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This chapter briefly summarises some of the key issues
which must remain open to future debate and discussion, including:
The importance of organisational, institutional and cultural context in
determining the choice of development approach; and
Whether
new and existing development approaches really have added value for
interventions at field level.
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At the outset of our work, there was a general feeling (which
emerged from the informal discussions, comments and informal
‘organisational’ culture) that there was a significant gap between the
formal level of the Organisation and the practice. We wanted to better
understand the nature of this gap, across a number of technical divisions, each
with their specific mandate and informal culture as well as across different
linguistic and regional contexts, so as to have an exhaustive map.
The ultimate aim of this exercise was to separate the
structural from the institutional blockages to development through an analysis
of the critiques that were made of the realities and institutional life cycles
of development interventions. There was an unmeasured but diffuse feeling that
the majority of development interventions are ‘failing’, either
completely or at least in part, to meet their ultimate goals of decreasing
poverty and improving the lives and rights of people in the developing world.
Our aim was to try to understand to what extent this is dependant on external
structural issues which the development community has so far been unable to
effectively address and to what extent there are internal blockages and failures
in the development interventions themselves. The obvious answer is that both
factors play a role. The present analysis is an initial and limited attempt to
separate the structural blockages from the institutional/organisational ones so
that they can be addressed separately and with different tools.
So far we have analysed both structural and organisational
issues within development as a field of activity, and, more specifically, within
rural development as is practiced in FAO. We have reviewed formal approaches,
their strengths and weaknesses and how they have been put to good use or have
partially failed in their purpose when applied to real situations by
practitioners. We have discussed the relationship between organisational
dysfunction and structural issues in an attempt to identify areas within which
future efforts can be concentrated. The summary of this journey into the
informal culture of FAO and development can be summarised in a few points that
remain open for further discussion:
Development approaches that evolved during the 1990s and are currently in
operation are all based on broadly similar principles, tools and methodologies.
There is, nevertheless, a dominance of Anglophone approaches as well as a lack
of adequate exchange across cultural and linguistic divides. Each approach has
its own specific strengths and comparative advantages and it is crucial to
pursue the comparative path that we have tried to outline in this report so as
to home in on the areas which all the approaches have found to be
problematic.
It is the
organisational, institutional and cultural context of development that will have
the deciding influence on project and programme performance, and not the
approaches used. Successful development projects ultimately depend on the
existence of certain crucial organizational conditions (adequate time,
organizational commitment and the absence of internal blockages), on the
presence of a strong institutional driving-force and on the leadership and
organizational capacity of its main stakeholders.
There is a
significant divide between principle and practice in the livelihoods-type
development approaches of the 1990s. Much of development is driven by the formal
requirements and agendas that are embedded in all stages of the development
cycle (diagnosis, implementation, evaluation). This makes development activities
impermeable to ‘real life’ issues such as politics, rights and
structural change. It also makes it less effective because of simple practical
constraints. How much of this situation can be tackled and changed within the
existing organizational framework?
Development
approaches become redundant once the ideas that they embody have been
mainstreamed. New approaches play an important role in spearheading new ideas
and ‘bringing’ them to institutions. They become internalised and
mainstreamed on the basis of best practice experience and successful ‘case
study’ narratives. A crucial issue for establishing whether they really
have added value is their ability to capture the ‘spirit’ and dominant
concerns of what is happening in the real world, both in the North and
South.
