This article contributes to the literature on unintended effects by adding a dimension to existing typologies: exaggerated unintended effects. It analyses the existence of this dimension resulting ...from the adoption of the United States’ conflict minerals legislation, the Dodd-Frank act, article 1502. The article makes evident that there were two competing narratives on the unintended effects of the American regulation: the duration and the scope of the de facto embargo. While in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC; the target of the legislation) the negative unintended effects were declining, the dominant narrative on unintended effects was not changing and omitted crucial elements. A quantitative analysis shows that especially those companies that stood to gain from deregulation did not incorporate these positive developments into their narrative. The narratives of other stakeholders, such as non-governmental organizations and investors, progressed together with the changes observed in the DRC. The research indicates how the discussion on unintended effects impacted the formulation on conflict minerals regulation in the European Union. The article concludes by drawing parallels to debates on unintended negative effects in other domains of international cooperation, such as migration. It is suggested that policy makers, researchers and journalists verify claims of negative unintended effects before integrating them into their own narratives.
•This article contributes to the literature on unintended effects and explores a potentially missing dimension: the exaggerated unintended effects.•It develops an additional dimension of the typology of unintended effects and applies it to the United States’ conflict minerals legislation.•In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC; the target of the legislation) the negative unintended effects were declining, yet the dominant narrative on unintended effects ignored these developments.•A quantitative analysis demonstrates that especially those companies that stood to gain from deregulation omitted this positive change into their narrative.•Researchers and policy makers are hence invited to critically assess claims of unintended effects before reproducing or using them.
This article presents the results of the first ex-post sustainability study among 93 development interventions implemented between 1990 and 2008 in Kenya, India, South Africa, and Ghana. The ...interventions were undertaken by 42 different local organisations with support from an equal number of Dutch small-scale, voluntary development organisations. We find that a large number of interventions still achieve the intended output and outcome results. The results show no differences between interventions that took place 5, 10, or 15 years before the study. Financial dependency on the Dutch partner organisations remains large. The levels of sustainability differed significantly between the four countries, with Kenya and South Africa portraying the most positive picture. In addition, the results indicate that the majority of the interventions are focusing on the direct reduction of poverty: offering concrete support to people through the provision of basic needs. While many local organisations expect that these interventions will also contribute to more structural change, the findings of this study question this supposed transformative effect.
Established development organisations face a long-standing legitimacy crisis for not living up to the expectations once set. Meanwhile, thousands of small-scale, voluntary development organisations - ...referred to as Private Development Initiatives (PDIs) - have joined the field of international development. In this article, I examine the legitimacy of their acts from a local government perspective based on an analysis of four dimensions of legitimacy: regulatory, pragmatic, normative and cognitive legitimacy. The study took place in May 2017 in the Kenyan coastal county of Kwale. A range of government officials were interviewed on how they perceive the interventions of international development organisations in general, and Dutch PDIs in particular, and on their cooperation with these development actors. The study shows that, although many of these PDIs operate in areas that fall under the responsibility of the local government, most of them have a rather limited cooperation with the local government, putting their legitimacy in the eyes of local government officials at stake.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Policymakers, practitioners and academics expect mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) interventions to have social outcomes. Surprisingly, the existing academic literature on the ...effectiveness of MHPSS has focused almost exclusively on clinical outcomes. The evidence base of MHPSS interventions is in that way limited. To feed the research agenda on MHPSS (i.e., MHPSS-SET2), this scoping review analyses the presence and understanding of social outcomes in the grey literature. Open-access documents were systematically searched from various online grey literature databases and websites of organisations. Documents which describe psychosocial programming in low- and middle-income countries for people affected by humanitarian emergencies were included. Data characteristics were extracted, such as the type of document, intervention and outcome. A textual analysis of social outcomes was conducted to categorise the descriptions of these outcomes.
A total number of 95 grey literature documents were included in the review. It was found that in the vast majority of the reviewed documents, social outcomes are being described. However, social outcomes have been poorly conceptualised both theoretically and methodologically, meaning that most documents lack definitions of theoretical concepts and measurement instruments. Mechanisms relating interventions to social outcomes have remained implicit. These findings are interpreted in light of key developments in the field of MHPSS, in particular the introduction of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) guidelines, and the review traces the underexposed position of social outcomes back to the clinical historical roots of the field.
In conclusion, those who develop and evaluate interventions should focus more structural attention on social outcomes to fully understand the possible impact of psychosocial interventions. Further harmonisation between academic research and practice is necessary, by drawing from practice-based insights on social outcomes as found in the grey literature, and using methods and measurement instruments from social sciences in MHPSS research.
•Mental health and psychosocial support is expected to have social outcomes.•Academia focuses on the clinical outcomes of mental health and psychosocial support.•We reviewed grey literature; the work of policy makers and practitioners.•The resulting categorisation and conceptual model can guide academic research.•Methods and measurement tools of social sciences can complement current research.
