied with the use of participatory methods within the project cycle. This statements are reflected in donors guidelines and manuals Use of logframe and LFA within a Results Based Management shift. Some donors abandon traditional logframes and use results chains instead; others continue using logframes and PCM-LFA with a RBM focus Source: self elaboration, following previous proposal made by Sartorius (1996)
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4. Furthering the project approach: The Results Based Management & the Sector Wide Approaches As we have described as a fifth generation of logical frameworks, the more advanced versions of the project approach are now being mainstreamed under the Results Based Management. In terms of popularity, the Management oriented by Results (RBM) has been the most popular answer from the donor community to answer the need of achieving results in development interventions and not necessarily in the management of the invested resources. This change in focus has basically been a transit from a resource & budget centred management (inputs) to the focus on the results (in a more broad sense rather than outputs) of the interventions. In other words, as it is understood in the field of evaluation, it means concentrating in efficacy and impact rather than in efficiency. In this sense, the RBM does not truly come from the development cooperation field like it has been traditionally so in the LFA; rather it constitutes a wider tendency of public management that has its origin in the search of more efficacy in that activity, having a strong influence in the field of development and management. It has also, therefore, its origins in the application of MBO to public management, and comes in a direct manner from the field of enterprise management (fundamentally in North America). The concept notion of results in the RBM is wider than the term adopted in the LFA (usually associated with the levels of output of the project) and it includes “the product, effect or impact (intentional or not, positive and/or negative) of development intervention” (OECD, 2002, p.33) The fundamental emphasis consists in the importance of measuring change and the importance of causality as a logical base for the management of change. As a part of the reaction of donors to the critiques to their project mode of promoting development, more recently the Sector Wide Approach (SWAP) is emerging as an alternative to the project instrument. It consists, basically, on direct budget support to developing countries to sectorial policies under certain conditions (usually related to governance and corruption), making common baskets with the contributions of several donors. In its basis, SWAP has been launched to overcome the main failures of project approaches recognized already by agencies and donors. But new questions may be considered: is SWAP really an approach or it is really an aid instrument? In other words, can SWAP enhance the expansion of human capabilities more or better than the project approach? We are cautious about this question. If we look to the methods associated with SWAP (essentially the same results based and PCM based), probably SWAP is more an instrument than an approach.
III. THE PARTICIPATORY LEARNING PROCESS APPROACH: THE HETERODOXY IN THE APPROACH & METHODOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE Introducing the alternative heterodox approaches in development The process approach is the head start of what could be framed as ‘alternative’ to the project approach in mainstream development practice, since the first critiques made to the blueprint approach in the early 80´s. As Mosse defines in Development as a Process (Mosse, 1998, pp. 3-30), this approach is a wide concept itself characterized by: a) the claim for highly flexible design and management in interventions; b) the importance of context and the relationships between the environment and development interventions as the key elements of them; and c) the importance of idiosyncratic, dynamic and unpredictable elements in interventions. Even into the process approach to development planning at least two big streams of thinking can be found: the first one, considerate participation as an essential element of development process (and,
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obviously, initiatives), as Chambers, Korten and others (Chambers, 1995, 2005; Korten, 1980; 1992; 1984). The second one is critic with participation, considering it part of the “new orthodoxy” and not essential to the process approach. We will analyze in detail the first approach, which can be called Participatory Learning and Action (Blackburn, Chambers and Gaventa, 2000) or Participatory Learning process approach as we suggest to emphasize the importance of the three terms. As its name recalls, this approach is in first instance, ‘participatory’, emphasizes ‘learning’ and includes the idea of ‘process’. These three components will be examined. Undeniably, this approach is relevant to the contemporary landscape of approaches and methodologies used in development practice because it is open-ended, rich in methodological insights, and still evolving, and also because it is a ‘container concept’ of a particular stream in the approach and methodology of development practice. In this section of the paper, the focus will be on the underlying argument of why and how the participatory learning process approach may have an ideal linkage or ‘framework’ to fuse with the capability approach. In this sense, the first task will be to identify the origins of this approach and which are the basic requirements and characteristics that give meaning to it as an alternative practice in development. The participatory learning process approach is considered to have been initiated with the foundational publication of David Korten in 1980 “Community Organization and Rural Development: A Learning process approach.” David and Frances Korten, as well as Robert Chambers, Dennis Rondinelli, Bernard Lecomte, and Norman Uphoff, amongst others, develop the approach’s main contributions. The literature about alternative approaches to the project approach has been a weak voice in mainstream development theory and practice, the majority is not published in indexed scientific magazines, but in grey literature, discussion papers or in congresses, what suggests that the participatory learning process approach is a relatively recent and still in an early state of evolution approach within the field of development (even though there have passed almost two and a half decades since Korten’s seminal publication, and the popularization of the term ‘process’ in the rhetoric of development interventions). Moreover, the approach’s empirical foundations are not too well know and the ones that are know concentrate in development interventions mainly found in Asia, Africa and in a minor way the ex-Soviet Union. In Latin America almost no previous experiences have been documented using this approach, although the characteristics of this approach have certainly been found in successful development experiences associated with the stream known as ‘solidarity economics’ (Razeto, 1983; 1990) or popular economics (Montoya, 1995). Thus, the major contributors to this line of thought come mainly from the Anglo-Saxon and French influence. Elements of the Participatory Learning process approach 1. A critical approach to development As it was illustrated in the last section, there are evident limitations of the project approach, especially if it is to be evaluated with the critical lenses of the capability approach. The weaknesses of the project approach and the orthodoxy in development practice are evident in the record of development practitioner’s experiences. They reveal that the reality of development is an experience of trial and error, and what is more, that the current mainstream approach, methods and tools to tackle it are not adapted to grasp the full complexity of it, finding critics even from the same methodological orthodoxyix. For instance, international aid itself after decades of efforts is beginning to resent the failure and poor results of development projects, which made development aid experiment a slowdown in the last 90`s with the phenomenon of the donor’s fatigue (Romero, 1999; Alonso, 1999, p.69). As Norton and Foster (2001, p. 14) point out, the problem lies in that the project approach absorbs so much of the recipients government’s capacity in trying to deal with a multiplicity of donors with different procedures, that at the
