Suchergebnisse

In many popular intervention methodologies aimed at stimulating sustainable rural development (in the widest possible sense) the idea of 'participation' is a leading principle. This article will demonstrate that the process in which actors are supposed to participate is often thought of as being a process of planning, decision‐making and/or social learning. It will be argued that such an operationalization of development processes is based on inconsistent theoretical assumptions, and can easily lead to unproductive development interventions due to an inability to handle conflicts. As an alternative it is proposed to use negotiation theory as a basis for organizing participatory development efforts. The implications of such a shift in thinking about participation are far‐reaching: it requires new modes of analysis, and different roles, tasks and skills for facilitators of participatory processes.

Tensions between farmers, government and society have recently been running high in the Netherlands. Dutch farmers are furious with the national government because of the ever-stricter nitrogen policy that is supposed to save nature in the Netherlands, in line with European directives. The current plan states that nitrogen emissions need to be reduced by 50% in 2030. The disagreement over how to tackle the nitrogen issue in the Netherlands is a deeply rooted conflict that goes back decades. In this political commentary, we analyse the conflict and argue that the solutions proposed in the public and political debate tend to ignore the systemic nature of the problem. We suggest that it is important to work towards innovation in the rules and arrangements that govern agricultural value chains to create a more conducive and enabling environment for the regional initiatives that have emerged in response to the current crisis, several of which challenge the currently dominant food system.

Advocacy has become an important area of development support. Simultaneously, the interest in learning-oriented monitoring of advocacy programmes has increased. Starting from the premise that learning has sociopolitical dimensions, this article explores how the challenges and contradictions of such monitoring present themselves in Latin American advocacy activities supported by a Danish NGO. Our case-study demonstrates that two largely separate monitoring systems coexist. Side by side with a conventional formal and indicator-based monitoring system, project staff and stakeholders have developed a more informal and dialogical mode of monitoring advocacy. Although the latter has potential advantages from a learning perspective, the article demonstrates that its actual contribution to organizational learning is suboptimal and points to several sociopolitical obstacles and influences that lead to limited learning.The article concludes that the improvement of learning-oriented monitoring first and foremost requires affirmative `political' action and leadership towards widening the space for learning and reflexivity.

Within development cooperation, development issues are increasingly recognized as complex problems requiring new paths towards solving them. In addition to the commonly used two dimensions of complex problems (uncertainty and disagreement), we introduce a third dimension: systemic stability; that is, stability provided by rules, relations and complementary technology. This article reflects on how development evaluation methodologies and especially those introducing a complexity perspective address these three dimensions. Inferring that this third dimension deserves more attention, we explore the characteristics of reflexive evaluation approaches that challenge systemic stability and support processes of learning and institutional change. We conclude that reflexive evaluation approaches may well complement current system approaches in development evaluation practice.