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Uncovering the Politics of Evidence
Rosalind Eyben
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The issue• The current dominant framing of international aid as
‘technical’ best-practice interventions. • Exacerbates tendency to see people as subjects
requiring treatment rather than as citizens with political voice.
• Forecloses analysis and debate about the structural causes and consequences of inequity and how these should be tackled.
• Quick, easily-measurable results over long-term support to locally-generated complex processes of social change.
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Outline• Ideological links between the discourses of
“results” & “evidence”;• Their influence in the development sector; • How they affect the sector’s support to social
transformation. • Why and how useful approaches mutate into
coercive instruments and who is coming under pressure;
• The organizational actors promoting them, and the need for challenge.
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‘Evidence’ is....
• What works or doesn’t work;
• Derived from medical research.
• Relatively recent discourse.
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Critique of the ‘evidence’ discourse
• The ‘how’ of context and process is ignored;• Assumes a linear cause-effect relationship;• Risks researching and evaluating social-
transformation as if testing efficacy of a pill;• Deflects attention from the ideologies and
values that shape policy and programming.
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‘Results’ are....• What you can be
counted and delivered;
• Derived from private sector accounting practices.
• Dating back to the mid-19th Century.
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150 years of ‘results’
VFMPBR
MBOCBA
RESULTSVFM
PBR
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Critique of the ‘results’ discourse
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‘Evidence’ and ‘results’ share...
• A common understanding of causality and accountability;
• An assumption that evidence pertains only to measurable facts and that other kinds of knowledge have no value;
• A reductionism that categorises, counts and objectifies people as individuals requiring intervention and treatment;
• Claims to objectivity that hide the ideological underpiining.
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‘Dear Mr Gandhi, We regret we cannot fund your proposal because the link between spinning cloth and the fall of the British Empire was not clear to us.’
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Why these discourses are influential in the development sector
• The urge for control as a pathological reaction to the complexity of a dynamic and uncertain world;
• The sector’s internal dynamics: competition for resources
• The politics of accountability • The prevailing ideology of the market.
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The tools and protocolsResults
• Base-line data• Results reports• Progress reviews• Performance
measurement indicators• Logical framework analysis• Risk register• Theories of Change• Payment by Results
Evidence• RCTs• Systematic reviews• Cost-effectiveness
analysis• Option appraisal• Social return on
investment• Business cases• Impact evaluation
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Instruments of power
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What is their effect?
• Compliance• Resistance• Fabrication• Internalisation
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The squeezed middle
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Some of the actors promoting these tools and protocols in the sector
• Anglophone development agencies;• Accountancy companies - e.g. KPMG,
PWC – contracted to run large development programmes;
• Philanthro-capitalist foundations;• Sections of evaluation and development
research industries .
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The Big Push Forward seeks to create the political space for discussion, debate and the exploration of approaches for supporting and assessing transformative development processes.
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Conclusion
• Social development and poverty reduction are largely a consequence of changes in power relations;
• In the past the international development sector has provided many opportunities for supporting such changes directly and indirectly including through financing UNRISD.
• Active efforts are required for the sector to continue to provide such opportunities.