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same time it runs the risk of generating an unequal scheme or contradictory development, fragmenting the resources between projects that do not contribute in anything to construct a replicable and sustainable approach in reducing poverty and constructing solid institutions. Essentially, the participatory learning process approach criticizes the lack of attention that donors in development projects and interventions have put to the aspects of participation and capability expansion of the people, leaving such terms to the level of discourse and rhetoric, rather than the real practice of their own interventions. In parallel with the capability approach it specifies that normatively development should be centred in the people, and thus be a people-centred development approach, as depicted by Korten (1980, p.482). For this approach the lack of learning in many development intervention experiences is evident and reflected in: a) The inclusion of the term “participative” nominally in centralized programmes anyway. b) An inadequate investment in the difficult process of constructing capabilities for the people and communities to have the agency to solve their own problems. c) The erroneous attention put to solving social diversity and power, specially where there are strong social stratifications d) The insufficient integration of the technological and social components. Going further, the participatory learning process approach criticizes mainly the donor’s role in four key aspects. Firstly, it sees as a negative aspect of the project approach the excessive pressure to obtain immediate results, due to donor’s requirements. What is more, it criticizes how it is measured because it only concentrates in the given products and offered services that put out of focus the institutional aspects pushing it to assistance and grants. Secondly, it states that the project approach by its own nature (as it is based on engineering design principles) puts the emphasis in the means (resources, goods and materials of infrastructure) rather than the ends of development (human beings), distracting the project’s attention on generating capabilities of the people and how they should be able to maintain and operate the project. Thirdly, it criticizes the methods associated with the stablishment in the project approach on the grounds that: (a) the projects require a detailed planning prior to the execution of the project; (b) the project virtually guarantees the need for the decisions to fall on the hands of the technicians or the bureaucrats; (c) the emphasis in meeting the requirements of the program’s activities and the calendar of payments induce the creation of specific units in charge of the project’s management, using incentives (basically through salaries) to attract the most qualified staff to the project team, staff that too often abandon their permanent organizations, affecting negatively the possibilities to propose and sustain long term actions. Lastly, the fourth critical aspect is that according to this approach, the pressure of the donor to allocate the funds is affecting the donor’s own performance which is then translated in the following consequences: a. The primary focus falls on infrastructure, capital-technology intensive projects b. The project incentives external imports because it is the quickest way to provide itself with the goods and services needed to run the project. c. The cost of the local personal is undervalued when it is clear that the most important expenditure for an effective work on the field is basically under the goal of constructing capabilities. d. The expenditure on local specialized personal is weak; the protagonist of the project is usually an international consultant team.
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e. The project evaluation is focused on a one-way accountability: to the donor country, rather than the host-country or the beneficiaries of the project. This provokes that the staff in charge of the project management, its preparation and justification of expenditure concentrates its efforts to meet the requirements of the donors (and the project itself) even if they are found in contradiction to the empowerment or expansion of human capabilities in the grassroots level (Ferrero y de Loma-Osorio, 2003, p.257). 2. People centred development The feature of being people centred means that this approach views human beings as the subjects of development both in its collective and individual sense, usually gathered around common interests and particularities (families, gender, income, production, etc.) In other words: people –individuals- are put in the centre of the whole intervention, so all the other concerns –including the intervention itself- are secondary and there is an ethical imperative to adapt to people’s needs, wishes and chosen functionings. The general objective of the participatory learning process approach is to shed light to the need for “a flexible, sustained, experimental, action based capacity building style of assistance” because it is precisely these requirements which are necessary to expand people’s capabilities in the long term. The key factors of the learning process are given by: the process of constructing interventions and organizations from below through the experiences of micro-grass roots level prolonged in time to define a model of intervention, prior its later extension; the role of the leaders with high level of commitment, long term shared living experience and with permanence in time in the programs and organizations; and the permeability of the organizations to learn from experience and adapt rapidly as they go along. An example of these special variations of interventions that work closer and in a more participative manner with the subjects in this field have been named as ‘para-projects’ by Uphoff, (1990, pp.14071408) and are characterized for: -
Being more intensive in human resources and work than capital, focusing in human and social factors rather than material ones.
-
The mobility of local resources (materials, but specially ideas and management capacities).
-
The commitment of support the process in the long term by the external donors with, that would play a critical role
-
The emphasis of the action in the qualitative changes through the combination of technological and organization improvements, as a medium to obtain qualitative jumps.
-
The key dimension of the values and motivations that condition the behaviour of persons beyond the material things.
3. Development as a wider and richer concept than the project approach: open ended, holistic, systemic and adaptive For this approach it is not possible to think of isolated development interventions. For it, a single project will not make important changes in the context where it is developed, mainly because it is not centred in being a sustained structural or systemic change in life of the individuals. Consequently, the approach collides with the classic project approach. In this sense, territorial and institutional approaches (which start from the consideration of diversity and freedom in the individual level) are the ones appropriate to evaluate interventions –and not only or mainly giving importance to the achievement of goals and results-. Looked with this perspective the important issue is the evolution of capabilities and, in a social
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dimension, collective action and agency; a single project may contribute to enhance such processes or may hinder them… with individual goal achievements. The participatory learning process approach can be seen thus as a basis for multidimensional development. Years before the popularization of Social Capital concepts and the New Institutional Economics, Lecomte (1986) and other scholars were critical in this aspect on the project approach and methods, which could not contribute to stimulate personal effort, local initiative and the sense of responsibility with its own development in the beneficiaries (individuals and groups). The particular worry is with the people’s multidimensionality and if the project strengthens (and with this point shares a common preoccupation with the capability approach) the local capabilities of the people, their dignity and other aspects not captured about their own humanity. The participatory learning process approach, from Lecomte’s perspective, has to change the roles scenery of aid, usually closed to the interaction between the public entities of the host government, the negotiating donor agencies and the consultant companies and contractors (almost always external to the country), where the awaited role of the beneficiaries is the mere execution and support of the costs of future exploitation of the project. Lecomte propose to create “planning agreements” as a new aid instrument, with the final goal of articulating a “long term development aid”. These would be subscribed by the governments and the donor (or joint with them) for a long term duration, linked to the joint work with a sector or area, and orientated to determined results, and has inspired in several ways the Sector Wide Approaches. 4. Development as a learning process in contexts of uncertainty The approach establishes that it is not adequate to elaborate a detailed plan or design prior to the execution of the intervention, rather it gives space to make the paths and changes that the human beings involved may need in order to reach their goals in a “learning by doing” manner. This idea is sustained like this because it recognizes as characteristics inherent to development problems the uncertainty, the complexity, the rapid change of context and previous ignorance with respect to the development dynamicsx. In this sense, the real key to development does not lie in previously designed programs or projects, but in the learning process of the people and the professionals in the same level of power and importance. The team work, leadership and outsiders attitudes and values (Chambers, 1997) are fundamental, and not the pre-designed plans, as traditionally assumed in project approaches. The advances are produced progressively in the ‘three level concordance’ (between the program itself and the needs, the capabilities of the beneficiaries and the appropriate organizational support.) Both the program and the organization emerge from the process of learning where the investigation and action are strongly linked. In the epistemological field, the learning process approach is identified as using a cybernetic paradigm (unlike the Project or blueprint approach which uses a rationalist paradigm that orientates on how the decisions should be taken when only one actor is involved) because it provides a precise description of how the decisions are taken for real and it’s a lot more useful when it comes to the analysis of how the decisions are taken in complex systems. In this context several authors have also contextualized this problem as an essentially paradigm problem, between soft and hard systems within Systems Theory (Checkland and Scholes, 1990), using new emerging theoretical frameworks such as Organizational Learning (Davis, 2003), or using metaphors as lucid and simple as Chamber’s and Korten’s comparison between the “object cantered paradigm” and the “people centred paradigm” as shone in Table 3 (Chambers, 1997). As Dennis Rondinelli (1990[1983],148) illustrates the operationalization of the project approach has a point in common with the capability approach, it is conceived more “a matter of art than science”,(Alkire, 2005, p. 129), on the grounds that the design, planning and implementation of