Motivation
The aid architecture for international development has undergone significant change in recent years, but it remains unclear how the established order has responded to the emergence of new ...actors in this field.
Purpose
The article closely analyses the entry of small‐scale, voluntary development organizations to gain a better understanding of the changing aid architecture.
Methods and approach
Through extensive policy tracing over a 15‐year period, combined with analysis of primary, longitudinal data, we study how private development initiatives (PDIs) have been received by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and established development organizations in the Netherlands. We focus on the type of support provided to PDIs and the (changing) rationale underlying this support.
Findings
After many years of generous support, PDIs are no longer part of the Dutch policy agenda as a result of vanishing attention to the rationale of public support. The professionalization agenda underlying both the financial and non‐financial support provided to PDIs also prompted these organizations to move away from the traditional order. PDIs successfully sought alternative allies, surviving as actors in their own right. These two developments have resulted in mutual disengagement between the established order and PDIs, with increasingly less co‐operation and interaction.
Policy implications
PDIs have not been genuinely included in the traditional development order in the Netherlands, making it questionable whether their emergence contributed to a more plural community as envisaged by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the turn of the century. To make use of the value of actively involved citizens, policy‐makers will have to set up appropriate frameworks that recognize and preserve the distinctive nature of these organizations and, in so doing, capitalize on the comparative advantages of PDIs.
Within the field of international migration, most studies focusing on home‐based migrant social networks tend to focus on family relations, whereas the role of the friends who stay behind is largely ...neglected. This study explores how friendships affect and are affected by, international migration. Via an ethnographic approach, we have analysed the experiences of 16 young adults who stayed behind in the sending region of Essaouira, Morocco. In contrast with the pressures experienced within family relations, friendships emerged as an important source of socio‐emotional support for migrants, thereby functioning as safe spaces. Building on the findings, we argue that for a more comprehensive understanding of the social embeddedness of migration, friendships should be considered along with family relations.
•Organisational characteristics influence giving intentions of (potential) donors.•Overhead costs negatively influence giving intentions of (potential) donors.•(Potential) donors are in favour of ...experienced, familiar organisations.•To donors high in social trust the familiarity of an organisation remains important.•The ideal organisation is a hybrid, rarer type of organisation.
This article investigates what type of international development organisations potential donors would prefer to donate to. We constructed 960 scenarios in which a fictive development organisation was described. The scenarios were randomly varied across eight characteristics of the organisation: size, familiarity, experience, religious character, number of different projects run by the organisation, number of countries in which the organisation is active, overhead costs and staff composition. A large representative sample of the Dutch population (N=2,758) received six randomly allocated scenarios and had to decide if, and if so, how much they would donate to the depicted (fictive) organisation. Results demonstrate that donors have a preference for familiar organisations with several years of experience. Although donors have a strong aversion regarding overhead costs, we find that donors seem to value the capacities of paid staff members and are, to a certain extent, willing to pay a price for these. The ideal development organisation combines features typical of small(er) scale voluntary development organisations (e.g. mainly run by volunteers) and large(r) scale professional organisations (e.g. running development programmes in numerous countries).
In the Netherlands, there is a large group of small-scale, voluntary development organisations, referred to as Private Development Initiatives (PDIs). By classifying PDI interventions based on their ...potential sustainability, we aim to enhance our understanding of PDIs as alternative development actors and to get insight into the diversity within this group. We rely on detailed data of 49 Dutch PDIs active in Kenya and Indonesia. The classification is based on a combined analysis of both the intervention type ('what' they do) and the intervention manner ('how' they work) of PDI activities. This results in a typology that outlines the potential sustainability of PDI intervention strategies. We find that diversity regarding the potential sustainability of PDI interventions is large. Whereas several organisational characteristics influence the choice of the intervention strategy (e.g. independence local partner, budget), intrinsic drivers such as motivation and the personal or professional background of PDI members tend to be of great influence for the potential sustainability of the intervention strategies adopted by the PDIs.
In the Netherlands, charitable behavior for international development purposes is subject to important changes. Whereas established development organizations suffer from a declining support base, ...private development initiatives (PDIs) that execute concrete, small-scale projects within direct personalized aid networks can count on increasing enthusiasm from individual donors of money and time. We investigate to what extent cost-benefit evaluations of volunteers (supply side) and characteristics of PDIs (demand side) affect the time allocation for volunteering in these organizations. The study is based on a survey among 661 volunteers active in Dutch PDIs. PDI volunteers face time and budget restrictions, partly due to their position on the (paid) labor market. Volunteers who are skeptical toward established development organizations increase voluntary time investment in PDIs. Corroborating the proximity hypothesis, volunteers perceiving a smaller distance to beneficiaries, spend more volunteering hours in PDIs. Volunteers also spend more hours volunteering for PDIs with larger budgets and more staff.
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