Civil society building network research activities 2005/06

Author(s): Hivos Knowledge Sharing
Publication date: Monday 13 February 2006

One of the proposed activities of the ISS-Hivos partnership on civil society building is to develop mutual research projects on particular issues both partners would like to focus on. This document provides an overview of research activities proposed by ISS staff as well as by Hivos staff, as a follow up to the December 2004 and May 2005 seminars. It also draws on the evaluation of the May seminar, programme evaluations, and other inputs.

1. Objectives of the research activities
The central purpose of this research is, as was agreed in our December 2004 agreement, "to collect and extract existing (dormant) knowledge from Hivos practices and experiences in civil society building-related activities, and thus to foster new and innovative research, including evaluation, that will lead to improved policy and programmes for civil society building".

The main empirical base for this research are the Hivos project files, evaluation reports, in addition to the non-written knowledge from Hivos staff and staff of partner organisations. ISS academic staff members will co-ordinate these research activities, but the implementation may include ISS students as well as staff from Hivos and/or Hivos partner organisations.

This is going to be an entirely new element in our partnership, which will have to develop step by step. After all, both institutions would like to benefit from the results of this research. Hivos will prefer output that can be used for their policy development, whereas ISS might want to use this for particular publications. The ultimate purpose of the research activities in this framework, apart from widening and activating our mutual civil society building network, is to generate new knowledge that may be used for strategic civil society development

The output of these research projects will be made available on the joint www.civilsocietybuilding.net website, they will be published in the form of articles and/or be printed as ISS Working Papers or as Special Papers by Hivos and/or partner organisations.

The research will be co-ordinated by a group consisting of Ria Brouwers and Kees Biekart (ISS), together with Karel Chambille from Hivos. The group will closely work together with ISS staff and students, with Hivos staff concerned and with staff of Hivos partner organisations. Cooperation will also be sought with researchers from institutions in the South.

2. Research topics
In several discussions we have identified possible topics that can serve as themes for a number of compact research projects in the period October 2005 ? December 2006. Many topics have been suggested in discussions between ISS and Hivos staff, and were worked out over the past few months. Although the exact focus can still vary slightly, we propose to start with two main topics and explore issues regarding two other topics:
The two main research topics are:

• (i) New governance: engaging civil society to hold the state accountable
• (ii) NGOs and social movements

Two additional exploratory research topics are:

• (iii) Financial and institutional sustainability of partner organisations
• (iv) Strategies for civil society building by women?s organisations

Each topic is briefly outlined below, explaining the focus, methods and expected outputs. The list of topics can be further extended in a later phase, after a mid-term evaluation.

(i) New governance: engaging civil society to hold the state accountable

The fading and failing role of many nation states and the subsequent response by civil society organisations was the theme of the seminar "Confronting the state, engaging the state? held in May 2005" as part of the Hivos-ISS Knowledge Sharing Network. Participants discussed how people?s confidence in the nation state has become minimal in many countries and how civil society organisations are faced with the challenge to find creative ways to hold their governments accountable. This research aims to follow up on that discussion.

Not only citizens have lost confidence in their governments, also the international donor community has come to the conclusion that the role of the nation state is inhibiting development and deserves serious attention, hence the call for "good governance". As part of the efforts to provide effective international aid, changes have been made in the aid architecture, with the PRSP as linchpin of the approach, complemented by the international agenda of the Millennium Development Goals.

The new agenda and the new discourse also focus on a new range of stakeholders. The involvement of non-state stakeholders in monitoring and evaluation has been promoted by international donor organisations, in the belief that stakeholder participation will enhance the transparency of policy processes and the quality of programmes, and will produce evidence about implementation and impact of service delivery. The notion to consult stakeholders during the evaluation process has been broadly promoted under the PRSP M&E process, where governments and international organisations introduced opportunities for participation by civilians. This concept has been reiterated in the MDG framework.