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development projects is better done only with the specific knowledge and feedback obtained on the field experience. For this reason, almost every scholars within the participatory learning process approach propose that it is necessary to orientate the project approach toward the experimentation and learning through successive phases in long term: experimental projects, pilot projects, demonstrative projects and extension & generalization of the experience (when trying to generate a big program) or simply share, learn, facilitate, enhance capacities and adapt the programs as reality evolves, even if the matter is not to create a big program and is “only” to support people’s processes. Table 3: The paradigm of the objects and persons compared
Centred in Manner Concept/key activity Objectives
The paradigm of the objects and persons compared Objects Persons
Logic Activities and actions Suppositions People see themselves as The role of external personnel Main external staff Expected outcomes or results
Achievement of an objective Planning Previously established prior the execution Lineal, Newtonian Standardized Reductionist Objects, “target groups”, beneficiaries To transfer, motivate, teach Engineers, economists Infrastructures, physical changes and materials
Learning Process Participation Evolve and change during the process Iterative Diverse Holistic, systemic Subjects, actors, participants Facilitate, “empower” the people Those that have attitudes and participative conducts Capabilities, capacities, institutions
Source: Chambers, 1997
5. Development as a sustained long term relationship of cooperation between human beings For this approach, the required periods to reduce the uncertainty, comprehend the complexity and generate knowledge are broader than the project approach, and mainly because it states as its main assumption that real, structural changes are the ones that lead to changes in the life of the people in the long run. The idea behind this issue is that the relationships of cooperation between human beings have an operational sequence of phases in development which are, as Korten pointed since his earlier writings (1980): a) Learning to be effective: in this phase the objective is to develop an appropriate model of intervention through local experimentation and the experience of learning, consequently in this phase the slogan is “learn to learn.” This approach sets this phase as the phase of searching the concordances. This requires a high level of freedom with respect to the administrative limits and external procedures, and a high level of investment in human and intellectual resources to generate knowledge and the acquirement of capabilities, which means that they usually are intensive in resources and less efficient in terms of results. When this concordance, the next phase may start (if desired to). b) Learning to be efficient: The objective of this second phase is to reduce the inputs required by each unit of product, that is, to reduce the non necessary activities emphasizing the important ones, trying to reduce the role of the external agent. The main interest is to develop adequately the organization support to the program (concordance between program-organization). It is usual and acceptable at this level to have a trade-off in effectiveness when rising efficiency, but the pursuit is for a level of equilibrium in the model of intervention.
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c) Learning to expand: The objective is the capacity expansion of the organization and the expansion of the program on a bigger scale. A constant attention must be kept on the concordance of the needs of the beneficiaries. For the learning process approach the priority is to potentiate the capability for action through action, and not detailed project planning (Korten, 1980, p.502). Naturally, for the operationalization of this approach what is required is more sensibility of donors and outsiders, given its dominant position and influence on the planning methods. It is proposed in this approach that the donors finance the learning process by recognizing these three phases, with a temporal horizon of no less than ten years to be considered as a real process for structural change. 6. Development as empowered participation of the individuals and groups for their own individual xi and collective agency The transition for change from the project approach has also made significant efforts to break the project approach’s rationale using real and active empowered participation as the means to add humanness and ethical rationality to the approach. In this sense, the roots of the participatory aspect of the learning process approach lie in the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) - which now is called Participatory Learning and Action (PLA). As described by Chambers (1994-a, pp. 954-959) PLA -and obviously PRA-, starts from the ActionOriented Participatory Research and Popular Education, that gave birth the inspiration of Paulo Freire and his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970 [1968]) and its practice in Latin America. Chambers identifies also the influence on the construction of PLA principles, methods and key elements of Agroecologycal Systems Analysis, Applied Anthropology, Agrarian Systems field research and, of course, Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA). Essentially, PRA has been defined as “an approach and methods to learn about life and the rural conditions of, with and by [the rural] people” (Chambers, 1994-a, p.953). It is more than learning, the approach extends as well to action. It is in this sense it has been defined as “a growing family of methods and approaches that facilitate that local people share, augment and analyze their knowledge about life and its problems, that may help them plan and act” (ibid, p.53 and Absalom, et al.,1995) and includes behaviour and attitudes of outsiders and the people (Adhihari, G.B., et al., 1996-Blackburn, Chambers and Gaventa, 2000, p.25). The PRA is based in the idea that local people possess the knowledge and abilities necessary to conduct their own development, and that those that facilitate the PRA have to pose their attention on the way they behave in their work on-the-field in their interaction with the local people (Ibid.) The key difference between the participative and non-participative approaches is where power resides: in PLA the power resides in the people, and the methods are developed essentially thinking to give power to the poorest and to those who traditionally have no voice -see Deepa Narayaan’s work (2000) in Voices of the Poor-. There are three basic component of the PRA: the methods themselves, the behaviour and the attitudes of the PRA facilitators and the principle of sharing learning. (Mascarenhas, et al, 1991, p.35). In this sense, a key fact when discussing participation in development and how to mainstream it in development (Blackburn, Chambers and Gaventa, 2000) is to make a clear difference between the consideration of participation: a) as a set of methods to extract information in a quick manner; b) as a mean to increase project effectiveness; and c) as an empowering process and as a mean itself. a) The first case was the origin of the RRA, the main predecessor of PRA and PLA. It was through the RRA that it was developed a set of rapid methods based in local knowledge for rural investigation, substitutive of massive scale surveys. The PRA adopts some of the elements of the RRA, fundamentally
