Next steps: moving forward with the knowledge sharing network

Author(s): Julie Ferguson
Publication date: Tuesday 27 September 2005

After sharing a wealth of information and experience, knowledge is expanded and new linkages are made. But maintaining the momentum is always a major challenge. What are the research priorities? How can we best move forward with the existing knowledge in both the research and practitioner communities, and how to share this in a mutually beneficial manner?

The Civil Society Building Knowledge Network will pursue research activities and policy innovation, relating to strategies in which donor, practitioner and research efforts are enhanced simultaneously.

10 points for research & policy development

1.      Sharing spaces
There is a tension between the need to ‘cede space’ to others, and to enforce one’s own space rigorously and tenaciously. One potential strategy to overcome this tension, is to explore the interrelationship between different forms of inequality and exploitation – for instance between gender, violence and economic inequality. There is a need for coalition building between civil society groups active at different intervention levels (the ‘gap’ between (inter)national NGOs and communities), as well as a need to broaden the ‘landscape’ of civil society.

2.      New gender communication strategies
 New strategies will have to be developed to communicate ‘gender’ as a common concern. This implies reconfirming the importance of a gender perspective throughout all actors in civil society, whilst simultaneously exploring new roles for women’s organisations.

3.      Power dynamics and fostering leadership
The repressed or marginalised are often hesitant to take leadership positions, having their own glass ceilings. Alternatively, examples have been shared whereby the repressed come into power, and instantly take over exactly those mechanisms which they were combating before the change. What are the ways in which marginalised people can take on power, without power taking on all those exploitative properties which civil society struggles to change? Is there a way to ‘feminise’ power?

4.      Innovating donor policies
Hivos has often been at the forefront of introducing new themes and alternative donor strategies. This role requires constant reflection and rethinking. In a rapidly changing international context, new urgent issues are emerging which also touch upon the position of our own role (and power) as an international donor. The question here is where to locate the new spaces for policy innovation.

5.      Understanding measurement
It is becoming increasingly important to show tangible results of civil society building interventions. Nonetheless, it is complex to show these achievements in simple, quantitative terms. Therefore, it is necessary to further develop practice-oriented, innovative, and contextually appropriate tools, and to examine critically where the limitations are of current instruments.

6.      Engaging the state
The opportunities to cooperate critically with state-led interventions are expanding, but there is always the danger of co-optation. It is crucial to be aware of the opportunities and limitations of joint advocacy strategies and how these impact on policy reforms. There is a need for a disaggregated understanding of the various levels of the state with which engagement is developing, and therefore a need for more strategic analysis of how different strategies can be developed to strengthen progressive elements within state structures.

7.      Social movements and NGOs
Over the past decade, the attention of progressive donor NGOS has shifted from supporting grassroots movements and community groups towards partnerships with professional organisations, in particular with specialised NGOs. There are many valid reasons for this shift, but it will be important to analyse further how donor and advocacy NGOs can rethink their working relationships with social movements.

8.      Citizenship and participation
There is a tendency towards increased social and political exclusion of the powerless and the marginalised. This is a tendency implicitly linked to the impact of neo-liberal economic policies. Recent studies have pointed at the crucial importance of re-inventing citizenship and guaranteeing social and political rights. This also implies a rethinking of the practice of participation of the vulnerable and powerless in the definition of their development needs, despite the critical voices about the cooptation of the participation paradigm by the mainstream development agencies. Is there a new practice of building citizenship and enhancing participation? And under which conditions are these promising experiences evolving?

9.      Changing civil society strategies
There is a need to analyse more experiences where alliances within civil society managed to engage with the state in an autonomous, but also productive manner. It is true that every context requires its own approaches and strategies, but there is still an enormous potential for exchanging experiences, both of the successful as well as the failed experiences. Civil society alliances will benefit from a better ‘reading’ of the strong and weak elements of a state in order to make a maximum use of its potential partnership. This is a matter of collecting and analysing specific country case studies and to draw out common elements to develop new strategies to engage with the state.

10.  Knowledge sharing and learning
Intensifying knowledge sharing and communication between organisations of civil society, but also between partners and donors, as well as between development professionals and researchers will become a key asset in the years to come. The knowledge sharing network between ISS, Hivos and their partners requires critical monitoring in order to learn how academics and practitioners can mutually benefit from each other. Different dynamics and interests are balanced by common ideas and ideals. By recognising and analysing these dynamics more systematically, new practices might be developed from which others can benefit.

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