Social capital has not merely risen as a social scientific term in the scholarly literature; it has become routinized into everyday conversation and policy discourse across an extraordinarily diverse ...set of disciplines and substantive domains in countries around the world. It currently enjoys citation counts some 100 times larger than it did just 20 years ago and its popularity continues apace, despite numerous trenchant criticisms. Some of the reasons for the rise and routinization of social capital are explored, especially as they pertain to issues of primary concern to political science, namely collective action, economic development, and democratic governance (issues made especially salient by Putnam 1993 ). While ongoing debate is to be welcomed and rigor from individual scholars required, social capital must continue to do double duty: providing for diverse audiences a simple and intuitively appealing way of highlighting the intrinsic and instrumental importance of social relationships, while also yielding at the appropriate time to more precise terms appropriate for particular specialist audiences. Social capital is another “essentially contested concept” ( Gallie 1956 ) whose utility to social science (and beyond) rests less on its capacity to forge an inherently elusive scholarly or policy consensus on complex issues than its capacity to facilitate constructive dialogue about agreements and disagreements between groups who would otherwise rarely (if ever) interact.
This book seeks to narrow two gaps: first, between the widespread use of case studies and their frequently 'loose' methodological moorings; and second, between the scholarly community advancing ...methodological frontiers in case study research and the users of case studies in development policy and practice. It draws on the contributors' collective experience at this nexus, but the underlying issues are more broadly relevant to case study researchers and practitioners in all fields. How does one prepare a rigorous case study? When can causal inferences reasonably be drawn from a single case? When and how can policy-makers reasonably presume that a demonstrably successful intervention in one context might generate similarly impressive outcomes elsewhere, or if massively 'scaled up'? No matter their different starting points – disciplinary base, epistemological orientation, sectoral specialization, or practical concerns – readers will find issues of significance for their own field, and others across the social sciences. This title is also available Open Access.
Governments play a major role in the development process, and constantly introduce reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; ...schools get built but kids don’t learn, IT systems are introduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability. This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It starts by providing evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, showing that many governments lack basic capacities even after decades of reforms and capacity-building efforts. The book then analyzes this evidence, identifying capability traps that hold many governments back—particularly related to isomorphic mimicry (where governments copy best practice solutions from other countries that make them look more capable even if they are not more capable) and premature load bearing (where governments adopt new mechanisms that they cannot actually make work, given weak extant capacities). The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (problem-driven iterative adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. The discussion about this process is structured in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers devise policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past.
The notion of development influences and is influenced by all aspects of human life. Social science is but one representational option among many for conveying the myriad ways in which development is ...conceived, encountered, experienced, justified, courted, and/or resisted by different groups at particular times and places. This wide-ranging collection from a diverse group of academic and non-academic authors engages with the broad field of development through twelve chapters that deal with music, theatre, fiction, photography, festivals, computer games, the arts, blogging, and other media. It explores three broad areas of alternative forms of knowledge about development, organized around the three themes of ‘translation’, ‘advocacy’, and ‘engagement’. The first of these is concerned with how popular representations of development can successfully compete with and complement formal social scientific representations; the second relates to the politics of popular representations of development, and the way that popular productions shape debates; and the third asks whether popular representations of development can generate alternative critiques that allow for the articulation of views that would be unacceptable to more orthodox means.
Previous efforts at legal development have focused almost exclusively on state legal systems, many of which have shown little improvement over time. Recently, organizations engaged in legal ...development activities have begun to pay greater attention to the implications of local, informal, indigenous, religious and village courts or tribunals, which often are more efficacious than state legal institutions, especially in rural communities. Legal pluralism is the term applied to these situations because these institutions exist alongside official state legal systems, usually in a complex or uncertain relationship. Although academics, especially legal anthropologists and sociologists, have discussed legal pluralism for decades, their work has not been consulted in the development context. This book brings together, in a single volume, contributions from academics and practitioners to explore the implications of legal pluralism for legal development.