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the methods, but supposes an important change compared to it. But as it is clearly remarked by its supporters, identifying participation with a mean to extract better information from the people is a misuse o the term and may be harmful for the people themselves. In this sense, we should be very careful when using as researchers participatory methods as a mean only to evaluate or measure capabilities. If we do so, we are not really using a participatory approach; we will be only using its toolbox. On the other hand, the use of participatory methods as a research tool has also criticisms (Wright and Nelson, 1995; Mosse, 1998; Cornwall and Jewkes, 1995, p. 1673). b) Using participation as a set of methods in a more real or more rhetoric sense in an attempt of generalizing the participatory practice in projects, with specific developments in traditional planning phases (the PRA for the assessment, identification and design, and the participative monitoring and evaluation -PM&E-xii), but as complementary of LFA and within PCM has been the main trend within aid donors and organizationsxiii. These practice is based on the empirical evidence that participation directly improves effectiveness even in a traditional way of project management (the work of Isham, Narayan and Pritchet, 1995, is paradigmatic in this sense). There is a great controversy concerning the possibility and adaptation of such a “marriage” (as named in the GTZ’s seminar held in 1996, “ZOPP marries PRA?”. On the one hand, several authors such as Mosse (1998), Aune (2000, p. 690) or Shubert (1996, p. 32). Even more, some scholars are nowadays talking of participation as the new rhetoric (Kumar and Corbridge, 2002, p. 73) or as the new fashion… and the new tyranny (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). c) Considering participation as a process itself, both as an individual, household, community and organizational levels, with or without projects, is the real meaning of the approach by its main followers. The essence of this approach is that participation should be an end itself (although can and should be supported also by methods and interventions). An end to increase the capacity of people to analyze, reflect and act, to have in consequence more incidence on the decisions that affect their lives. This means to enhance the capacity for individual and collective action in order to change structural power relations when necessary, and have more opportunities and freedom to choose. The institutionalisation of participatory spaces and practices and in bigger and bigger levels (scaling-up participation) is an essential goal, going beyond particular projects or interventions. Emphasizing the role of participation in development interventions is “a process in which the primary actors share the control and influence their development initiatives, decisions and resources” (Tandon and Cordeiro, 1998), “a process that facilitates the permanent ability to identify and analyze problems, formulate and plan solutions, move resources and implement them in all areas of development needs of the people while they search to gain control over the processes that affect their lives” (Leal and Opp, 1998, pp.7-8), PLA and Process Approach provides the space, principles and orientations to operationalize in the praxis of development the Capability approach. This feature may be the main link with the Capability Approach from our experience and empirical findings. This topic is specially illustrated by the Bajo Lempa study case: in order to survive poverty a similar bond was strengthened, but it only grew with the commitment they had because of the values they fought and defended in the context of the war: justice, solidarity and equity for all to live a decent, peaceful and fullfilling human life. Thus, their “cooperation” factor structured what the own ‘beings’ and ‘doings’ of what they had reason to value in Sen’s meaningful terms. The social grass-roots organization that triggered this aspect was CRIPDES and it was the platform that gave rise to an organization called CORDES that would tackle the next essential aspect: the economic organization of the grass-roots communities in the region. Essentially these two organizations created by themselves were the initial seeds for ‘good change’ in Chamber’s terms because they were the visible arms that made the real collective agency of the people materialize in terms of participation and empowerment of men and women of all ages. Everyone was committed since the start of the experience in participating in the local
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community assemblies, discuss their problems and accept the consequences of dealing with uncertainty: they learned to learn from the trials and errors that their experiences of development originated. The key issues that the PRA tries to answer are formulated by Chambers (1997) and others (Blackburn and Holland, 1998; Estrella and Gaventa, 1998) like the question of whose reality counts, “ours” or “theirs”? That is, whose perspectives, knowledge, necessities, priorities, criteria, diagnosis, analysis, plans, base lines, actions, indicators, assessments and evaluations really count? “Ours or “theirs”? Related with these questions, “Who participates in whose project? Do “they” participate in “our” project or us in “theirs”? Who are “they”? The poor women? The inhabitants of isolated places, the minorities, the young, the old, the poor, the rich, the local elites, the project officials, or whom?” (Chambers, 1996, p.12) The role of the external staff/investigator stops in the facilitation of the process (which is why it offers appropriate methods and facilitates its application), leaving all in hands of the people. The participative process sets the goals to implement actions of development: by having transferred the “power” of investigating, interpreting data, designing, planning, from the external staff to the own people, this raises their self esteem, their capabilities and their participation in the decision-taking space. In other words, people acquire power, a process that has been called empowerment. The ultimate end of the PLA application changes, from the learning of the researcher to the empowerment of the local population, defining these priorities of the investigation and having the control (power) over the process of research and its results; in the RRA the researcher exposes the research problem and methodology, extracts information to be processed in desk analysis, personal use and later diffusion. In the PRA, the people describe the problem, design and control the research, extract the information, processes and interpret it, share it, and use it for its own action. The external staff hears, watches, learns, catalyses, but the direction of the investigation is carried out by the people. From this perspective, the PLA requires a radical transformation of the behaviour and attitudes of the researcher and the institutions, a fact that is not necessary in a RRA practitioner. In the PRA, as it has been recognized, the values, attitudes and behaviour of external staff have more importance than the methods or specific techniques employed. Establishing an environment of trust and empathy rapidly is important, and this is why the initial attitudes of the external staff are so important. Among these are found attitudes such as: humbleness, respect, patience, interest for what the people say and teach, not rushing up, putting attention, hearing, watching and not interrupting. In particular the specific principles of the PRA are: 1. “They do it”: not doing anything that the local people are capable to do. The role of the external staff is limited to only facilitate the process, thus being a process of “handing over the chalk”. 2. Auto critical conscience: critical permanent exam of the behaviour and attitudes of the facilitator, including the acceptation of its own errors. 3. Personal responsibility: “using always the best personal judgement”, instead of delegating the own responsibility in manuals or recipes. 4. Sharing: between the facilitators and community; between the members of the own community; between the own facilitators and researchers and between the institutions. An element of the PRA differentiating it from the RRA has been the adoption of visual techniques instead of verbal ones, as an indispensable element to share at the community level and between this one and the external staff. All these principles are summed up by Chambers (1994-b, p. 1262-66) as “changes” (change of emphasis, focus or importance): Firstly in the level of the analysis of the analysis of frameworks (knowledge,
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categories, and values, from the external investigator to the local people). Secondly in the ‘change of mood’, that is, it is a change that goes from individual methods, to group methods; from verbal methods to visuals; from measuring methods, to comparative methods (which facilitates comparative trustable data in aspects where the people tend to hide absolute data, like income). Thirdly, there is level of change in relations, from the coldness, distant mistrust to the trust and empathy; from the frustration and routine to the enjoyment and creative improvisation. Lastly and more importantly the change in the shift of power, that is seen from the extraction of information from the people, to their empowerment. 