Understanding Politics in Development

Development is a complex business but it should not be tackled in isolation from the political dynamics in a country or context. And that’s why development practitioners would be advised to embrace the Political Economy Analysis, according to experts.

The Political Economy Analysis encourages and enables development professionals to better understand key political dimensions in a particular context in which they operate. It may also provide insights on how to adapt their approaches accordingly.

“Development is essentially a locally driven political process,” said Sue Unsworth from The Policy Practice. “If external players are going to be at all effective in influencing how that process takes place, they have to understand it and look for ways of engaging with it.”

A better understanding of the politics can help programme officers avoid over-ambitiousness, can contribute to setting realistic time schedules and appropriate sequencing and to foresee future problem areas or understand better why certain efforts have not been successful in the past.

The Political Economy Analysis has received a good deal of attention in recent years. But for it to endure, and Ms Unsworth believes that Political Economy Analysis is an essential tool in the development practitioner’s cache, donors have to change the way they operate, she said speaking at a recent PEA seminar in Brussels.

“The impact has been quite fragmented within agencies, and what [the Political Economy Analysis] hasn’t done is induce any kind of fundamental rethink about how development happens and what the role of external players might be,” said Ms Unsworth, “And that in turn isn’t affecting key decisions agencies make about how they recruit and deploy staff and train and use them.”

Alex Duncan, also from The Policy Practice and another key speaker from the learning seminar, agrees that this approach is central to effective development, and one that donors have overlooked for too long.

“Over the decades, by and large, development agencies have been remarkably ignorant of politics in their programming – which is not to say that their staff don’t understand, as I think the staff often do understand – but that this way of thinking, of trying to be more realistic, has not been legitimised by the organisations.”

Agencies, like the Commission, “have not given the staff the analytical tools and space to arrive at a better understanding of the context in which they are working.”

But now that the Political Economy Analysis has come to the fore, Mr Duncan cautiously believes there is no going back.

“It should not be oversold, it is not a new silver bullet that is suddenly going to transform the way that organisations work,” said Mr Duncan. “It seems to me there is no going back to the situation where we thought of the principle development challenges as a technical problem or a lack of finance.”

“Plenty of evaluations carried out for the European Commission and others have said ‘you have been too naive politically’ and I think one has to respond to those kinds of findings of our past effectiveness.”