Emerging Issues
The Emerging Issues Research Service responds to and shapes new and emerging priority agendas of concern to the international development community. These are emerging policy areas where it is important to bring expert disciplinary perspectives into policy debate and programme responses early. If you are interested in using this service, please contact enquiries@gsdrc.org so we can discuss your requirements.
DFID staff can submit requests through their Head of Profession. AusAID staff should contact the Peace, Conflict and Development (PCD) Unit at GsdrcHelpdesk@ausaid.gov.au.
For more details about the process for identifying and selecting emerging issues, please contact enquiries@gsdrc.org.
Emerging Issues Reports
- Community-based Approaches to Peacebuilding in Conflict-affected and Fragile Contexts
- The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Conflict and State Fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Political Settlements
- Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Impact Evaluation and Measuring Results
- State Capacity and Non-state Service Provision in Fragile and Conflict-affected States
- Increased Religiosity Among Women in Muslim Majority Countries
Community-based Approaches to Peacebuilding in Conflict-affected and Fragile Contexts
Huma Haider, November 2009
The ‘community’ has often been resilient in conflict-affected and fragile contexts, providing survival and coping mechanisms for violence, insecurity and fragility. Growing attention has thus been paid to the adoption of community-based approaches to help address the extensive needs in these contexts. This paper explores the principal aims of community-based approaches and key challenges and considerations in designing and implementing such approaches, particularly in environments of conflict and fragility.
Community-based approaches (CBA) seek to give communities direct control over investment decisions, project planning, execution and monitoring, through a process that emphasises inclusive participation and management. The basic premise is that local communities are better placed to identify their shared needs and the actions necessary to meet them. Taking charge of these processes facilitates a sense of community ownership, which can contribute to the sustainability of interventions.
The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Conflict and State Fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa
Shiv Bakrania and Brian Lucas, July 2009
Whilst countries which are currently politically unstable and suffer from pre-existing conflicts have suffered severely from the financial crisis, decreasing income streams could even push some previously stable countries towards fragility. Thus, there is a perilous risk that the crisis could precipitate new instances of fragility and erode many of the gains made over the past decade by post-conflict states in Sub-Saharan Africa.
At the same time, empirical evidence shows that the declines in human development made during economic deceleration outweigh the gains made during economic accelerations. Therefore, achieving the MDGs becomes an even more distant prospect if the impacts of the financial crisis are not mitigated in countries that are fragile or emerging from fragility and conflict.
In this context, this issues paper collates recommendations from a range of sources on how the impacts of the financial crisis might be addressed and suggests potential areas of collaboration among donors. These include:
- Stepping up aid commitments and coordination
- Supporting social budgeting and protection
- Investing in research including monitoring and evaluation systems
- Supporting businesses and promoting diversification
- Focusing on flash-points without ignoring regional dynamics
- Targeting vulnerable groups such as women and children who are adversely affected by shocks.
Political Settlements
Jonathan Di John and James Putzel, June 2009
Why do similar sets of formal institutions often have such divergent outcomes? An analysis of political settlements goes some way to answering this question by bringing into focus the contending interests that exist within any state, which constrain and facilitate institutional and developmental change. It provides a framework to analyse how the state is linked to society and what lies behind the formal representation of politics in a state.
The political settlement and the elite bargains from which it emerges are central to patterns of state fragility and resilience. The role of political organisation within the political settlement is crucial to both the stability of the settlement and the direction in which it evolves over time. The elite bargains that may lead to the establishment of what might be considered a resilient political settlement may also act as a barrier to progressive developmental change.
Analysis of political settlements suggests that state-building is
far from a set of technical formulas, but is a highly political process. Creating capacity within a state to consolidate and expand taxation is fundamentally determined by the shape of the political settlement
underlying the state. This is true as well for the development of service
delivery or any other function of the state. This analytical framework provides a window for donors to grasp the politics of a place in order to design more effective interventions.
Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Impact Evaluation and Measuring Results
Sabine Garbarino and Jeremy Holland, March 2009
Issues paper | Workshop report
There has been a renewed interest in impact evaluation and measuring results in recent years amongst development agencies and donors. This paper reviews the case for promoting and formalising qualitative and combined methods for impact evaluation and measuring results, as part of a broader strategy amongst donors and country partners for tackling the evaluation gap. The accompanying workshop report provides a summary of the January 2009 workshop “Make an Impact: Tackling the “I” and the “D” of Making It Happen”, which aimed to familiarise DFID staff with the use of qualitative methods in impact evaluation and measuring results.
The case for qualitative and combined methods is strong. Qualitative methods have an equal footing in evaluation of development impacts and can generate sophisticated, robust and timely data and analysis. Combining qualitative research with quantitative instruments that have greater breadth of coverage and generalisability can result in better evaluations that make the most of their respective comparative advantages.
State Capacity and Non-state Service Provision in Fragile and Conflict-affected States
Richard Batley and Claire Mcloughlin, February 2009
How can governments effectively engage with non-state providers (NSPs) of basic services where capacity is weak? This paper examines whether and how fragile and conflict affected states can co-ordinate, finance, and set and apply standards for the provision of basic services by NSPs. It explores ways of incrementally engaging the state, beginning with activities that are least likely to do harm to non-state provision.
Paradoxically, the need for large-scale approaches and quick co-ordination of services in fragile and conflict-affected settings may require ‘prematurely high’ levels of state-NSP engagement, before the development of the underlying institutional structures that would support them. When considering strategies to support the capacity of government to engage with NSPs, donors should:
- recognise non-state service provision and adopt the ‘do no harm’ principle
- beware of generalisation
- recognise that state building can occur through any of the types of engagement with NSPs
- begin with less risky/small scale forms of engagement where possible
- adopt mixed approaches.
Increased Religiosity Among Women in Muslim Majority Countries
Sarah Ladbury and Seema Khan, November 2008
Issues paper | Annotated bibliography | Full summary
It has hitherto been assumed, at least by western development practitioners, that women’s rights are best attained through secularist liberal interpretations of equality, of the sort reflected in CEDAW type conventions. Yet what does increasing use of the veil and greater religious observances across the Islamic world signify in this context? Does it reflect a rejection of these standards? And if understanding this move to greater religiosity requires a different paradigm of rights then how does this ‘Islamic’ paradigm sit with the ‘western’ one?
The social, political and economic contexts within which women live in Muslim majority countries (MMCs) are in a constant process of change. Their increased literacy, access to information and communication technologies, as well as to wage-earning work, and their appropriation of religious knowledge from previously closed, male-dominated circles means that Muslim women are constructing their own modernity. This symbolises a break from many traditional practices as well as from western conceptions of progress and equality.
The issues paper argues that it is important for development policy makers and practitioners to take an interest in this upsurge in religiosity because it raises questions that are relevant to three key areas of their work: women’s rights and gender equality; women as political actors (including in Islamist parties); and women’s involvement in civil society (including religious movements). The annotated bibliography is written for those who want a more in-depth understanding of the issues introduced in the main paper.