7. Valuing Freedoms or valuing means… or management performance? In this manner, what is central to this approach, is that the conception of ‘success’ is only dependant on the people’s views of what they value as important for their lives. This is exactly where a conjunction with the capability approach can be seen: they are both emphasizing the respect for the values and the people’s ideas of ‘good change’ or what is the ‘good life’. And this may not match with the traditional notion of development evaluation, mainly remaining clearly positivist. One of our main empirical outcomes (Ferrero y de Loma-Osorio, 2003, pp. 528-555), when observing interventions in a constructivist manner, is that there are clearly two main rationalities and behaviours (logics) and ways of judging (and defining) the success or not of an intervention (see Table 4): on the one hand, the perspective of management (usually adopted by managers, donors, technical staff…): perspective of those individuals or organizations with the responsibility of the design and management of the intervention’s execution, with a requirement and obligatory account to a donor organization, for which the project is almost and end itself and the achievement of the prescribed goals a normative principle; and on the other, the perspective of the development process: the perspective of the inhabitants (beneficiaries or not) and the public organizations or private locals present and direct or indirectly implicated in the local space where the intervention is developed. From this point of view, the project is seen not as the centre of the action, but only as another element in the personal and collective process, and for which the achievement of an individual project’s goals may be relatively insignificant. The same project may be judged as very successful by the management perspective but very detrimental to collective action and empowerment (as happened in our Morocco DRI case study), and the opposite (as happened in the Nicaraguan rural development policy making experience). Essential to the Bajo Lempa experience is that without themselves consciously knowing in theory, they were practicing a comprehensive kind of development practice that could easily be linked with the participatory learning process approach and the capability approach. What they lacked was the ‘integrated theory’ to have further collective agency and empowerment in the context of negotiations with the donors as to how the ‘monitoring and evaluation’ would be done. Nevertheless, what they were sure of, is that their own indicators of success would not be centred or be dependent in the narrow short term results or outcomes, and for this reason they searched a variety of sources of donors to “allocate” and distribute their interests in a better way, taking into account that each donor had a ‘particular perspective of how things should be done’. Their letter of principles as a group served to preserve their own collective identity and goals and their bargaining power with the donors. In the operational level Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation (PM&E), “a different methodological approach that implies that local villagers, the development organisms and the decision takers, they all get together to decide how progress should be measured, and what action has to be taken at the end of the evaluation results” (Estrella and Gaventa, 1998, p.3), has developed –within PLA – a whole set of methods to do it in the field. In this sense, there is an ethical imperative to prioritize or choose one of the perspectives, interests or points of view. In our opinion, there cannot be other alternative but choosing the people centred perspective. This is the only path to operationalize CA in development practice, challenges
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traditional project-based methods and approaches, and claim for new approaches and methods where Learning Process and PLA are much more suitable for it. Table 4: The translation of the management requirements in the aid chain Actor
Accountability…
Results Achievement is…
Consequences and main concerning
Donor
To the government /parliament/ people of the donor country
The achievement of global results of its cooperation
Staff in the donor’s country
To the central headquarters of the donor’s agency
The achievement of visible results and attributed to the cooperation in the country. The achievement of expected results (products) of the intervention, execution of activities.
Search for attribution and visibility. Preoccupation for global results. Execution for the greatest amount of the budget possible. Search for attribution and visibility. Preoccupation for immediate results in the country. Preoccupation for the immediate results of the intervention. Preoccupation for the exhaustive justification of the expenditure. Preoccupation for the execution of activities and budget.
Intermediate international organization
To the donor (local headquarters and central headquarters) To the social mass (in the case of NGOs) To the donor/to the intermediate Counterpart organism. Justification of the expenditure Actors of the local Sometimes to the counterpart
space (including beneficiaries)
The Execution of activities
An improvement of life conditions, vulnerability reduction, opportunity widening
Preoccupation to take advantage of the opportunities
Source: Ferrero y de Loma-Osorio (2003), p. 533
Table 5: Differences between M&E approaches Who evaluates What is valued
Orthodox approach
Participatory Learning process approach
External experts. The local inhabitants simply contribute with information. Predetermined success indicators
Members of the community, project personnel, facilitator
The local people designs the methodology, identify their own indicators of success (with a higher incidence of the qualitative ones) compiles and analyses the information and shares the results How is it valued Focus in the “scientific objectivity”; distance with Self-evaluation; easy methods adapted to the local culture; openly other participant’s evaluators; uniform sharing the immediate results through the participation of the local procedures, complex and quantitative; limited people in the process of evaluation access to the results and with much delay. Usually at the end of the project-program, in Evaluations at a smaller scale more frequently When is it some cases also at mid-term valued Why is it valued Evaluating account, added up, to determine if the Empowerment of the local people to initiate, control and correct the financing continues. action Source: Ferrero 2004, p. 327 from Estrella and Gaventa, 1998, p. 17 and Narayan, 1993
IV. DEVELOPMENT IN PRACTICE: SPECIFICATIONS FOR NEW TOOLS & METHODS IN DEVELOPMENT. The convergence between the capability approach and the participatory learning process approach can be seen as a process of building a comprehensive theory and practice of development, open-ended, but with one common characteristic: they want to put the measure, aims and philosophy of the approaches, methods and tools in terms of ‘human beings’ needs, values and nature, thus it is their pursuit of humanness which is the primary link to state in the first place. The theory and practice that integrate the humanness of development does not have a ‘logical framework’ and it is necessarily so because of its open-ended nature. We have synthesized in Table 6 the differences and links between Capability and the
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methodology approaches; there can be clearly seen the proximity between the first and the Participatory and Learning process approaches. As has been mentioned in the beginning the empirical experience that integrates the analysis that feeds this paper is based on specific cases of development interventions (Ferrero y de Loma-Osorio, 2003, p. 614-617; Zepeda, 2004) and the critical reflection of the analytical framework that came as an output of these experiences. In this sense, we have tried to specify several ‘specifications’ that methods, tools and instruments in development management should accomplish in order to put the capability approach in practice in a friendly way to development organizations staff and their managerial requirements. Thus, we have distinguished two sets of methodological principles that may the bridge to link the Capability Approach principles and requirements underlined in the first section with the Participatory Process Approach. The first set, and the most important one, are those specifications needed because of the nature of the broad vision of development processes. The second one, and secondary to the first one, corresponds to the need of popularize the use of alternative methods; in other words, a set of principles oriented to make the intervention management friendly to development staff. Table 6: The Matrix of Approaches: Differences and Links Project Approach
Capability approach
Participatory Learning process approach
Concept of development
Limited, reductionist, utilitarian: to have, or have more, is better
Broad, multidimensional: Development as freedom: to have the real opportunity to do & to be what people values is better than having more
Broad, Multidimensional: Development as a learning process: to expand people’s own agency to accomplish their own objectives is better than having more
Approach to the people Centred in Concept/key activity
People as means Objects Planning
Objectives
Previously established prior the execution
Logic Activities and actions Assumptions
Lineal, Newtonian: Standardized Reductionist
People as ends Persons ¿¿?? May evolve and change as humanness complexity and diversity is recognized Philosophical liberalism Diverse Holistic, systemic
People as ends Persons Participation and Learning Evolve and change during the process, as it is complex and depends on people’s participation Iterative Diverse Holistic, systemic
People see themselves as
Objects, “target groups”, beneficiaries
Subjects, actors, participants
Subjects, actors, participants
To transfer, motivate, teach
Facilitate “empower” the people
Facilitate, “empower” the people
Engineers, economists
Multidisciplinary
Those who have attitudes and participative behaviours
Infrastructures, physical changes and materials
Expansion of capabilities / real opportunities for the people to be and do what they value.
