John Gaventa

The Impact of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives

This issue of Development Policy Review arises from a study of the impact and effectiveness of transparency and accountability initiatives (TAIs) in different development sectors. It analyses existing evidence, discusses how approaches to learning about TAIs might be improved, and recommends how impact and effectiveness could be enhanced.

Constructing transnational action research networks Reflections on the Citizenship Development Research Centre

This article examines the construction of transnational action research networks that bridge local and global, practice and research, North and South, and many disciplines. Using an ‘insider—outsider’ approach the article examines the emergence of the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability as a network of partners from seven countries concerned with research, capacity building and policy influence. The article examines how this network constructed shared goals and values, developed relationships and trust, and created network architectures to support action research, policy influence and capacity building. It also explores implications of the network’s evolution for change processes, bridging leadership, mutual accountability and institutional embeddedness.

Learning global citizenship? Exploring connections between the local and the global

This article identifies historical connections between adult learning, popular education and the emergence of the public sphere in Europe, exploring potential implications for adult learning and community development, drawing upon research evaluating programmes to promote community-based learning for active citizenship in UK. The research findings illustrate the relevance of the global and indeed the regional levels, when addressing concerns with active citizenship, locally. The article then moves on to examine experiences of global citizen advocacy coalitions, experiences from which participants have been drawing differing lessons about global citizenship. Finally, the conclusions raise questions about the scope for adult learning and community development in the current policy context, shaped so significantly by neo-liberal agendas. Social movements in general and popular education movements, more specifically, would seem to have vital roles to play, facilitating adult learning for critical democratic engagement with the structures of governance, locally and beyond, internationally.

States, Societies, and Sociologists: Democratizing Knowledge from above and below.

In his presidential address, Jess Gilbert argues that big states, in alliance with social scientists, can work to democratize society. He points to two fascinating examples—the involvement of rural sociologists with local citizens for policy planning in the New Deal and similarly their role in the Farm Security Administration’s Resettlement Communities Program. Both programs, though shortlived in administrative terms, created an enduring legacy of how sociologists might engage in the shaping of progressive and participatory policy, and what governments can do to aid bottom-up community development under certain conditions. Gilbert shows that these initiatives not only made change at the time but over time they continue to contribute to the democratic imagination about the possibilities of change. One hopes that as a new presidential administration comes into office in the United States, such historical lessons will foster similar initiatives and similar opportunities for sociologists and states to join forces for progressive social change. Such change happens neither through states nor society alone, but in their interaction—through ‘‘combined bottom-up, top-down initiatives,’’ as Gilbert puts it. If this is true, then the role of sociologists in contributing to change can be on either side of the state-society equation. Sometimes sociologists may join with state reformers to use their skills to promote policy change from within the state, as we see in Gilbert’s cases. But in other cases, the role of sociologists is a more participatory one within communities, whereby they use their skills and knowledge on behalf of civil society actors, who in turn demand and create change from below. In such cases, through participatory research, they work not only to democratize society through the state but to democratize the very knowledge base on which the state makes, implements, and sustains its policies in the first place. Before coming back to discuss the role of sociologists in bringing about democratic change, I want to explore further the question of how change happens, by looking at some recent examples from outside the United States. The challenge of building responsive and accountable

Participation Makes A Difference: But Not Always How And Where We Might Expect

In their article: Participatory Development Revisited, Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra Rao outline the high hopes for participation over the last two decades, yet conclude that participatory develop...

Inequality, Power and Participation – Revisiting the Links

Drawing on the contributions from the World Social Science Report 2016, Challenging Inequalities: Pathways to a Just World , this article examines the relationship between economic inequality and political participation. In particular, using the lens of the ‘power cube’ approach ( www.powercube.net ), we argue that understanding the impact of inequality on political participation requires moving beyond the study of its impact on more conventional forms of participation found in voting and ‘voice’ through established or formal democratic processes. Indeed, this relationship is also influenced by hidden and invisible forms of power, at multiple levels from the local to the global, which affect the rules of the game as well as individuals’ aspiration to participate, shaping whether, where and how citizens engage at all. Despite the power of inequality to shape its own consensus, recent evidence also points to the emergence of levels and forms of resistance to inequality outside of traditional channels of participation, which in turn help to expand and prefigure notions of what the new possibilities of change might be. Exploring these dynamics, the article concludes with a brief reflection on possible lessons for activists, policymakers and scholars working to understand, unravel and challenge the knotty intersections of inequality, power and participation.

Challenging the Asymmetries of Power: A Review of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Contribution

Despite the fact that power has been a key concept in social and political theory for decades, within international development a focus on understanding power relationships and how they are challenged and transformed has only recently become more central. In this article, we examine how the concept of power has been used and discussed in IDS Bulletin articles over the last five decades, reflect on IDS contributions to the concepts and practices of power in development, and speculate on what further work might shape and inspire work in this field in the future. We argue that an explicit analysis of power was largely absent from earlier issues of the IDS Bulletin , or considered in narrow economic terms. However, beginning around the 1990s, the analysis of power emerged more centrally to IDS work across many fields – including gender, knowledge, participation and livelihoods – such that today, understanding how power relations shape development is considered a core part of the IDS approach.

Co-constructing Democratic Knowledge for Social Justice: Lessons from an International Research Collaboration

Universities have a long history of supporting social change and social justice in the nations and societies where they are located. In recent decades, however, a changing political and economic landscape has threatened to isolate universities from societal debates on pressing issues. As universities find themselves in increasingly precarious financial situations, they are forced to sell their skills and the knowledge they produce to the highest bidder, rather than working with those in the greatest need. Nonetheless, the same drivers which can cut off universities from society can also open parallel opportunities for engagement with communities and civil society actors. In the past decade, with the advent of the knowledge economy, universities have also as a vital force for change and development. Global networks that actively promote universities as agents of change have begun to form. Particularly in the Global South, there is evidence of universities reasserting themselves as a force for social justice, as well as for using their research and teaching to deepen democratic change.

Introduction: Interrogating Engaged Excellence in Research

Approaches to engaged research, which do not just produce academic knowledge, but link with people and groups in society, have long intellectual roots. In recent years, however, for epistemological, practical and ethical reasons, interest in such approaches has gained ground. At the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) we seek to adopt an ‘engaged excellence’ approach to research. We have identified four pillars that support engaged excellence: high-quality research; co-construction of knowledge, mobilising impact-orientated evidence; and building enduring partnerships. This introduction interrogates this approach, deepening our understanding of what it means, whilst also acknowledging the challenges which it poses. It raises questions about who defines what good quality research is; how, why and who we co-construct knowledge with; what counts as impact; and how we build enduring partnerships. It also touches on some of the implications for both researchers themselves and the institutions through which we work.

Participation Makes A Difference

In their article: Participatory Development Revisited, Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra Rao outline the high hopes for participation over the last two decades, yet conclude that participatory develop...