The purpose of the present research is to identify the significance of these initiatives for the advancement of the accountability of the state towards civil society. Have such forms of participation created genuine opportunities to tilt the relationships between state and society and to force the state into "good governance" Is the process of externally initiated and promoted forms of citizen participation being picked up by and beneficial for civil society? When and to what extent are NGOs involved in the M&E activities and are they able to transmit the voices of the people? How is the demand-side organized and how are people empowered to speak out? The research will focus on various levels of interaction and accountability: of the state towards civil society, and of CSOs towards their constituency; and it will deal with the question of how demand-articulation among citizens takes place. The research is to find out about the conditions under which participation works, and to provide lessons how Hivos can support the creation and growth of these conditions.

The research will be made operational by focusing on M&E practices of MDG and/or PRSP agenda?s in which Hivos partners have been involved, in two countries at the minimum. The MDGs are the most ambitious of a recent series of global initiatives that focus on outcomes and results, as opposed to inputs and activities. HIPC and the related PRSPs are earlier initiatives for which goals for poverty reduction outcomes, and indicators of progress were developed. The result-based orientation of these initiatives has brought along an accelerated development of monitoring and evaluation systems in countries where such procedures were marginally developed so far, or were related to donor-financed projects only. International donors encourage developing countries not only to introduce M&E practices, but to make a system in which there is ample room for various groups in society to have a voice.

The main research questions are:

•   Is the process of MDG / PRSP monitoring and evaluation with its focus on citizen participation a source of new opportunities for civil society building and democratisation? Have CSOs strategically used this conjunctural focus on citizen participation initiated by the international donor community?
• How is the demand-articulation by citizens encouraged and channelled, and how are people?s voices fed back into new policy and programmes?
• What are the conditions under which CSOs have successfully been involved, and how can Hivos as a donor help to further promote these conditions?

It is proposed to conduct case studies in two countries together with Hivos partners who are involved in the process of monitoring and evaluation of the MDGs. One could be Uganda where the Uganda Debt Network has established monitoring committees in 17 districts to monitor progress on activities initiated for poverty reduction. It is further proposed to cooperate with research institutes in the selected countries, to promote the creation of a body of social knowledge on the issues in the countries concerned. Desk studies of additional partners involved in these processes can hopefully complement the findings of the two in-depth case studies.

(ii) NGOs and social movements
Social movements have been central to social and political change everywhere in the world, in all periods. As such, they have been supported constantly by Hivos, directly or though intermediary NGOs, as one of the central elements in its civil society building strategy. Over the past decade it seems that HIVOS?s focus on social organisations is declining, or at least that the number of social organisations directly supported by Hivos is lower than ever before. What is the trend here, and does this have to do with a new relationship between NGOs and social movements?

We have to be clear what we mean by social movements: ?a particular form of collective behaviour in which the motive to act springs largely from the attitudes and aspirations of members, typically acting within a loose organizational framework? (Heywood 2002: 284). This implies that membership of a social movement is related to commitment and activism, rather than formal membership and contributions. It also points at broadness of a coalition which can embrace several social organisations, activist groups, NGOs and even political parties. So Hivos as a committed donor NGO can certainly be part of a social movement, if not of several of these movements, but it can also consider itself to be a facilitator of these movements

The issue to be researched is, however, different. We would like to review the changing relationships between these support NGOs (in North and South) and particular social movements. Due to new reporting requirements, but also due to changing priorities, it seems that donor NGOs are struggling to find a new type of ?healthy relationship? with ?new? social movements, such as for example with the indigenous movements in the lower Amazon. At least, this is a central theme in a recently initiated research project with Hivos, SNV IBIS and Oxfam-USA. Outcomes of this research will likely be feeding into our current research focus.

The central questions we would like to address are the following:

• How have relationships with NGOs and social movements in the framework of Hivos partner organisations changed over the past decade?
• What are the obstacles in supporting social movements directly as part of civil society building strategies?
• Can one identify positive examples in which social movements were supported directly by Hivos (or other donors), and what can be learned from these examples?
• What is the position of Hivos (and other donors) in the dynamics of these social movements?

The proposed research method will be to identify a number of social movements that were supported by Hivos in the past, directly an indirectly, and review their relationship with local NGOs and with donor NGOs. Preferably case studies are going to be identified in Asia, Latin American, and Africa, with an equal spread over sectors and levels. The idea is to examine about 8-10 NGO-social movement relationships, and draw conclusions from these case studies that will feed into new policy-making.