Capabilities, capacities, institutions
Short term
Open-ended
Long term
1990
Methodologies
1960 LFA, Project Cycle Management, CBA, RBM
Evaluation of Success is measured in terms of
Money, quantitative efficiency, effectiveness, relevance, …
Qualitative, Capability expansion of the people in terms of dimensions of well being and agency
1980 PLA, Process Monitoring, Outcome Mapping, … Quantitative and qualitative centred in People’s and organizations own empowerment (agency) to overcome themselves and creatively their own problems
Relations between actors tend to be…
Vertical, asymmetric
Horizontal
The role of external personnel Main external staff should be… Expected outcomes or results Duration of the intervention Begins as a framework
¿¿??
Source: own construction
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Horizontal
Figure 4: Contrasting the Project Approach with the Capability approach
Source: own construction, based on Alkire (2005), Ferrero (2003)
i)
The principles specific to the development process
1. The approaches, methods, and instruments should recognize the nature of the processes of development by identifying: a. The inherent complexity and uncertainty of these and consequently, the impossibility of “designing” a process, due to the impossibility of a previous knowledge or predicting the behaviour of persons. b. The existence of multiple interests and the inherently conflictive nature of the processes, recognizing the political nature (apart from the economic and social) of these. 2. The approaches, methods and instruments should start from the basis that development processes can be orientated, facilitated and catalyzed, but not designed or managed. a. The interventions (policies, plans, programmes, projects, quasi or para projects…) are the ones that can be managed towards to and for people’s development process.
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3. The approaches should have a territorial base (of different scales, according to each specific case), as the organizations and institutions can not be detached from the local context or environment. a. Only from this approach one can manage an intervention contemplating the process as a whole, where multiple interventions coexist. b. The methods should start, from the very beginning, from an institutional mapping (evaluation of the social and political nature of the relations) and have a basis on the continuous monitoring of the reaction of organizations, the evolution of the social structure (relations) and the evolution of the institutions (formal and informal rules); those are one of the keys for people to have adequate personal and social conversion factors and, thus, key to be and do what they value to do. 4. The approaches and methods should be oriented towards the institutionalization of an empowered participation (continuous, and not linked to isolated events) in two levels: a. Primary participation (people and communities, especially the poorest) b. Secondary participation (formal and informal organizations, public and private, with interests in the territory development, although not necessarily coincident). 5. The approaches should be oriented towards the local management of resources, and the mobilization of local potentialities, and based on the knowledge, experiences and creativity of the people. 6. The approaches and methods should be oriented towards catalyzing the experiential learning process, at least at the three levels, from which the local learning process is the most important a. The social learning process within the local environment, beginning with the individual and household dimension of learning as one of the foundations of expanding capabilities. b. The learning process of the own interventions (furthering steps to reach ‘concordance’ in Korten’s terms) c. The learning process in the exogenous organizations involved, through the lessons learnt that can integrate the explicit knowledge of them, orientating their actions as organization. 7. The approaches and methods should conceive the activity of ‘design’ as permanent and simultaneous with a monitoring and evaluation process, also permanent and simultaneous. The design does not end or start with the implementation, as human beings are always simultaneously designing, deciding, doing and reflecting about the consequences during their lives. 8. In consequence, an intervention should be open-ended in terms of time and resources, with a flexible budget (resources not linked to predefined activities and products) 9. The methods and instruments should secure that there should be no requirement of making explicit the details of “the long or medium term roadmap”, but only as the preliminary vectors of action initially suggested. Only the activities and previous results in the very short term (as a maximum two years) should be explicit, and always as “orientative activities and results”.
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10. The unintended effects should be recognized as the “soul of the process”: the routes not foreseen, and the invisible effects and impacts are of great importance, usually more than the expected ones. 11. The methods should make explicit within their accountability and evaluation instruments (ie. intervention documents) the convenience of having an evolution since the initial terms of the development project. 12. The interventions should not reflect a logical link between the short term activities and results and their effects or impacts. This link is fictitious, which is why they should contemplate the effects of a particular intervention as a “contribution to the process” (together with the interventions and multiple external factors), and never as “attribution of effects or impacts”. 13. There should be no requirement to identify or formulate quantitative targets ‘ex-ante’; if they are formulated, in any case, they should be considered as “orientative targets”. a. Part (only part) of the monitoring would be realized by the evolution of some of the parameters identified in base lines (as human development indicators, state functions). But the monitoring should not be realized in reference to the initial targets of an intervention, but as a mirror (and just that) of the evolution of the human flourishing in its local context and environment. b. The central element of the monitoring and evaluation will be the process itself, with especial attention to the particular “intangible” and qualitative elements that are revealed as important to the process, often reflected as chaotic behaviours. ii)
Principles specifically oriented to the management of interventions
1. The management should be oriented strategically, based on a long term vision; managed in the medium term with maximum flexibility; and linked to the short term and action through adequately flexible instruments. 2. The approaches, methods and instruments should provide the minimum elements so that the management may be friendly and possible. This minimum ‘elements’ are: a. a long term reference (a vision, as most shared as possible, but one that recognizes the differing objectives, without ‘hiding’ them or ‘denying’ them) b. Clarity in the mission of the intervention, rather that in its general or specific goals or results. c. The initial institutional arrangements (likely of a changing nature), including the technical capacity and resources for management. This is the major component of the initial design prior to the start of an intervention. d. An operational - short term plan that can serve as a mobilizing agent towards action; only at this level should the activities, resources, and results in the short term be specified as orientating vectors of action (in this sense, it might be more adequate to call it “a short term mobilisation plan”). e. Brief and concise documents that may bring together the previously described fundamental principles and the flexible mobilisation in the short term.