The notion of development influences and is influenced by all aspects of human life. Social science is but one representational option among many for conveying the myriad ways in which development is ...conceived, encountered, experienced, justified, courted, and/or resisted by different groups at particular times and places. This wide-ranging collection from a diverse group of academic and non-academic authors engages with the broad field of development through twelve chapters that deal with music, theatre, fiction, photography, festivals, computer games, the arts, blogging, and other media. It explores three broad areas of alternative forms of knowledge about development, organized around the three themes of ‘translation’, ‘advocacy’, and ‘engagement’. The first of these is concerned with how popular representations of development can successfully compete with and complement formal social scientific representations; the second relates to the politics of popular representations of development, and the way that popular productions shape debates; and the third asks whether popular representations of development can generate alternative critiques that allow for the articulation of views that would be unacceptable to more orthodox means.
Contesting Development Barron, Patrick; Woolcock, Michael; Diprose, Rachael
02/2011
eBook
This pathbreaking book analyzes a highly successful participatory development program in Indonesia, exploring its distinctive origins and design principles and its impacts on local conflict dynamics ...and social institutions.
Our lives are remembered as an assemblage of overlapping stories – some of them prosaic and unremarkable, others more fraught, contingent and consequential – but most remain unfinished, punctuated ...only by their telling: to particular people, in particular ways, for particular purposes. In this spirit, a first-person account is provided of the making and impact of what has become the most-cited article in the 50-year history of
Theory and Society
. Originally drafted as a chapter of the author’s PhD dissertation, the article sought to provide the concept of social capital with an intellectual history, to forge an analytical framework integrating two (heretofore) largely separate realms of scholarship applying social capital theory to economic development, and to suggest some ways in which this framework, grounded in findings from across the social sciences, might be applicable to policy and practice. The paper itself emerged over two years from the generous input of many junior and senior scholars, several of whom were not based at the author’s university (and thus had few incentives to provide it). Pre-publication, the article’s positive reception – first amplified by a high-profile reviewer and then a widening circle of influential development researchers – played a decisive role in helping the author secure the first (and thus far only) opening for a sociologist in the World Bank’s Development Research Group. Post-publication, the paper’s key elements – theoretical, methodological, and substantive – became the foundation for a career at the nexus of (interdisciplinary) research, policy, implementation, evaluation, teaching, and mentoring across an array of sectors. It was an article that changed a life – and by extension, a lot of other lives. The story continues.
Rising standards for accurately inferring the impact of development projects has not been matched by equivalently rigorous procedures for guiding decisions about whether and how similar results might ...be expected elsewhere. These ‘external validity’ concerns are especially pressing for ‘complex’ development interventions, in which the explicit purpose is often to adapt projects to local contextual realities and where high quality implementation is paramount to success. A basic analytical framework is provided for assessing the external validity of complex development interventions. It argues for deploying case studies to better identify the conditions under which diverse outcomes are observed, focusing in particular on the salience of contextual idiosyncrasies, implementation capabilities and trajectories of change. Upholding the canonical methodological principle that questions should guide methods, not vice versa, is required if a truly rigorous basis for generalizing claims about likely impact across time, groups, contexts and scales of operation is to be discerned for different kinds of development interventions.
Trust, voice, and incentives Brixi, Hana; Lust, Ellen; Woolcock, Michael
2015., 2015, 5-29-2015, 2015-04
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
This report examines the role of incentives, trust, and engagement as critical determinants of service delivery performance in MENA countries. Focusing on education and health, the report illustrates ...how the weak external and internal accountability undermines policy implementation and service delivery performance and how such a cycle of poor performance can be counteracted. Case studies of local success reveal the importance of both formal and informal accountability relationships and the role of local leadership in inspiring and institutionalizing incentives toward better service delivery performance. Enhancing services for MENA citizens requires forging a stronger social contract among public servants, citizens, and service providers while empowering communities and local leaders to find 'best fit' solutions. Learning from the variations within countries, especially the outstanding local successes, can serve as a solid basis for new ideas and inspiration for improving service delivery. Such learning may help the World Bank Group and other donors as well as national and local leaders and civil society, in developing ways to enhance the trust, voice, and incentives for service delivery to meet citizens' needs and expectations.
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