(iii) Financial and institutional sustainability of partner organisations
The issue of financial sustainability is difficult and yet very important. It is difficult because we have seen from the thesis research of ISS MA student Lenka Cerna that a solution to low sustainability is context-specific and thus very hard to realise in countries in which considerable international aid flows distort any local effort to experiment with alternative forms of income-generation.

However, reviews by Lenka and others also show that partner organisations are very creative in looking for ways to secure their institutional survival: diversifying donor income, introducing market-based income-generation, reducing current expenses, expanding collaboration with similar organisations, and so on. There is a range of alternatives being practised, although these experiences need to be better documented and analysed.

A particular problem is to look for sustainability of organisations involved in more political interventions, such as civil society building, in which there are often very few alternative ways of income-generation. Think for example of human rights? groups or persecuted networks of social organisations. The key question is what is happening to those organisations after donors are withdrawing, or will these groups by definition remain dependent upon external subsidies? This is especially a relevant question for the countries in Latin America and Asia from which Hivos has withdrawn over the past years.

Therefore, the central questions in this research on sustainability are:

• What have been the important lessons from Hivos partner organisations regarding successful (and/or failed) policies to enhance financial sustainability?
• Are partner organisations at all able to work on contested or critical issues without external donor support?
• Which are the determining context variables affecting the effectiveness of initiatives towards strengthening financial sustainability?
• Is there a role at all to be played for a donor like Hivos in the promotion and/or implementation of more financially sustainable interventions?

The research will consist of a number of case studies in some key countries, building on the experiences of Lenka in Uganda. Ideally, we choose three or four countries and form research groups with ISS students, ISS alumni, and Hivos partners to work this out.

(iv) Strategies for civil society building by women's organisations

Amongst the main findings of the Programme Evaluation Role of women?s organisations in civil society building (2004) is that women?s organisations face the difficulty of how to maximize the impact of their work for the benefit of women. There are at least two sides to this problem. One is about the interaction of the organisation with its constituency and the other is about the organisation?s role vis-à-vis the state.

Women's organisations are often urban-based professional organisations who work for the promotion of the interests of women through lobby and advocacy activities. This may result in better laws for women, in more attention to gender issues in media and other fora, etc. However valid in itself, such strategy does not guarantee that women's voices are represented, nor that women become aware of increased opportunities and rights. The question thus is how a professional approach of lobbying and advocacy can be balanced with an approach of broadening the support base and of reaching out to women to also empower them to claim their rights.

The second problem is manifest in countries where governments fail to respond adequately to the needs of people, and women's organisations tend to take over service delivery tasks, which are actually the responsibility of government. Examples include care for HIV/Aids patients and orphans, legal support to women who are deprived of their rights, shelters for women suffering from violence. This leads to tensions with their role as advocates for the interest of women and brings up the question if women's organisations should rather spend their time lobbying and claiming proper service delivery from their governments.

We propose that the research on these strategy issues be of an exploratory nature. While the Programme Evaluation pointed to the issues, a wider inventory needs to bring out the extent of the problem and the experience of women\s organisations (Hivos partners) in other places than the southern African region with which the evaluation dealt.

Central questions for the problem of interaction with the constituency include:

• How do women's organisations reach out to their constituency for the sake of representation, awareness-raising and demand-articulation by the women concerned?
• Which factors limit their outreach to the grassroots?
• What are positive experiences of mobilisation of women and can these be applied elsewhere?
• Central questions for the problem of service delivery versus lobbying work include:
• Why is the service delivery by governments failing?
• What is the extent to which women's organisations take over and in what kind of situations in particular?
• Have other options been considered and what are the prospects of viability in the short and long term?

The inventory could be carried out by files study and through email contacts with the Hivos women's organisation partners. This task could be assigned to one or more ISS students. The option for going beyond the partner group should be kept open, as Hivos may have as its partners a selected group of women's organisations while lessons may be learned from other categories of organisations as well.