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3. The “judgement” of the management of the particular interventions should be realized, exclusively, over the emergent results in the mid and long term, and most of all, over the qualitative changes, without a link of the judgement with previous orientative targets. 4. The methods and instruments should consider in the estimation of the resources two concepts: a. Fixed costs: (associated with the human resources necessary to facilitate the intervention and the elements of dinamization and participation of the people); and b. Variable costs (the investments in infrastructure or activities of another type). These are not predictable ex-ante with exactitude, except at the very short term, because they emerge as the intervention oriented to the process advances, mobilizes initiatives and learns. c. For this reason, the instrument of financing of the interventions should contemplate an initial budget of the fixed costs and a set of estimated variable costs, whereby there should be no sanction on the low level of execution of the latter, letting an easy access to these as new demands or needs rise.
CONCLUSIONS Development practice and theory can learn from each other. The isolated literature on the participatory learning process approach experiences in developing countries needs the fuel of the theoretical features of the capability approach and vice versa. The underlying argument of this paper has been to acknowledge that the capability approach and the participatory learning process approach are frameworks with requirements that exert a synergic and complementary link in the construction of development in terms of humanness and human flourishing. Naturally, an integrated and comprehensive framework of development as the one depicted above requires a radically different approach towards the currently upward logic of accountability that the donors in the non-inclusive aid chain currently practice. As the experiences in development practice that inform this paper’s reflections, the procedures ex-ante, during the experience, and ex-post, reflect that human flourishing in terms of expanding capabilities can only be approached as a participatory, nonlinear and unpredictable process. Furthermore, the approach, tools and methods that should serve as the means to accomplish the valuable ‘beings’ and ‘doings’ that the people living in impoverished countries have reason to value, also claims for changes in the vertical power structures that at present shape development practice. The concrete experiences of ‘development as freedom’ in Amartya Sen’s perspective necessarily need to be led in practice by participatory learning processes whereby donors give collective agency and freedom to the people to substantially empower themselves to change their lives by themselves, and this implies their emancipation from political, supposedly technical, neutral and predictive positionings in development practice. Development accountability cannot be underpinned relying almost exclusively on quantitative results-based management perspectives because human development cannot be designed in blueprints as predefined targets. The alternative underlined here is to engage development from a capability approach perspective that in practice is ‘people centred and people led’ whereby they should be empowered to decide what is success, and be free to engage a long ‘trial and error’ process were people themselves write their own story of development. In this way, the kind of development rationale that the poor and marginalized people should have the capabilities to construct, implies freedom in a more radical, and political sense, whereby the expanded degrees of freedom ‘to ride’ the development process not only
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should be valued in a multidimensional way [for example following efforts of scholars such as Sabina Alkire’s and Manu Mathai’s], but also setting a more systemic and long-term perspective whereby development is reshaped by a participation that may even abolish the word “intervention” from its lexicon. The participatory learning process approach can serve as good platform of principles, tools and methodologies in which the capability approach may operationalize in a better way its main objective: the expansion of the real opportunities that people have to be and to do what they have reason to value in their lives. The points in common between both approaches are that their open-endedness and human centeredness makes them match into a comprehensive kind of development.
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ANNEX 1: SUMMARY OF STUDY CASES Initiative for Rural Development in Nicaragua
“Education and Work Project and work in the Industrial Park of Chalatenango (El Salvador)” Reubication communities 1, 2 and 3; Chalatenango (El Salvador)
Communities of Tafoghalt, Rislane and Sidi-Bouhoria (Berkane, Marruecos)
Country 1,180,000 euros 554,000 euros
3 communities 970,000 euros 350,000 euros
3 municipalities 1,707,100 euros 886,000 euros
January 1999- January 2002 Formulated and instrumental policies of rural development between the government and the civil society in Nicaragua
February 1996-December 1996 To achieve that the people of the poorest and most marginalized social stratus of Chalatenango could reach a state of insertion acceptable professionally, through a process of technical-personal formation and its integration to the industrial enclosure.
January 1996- January 1998
A conceptual framework has been created, institutionally and instrumentally adequate for the agreed consensus of the formulation of policies that may have risen from participative reflection between the main actors.
1. To Complete Basic Education of the beneficiaries. 2. To obtain the technicalmanagement training of the workers on the enclosure. 3. To incentive the economic productive resources. 4. To incentive the participation of the social agents. 5. To incentive the social and professional insertion of the young people. 6. To reinvest on the experience of the project
- Formulation of the Basis for a Rural Development Plan in Nicaragua - Started a chain of
- Install and activation of 6 industrial federative cooperatives - To start and make available a rotating fund
Nicaragua Detailed location Influence field Total budget Donor’s contribution Execution period
General Objective
Purpose
Main Components
33
DRI project in the BeniSnasssen, Berkane (Morocco)
To improve the living conditions of the rural population, reducing the exodus and the migrating processes, potentiating the endogenous capacities and sustainable model of development and strengthening the intermediterranean relations North-South 1. To improve local productive capacities 2. To improve sanitary and educative conditions 3. To endow basic services of communication, water suministration and rural electrification 4. To incentivate the participation and capacitation of the women 5. To impulse the participating lines 6. To strengthen the descentralization processes 7. To reinforce the public administrations 8. To improve the environment management 9. To boost the renewable energetic resources 10. To incentive the Mediterranean relations 11. To systematize the experience
- Productive: microentrerprise local centre, regeneration web of irrigation ditches; activation of irrigated land of 500
Bajo Lempa Group in San Vicente, (El Salvador) *
51 communities distributed in three microregions: SES, MES, IDES, located in the South area of San Vicente 2 municipalities Not available Not available 1992 to date (period of analysis: (1992-2003) To achieve in the Bajo Lempa region a sustainable rural development, raising quality of life of the families and communities in it, and achieving the people’s development.xiv To construct an alternative model of development, participative, humane, just and with equality. 1. To search for alternative forms of productive capacities and exploit them cooperatively with the people. 2. To improve sanitary and educative conditions. 3. To provide dignified rural employment with wages that may secure and expand the quality of life. 4. To strengthen women and youth’s participation in organization and decisiontaking 5. To strengthen the autonomy and agency of the people (empowerment) 6. To use a model of production environmentally organic and sustainable 7. To incentive the values of cooperation and solidarity in every organization process 8. To strengthen grass roots organization & movement 9. To find support and consensus both nationally and internationally to fight poverty and its causes. 10. To integrate the social and economic initiatives in an integral unit of organization - Productive: More than 13 economic initiatives: a credit cooperative, a cooperative of rural machinery and transport, a ‘people’s consumer’s shop,
Initiative for Rural Development in Nicaragua
training in rural development - Experimented methodology in rural territorial planification in 2 territories.
