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The evidence generated and used in development cooperation has changed remarkably over the last decades. When it comes to the field of democracy support, these developments have been less significant. Routinised, evidence-based programming is far from a reality here. Compared to other fields, the goals of the interventions and assumed theories of change remain underspecified. Under these circumstances, evaluating and learning is difficult, and as a result, evidence gaps remain large and the translation of evidence into action often unsuccessful. This is particularly dramatic at a time when this field is regaining attention amid global autocratisation trends. In this article, we analyse the specific barriers and challenges democracy support faces to generate and use evidence. Furthermore, we identify evidence gaps and propose impact-oriented accompanying research as an evaluation approach that can make a significant contribution towards advancing the evidence agenda in this field.

This paper addresses vulnerability of revenue to external shocks using export composition to capture economic structure and differentiating countries according to income levels, resource endowments and political regimes. This gives a richer characterization than previous studies. Lower income countries are vulnerable to shocks, especially in terms of trade (associated with the greatest revenue loss): democratic regimes seem to be less vulnerable to revenue losses due to shocks than non-democracies whereas revenue in resource rich is more vulnerable to shocks (except natural disasters) than non-resource rich countries. We find a negative relationship between manufacturing exports and revenue in lower income countries.

"Social cohesion" and the "social contract" are two related analytical concepts, which have become increasingly popular among researchers and practitioners. Both concepts help to understand and characterise societies and countries by shedding light on the relationships between members and groups of society and state institutions. Unfortunately, there is often little precision in the use of the concepts. As a result, their respective analytical strengths have not always been well utilised for policy analysis and project design. Furthermore, the synergies between them have been overlooked. This paper therefore defines both concepts, considers their respective strengths and discusses the relationship between them. The concept of the social contract emphasises the deliverables exchanged between societal groups and governing authorities. Social contracts are the sum of formal and informal agreements amongst societal actors and between them and the actor in power (the government or any other type of authority) on the rights and obligations of one towards the other. Social contracts vary enormously, but all establish more stability in state–society relations, especially if they are inclusive and flexible enough to account for changes in the framework conditions. The concept of social cohesion, in contrast, refers primarily to the quality of the relations between individuals, societal groups and the state, and the underlying values, norms and attitudes that shape these relationships. Social cohesion can be characterised as the glue that holds a society together and enables it to develop a shared vision. It concerns the horizontal relationships between members of society and the vertical relationships between societal actors and political institutions. Social contracts and social cohesion affect each other. Social contracts contribute to social cohesion because the regular and predictable exchange of deliverables between societal groups and the state creates an interdependence that strengthens mutual trust, willing-ness to cooperate and a sense of common identity. Conversely, social contracts tend to be more resilient and sustainable if they are based on cohesive societies. Both concepts are thus useful for national governments and foreign donors to assess opportunities and design policies for sustainable development. The social contract concept helps us to understand the "give and take" in a country: it shows where governments could do better in delivering to society and thereby make state–society relations more stable. The social cohesion concept in turn helps to determine what holds societies together and which attributes of intra-society relations could or should be strengthened. In addition, both concepts assist foreign donors in assessing which interventions would be favourable for the internal relationships in partner countries and in thinking carefully about potential unintended harmful effects. In particular, international donors can benefit from exploiting the mutually enforcing relationship between social contract and social cohesion.

In pursuit of employment opportunities and increased productivity, governments and donors have the highest ambitions for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) systems. Most prominently, TVET is expected to facilitate access to employment and a qualified workforce by offering its graduates skills that the labour market demands. Beyond its employment impacts, TVET supporters also anticipate that it will improve societal outcomes such as inclusion, gender equality and social cohesion.Access to the labour market plays an essential role in allowing displaced populations to sustain their livelihoods and to foster socio-economic integration. Long-term displacement situations and a decline in resettlement opportunities have spurred the quest for local integration in countries of first asylum. It is in this context that TVET has gained additional salience in the past decade.Does TVET live up to these promises? Overall, systematic empirical evidence on the impact of TVET is limited and often inconsistent. In terms of employment and income, evidence suggests that there is a small positive effect, but time plays an important factor. Often, impacts are only seen in the medium- to long-term, and in general, programmes tend to work better for the long-term unemployed. Evidence of societal effects is even more limited; there is a large gap of knowledge on the potential social cohesion impacts of TVET. Given the amount of funding and the high expectations found in the policy discourse, it is essential to better understand if and how TVET measures contribute to achieving their self-declared goals.In this brief, we present the results of an accompanying research study of an inclusive TVET programme implemented by the German development cooperation organisation Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Ethiopia. In this programme, host and refugee participants are jointly trained, with the explicit goals of fostering social cohesion and improving employment opportunities.The results indicate that while the social cohesion effect seems remarkable on several dimensions, the income and employment effect is at best weak and materialises only for specific groups of individuals. Qualitative and quantitative evidence supports the validity of the approach to achieve social cohesion. More than design or implementation problems, the lack of stronger employment effects appears to be driven by structural context conditions like limited labour market absorption capacity, legal work permission constraints, gender barriers and similar hindering factors.We derive the following main recommendations from the analysis: TVET measures need a careful context analysis (including labour market capacities, legal work barriers) to ensure that the necessary conditions for TVET to succeed are in place. This is particularly relevant in terms of employment effects, which appear to be elusive. Inclusive TVET measures seem to be an effective tool to improve social cohesion. However, if social cohesion effects are valued not just as an "add-on" to employment effects but as primary goals, the question arises if alternative interventions might be more efficient. This question is particularly salient given the modest evidence regarding employment and income effects. The evidence base of the impact of (inclusive) TVET programmes needs to be expanded. Knowledge gaps that need to be closed include TVET's impact on displaced populations, its potential societal effects, differential gender effects, and medium- to long-term employment and income effects.