Donor agency
Intermediate organization
Local Organization
Spanish Agency of International Cooperation- AECI Direct cooperation with the participation of an Inter-universitary Spanish Team in the execution. Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Nicaragua – Central American University of Managua Rural habitants of the country
Base group / beneficiaries
Investigation period Phases covered during research
Team responsibility
March 1999 – Dic. 2002 (4 years) Design and formulation, execution, and verification, final evaluation Coordinator of the technical team on the field, co-director of the project
“Education and Work Project and work in the Industrial Park of Chalatenango (El Salvador)” - Basic Education and professional training
Generalitat Valenciana (Regional Government) ThirldWorldYouth – Valencian Association of Engineers without Frontiers
Salvadorean Education and Work Foundation (EDYTRA-NGO)
Industrial Enclosure of Chalatenango Youth in risky or vulnerable conditions, women and poor population in general of the communities 1, 2 and 3 June 1995 –Septembre 1996 (1.5 years) Formulation and Follow up
Coordinator of ISF-V of the follow up of the project in Spain
DRI project in the BeniSnasssen, Berkane (Morocco)
Bajo Lempa Group in San Vicente, (El Salvador) *
hectares; agricultural assessment, ecological tourism - Health: infrastructure dotation, training - Education: rehabilitation and educative conditioning of infrastructure -Infraestructure: rehabilitation of rural tracks and bridge, rural electrification, water supply - Development management: participation and constitution of a Local Action Group - Gender Equity - Environment Spanish Agency of International CooperationAECI ATELIER – Madrid’s Association of Engineers without Frontiers . Valencian Association of Engineers without Frontiers Tafoghalt Municipality
ecological agrotourism, a enterprise for the biological control of plagues, agroindustrial production of organic & just products: cashew nuts, dairy products. - 7 social initiatives: a women’s rural association, educative organizations, a youth movement, - A participative web of social and economic enterprises with the local authorities to manage a disaster plan prevention - Gender Equity - Environment
Public actors (municipalities, ministerial delegations, etc.) and private (local NGOs, base groups, private sector) present in the territory
European Union
OXFAM Great Britain, USAID,
Local NGDO’s: National Foundation for DevelopmentFUNDE, CIDEP: an education NGO, CORDES: development NGO, Rural habitants of the Bajo Lempa area, grass roots groups and local organizations
March 1995 – December 1997 (2.5 years) Diagnostic, design and formulation, execution and monitoring
2003 (1 year) Planning, execution and monitoring,
Coordinator on the field of the execution component of rural electrification. Member of the design team, formulation and monitoring of the project.
External analysis (observation on the field & interviews)
Source: based on Ferrero y de Loma-Osorio (2003), *: based on Zepeda, C., Escobar, B. (2003)
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ENDNOTES i
A complete description of the experience and previous impact assessment can be find in Ferrero, et. Al. (2002). The whole of its background, theoretical assumptions and comparisons with other experiences of solidarity economics in Latin America are based in (Escobar, 2004; Montoya et al., 2005; Zepeda, 2004) iii The key elements of this approach draw from the theoretical surveys that aim to capture the essence of the capability approach as a whole, particularly from (Alkire, 2005; Deneulin, 2005; Gasper and van Staveren, 2003; Robeyns, 2005) iv To trace the historical roots of this concept see the work of (Harman, 1983) v The descriptive theory inherent to every development or social intervention, which describes how the program will lead to its effects, achieving its intended results and impacts (Scriven, 1991, p. 286) vi For brief historical accounts on the Basic Needs Approach and its decline see, for example, (Doyal and Gough, 1991; Gasper, 1996; Streeten, 1995). vii “The systematic and objective appreciation of an ongoing or finalized project, programme or policy about its design, its practical implementation, and results. Its objective is to determine the pertinence and the achievement of the objectives, as well as its efficiency, its effectiveness, its impact and its sustainability for development. An evaluation will have to provide credible and useful information, which will allow incorporating the lessons learnt in the process of decision taking of beneficiaries and donors. (…) The evaluation also refers to the process of determining the value or significance of an activity, a policy or a program. It is about an appreciation, so systematically and objective as it is possible, of a planned intervention, ongoing or finalized.” viii As Eggers describe, iIn the decade of the ‘80s, the group of experts of the DAC in aid evaluation made an effort of systematization of the evaluation of its country members for the identification and synthesis of the factors of viability or sustainability of a project commonly accepted by the great majority of development cooperation actors. These factors consequently constitute the design criteria of development interventions and as it has been taken by the European Commission (2001) (that incorporates the appropriation of the beneficiaries and the gender perspective in the original formulation of the OECD in 1989) they can be grouped in eight fundamental factors: a)The own appropriation of the project by the beneficiaries; b) A support policy; c) Appropriate technology; d) Socio-cultural aspects; e) Gender equity; f) Protection to the environment; g) Institutional capacities and management; h) Financial and economic sustainability. ix See the moderate critics in Cassen, Riddell, Madeley, Gow and Morss, Cernea and Carvalho & White; the CAD publications, diverse IRD program evaluations, etc. x The experience of the Bajo Lempa in El Salvador illustrates well the learning process. The experience started with a ‘scratch and error’ basis: during the period of the war of the 1980s in El Salvador, the region where it is now settled was abandoned by the people that lived there and poverty, tragedy and disaster were the cataclysms that drove the people out of the country. Later on, after the peace agreements of 1992, in El Salvador, the people that used to live there returned but found themselves in an awkward situation: there was no way forward because every crop, and all infrastructure had been lost during the war. Immediately, the first initiative was to cope with ‘survival strategies’ that would lead them to exploit the natural resources that were rich in the region. A basic idea was quickly translated into practice: the region was fertile and a rich environment that was particularly suitable for the growth of cashew nuts, so they started its production on a community based organization. The social organization of the people was a key factor for their eagerness to ‘do the projects by themselves’, and this was due to the fact that there was a high level of social interaction in terms of solidarity and cooperation, partly because of the context of the war and their bonds united in order to survive the war. xi There is an vast literature about participatory approaches and methods; for its description, we will build on the systematization work carried out during the 90’s and in recent years by Robert Chambers’ and the team work in the Participation Group within the IDS. xii Other methods not linked with the traditional participatory approaches which try to build an alternative and complete approach based in logic models, as well as a management tool are the Outcome Mapping, the Temporal Logic Model and the Actors Oriented Approach. xiii Considering the PRA as a methodological structure, it is important to note that the PRA does not offer a sequence of steps and phases for its application, which reflects a void that may question its characterization as a method. Nevertheless, diverse supporters of the PRA see this characteristic precisely as one of the key advantages of it (mainly Chambers) because it gives space for the creativity and the common sense of the facilitator in the way he/she apply the techniques. xiv Grupo Bajo Lempa, (2003), “Strategic Planning 2003”, CORDES, San Salvador ii
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