DFID governance programming in Nigeria: What difference has thinking and working politically made in practice?

The UK Department for International Development's country office in Nigeria (DFID Nigeria) has gradually adopted a thinking and working politically (TWP) approach in its governance programming. The initial focus on strengthening analysis has progressively been linked to discussion about the country and programme strategy, as well as programme‐management practices. Important lessons can be learned from this experience on how the TWP approach can be applied in practice. The article addresses three research questions: (1) To what extent have DFID Nigeria and its governance programmes adopted a TWP approach? (2) How has the TWP approach influenced the design and delivery of programming? (3) Has the application of the TWP approach enhanced the results of the DFID governance programming? Using project documentation and wider theoretical literature, but mainly relying on extensive participant observation within DFID Nigeria programmes, the article uses a historical perspective to outline how the TWP approach has been applied in Nigeria over 15 years of programme design, delivery, lesson‐learning and refinement . Published evaluation reports are used to provide evidence of programme results. DFID Nigeria and its programmes have progressively adopted TWP principles. This has led to clear changes in country strategy and programme design, as well as programme‐management practices. There is some evidence that the adoption of these principles has enhanced the results of DFID Nigeria programmes. By focusing on experimentation and “small bets,” TWP has proven relatively successful in generating and supporting ‘islands of effectiveness,’ but has had more limited impact in terms of generating more systemic, transformational change. The results obtained in Nigeria using the TWP approach have depended not only on Nigeria's political economy but also on the political economy of the development agency and donor country. DFID Nigeria's ability to engage in critical self‐reflection and to create an authorizing environment for risk‐taking have been vital to create enabling conditions for the TWP approach. However, other aspects of DFID and the UK's political economy are creating constraints that limit the prospects to go further and to go deeper in adopting the principles of TWP.     

Practising politics: Technical project templates and political practice in a DFID country office

Development agencies including the UK Department for International Development (DFID) increasingly agree that if aid is to be effective, it should be politically smart and locally led. However, both the critical and the reformist literature have argued that development agencies persist with technical, template‐driven programming: political analysis and practice have not been widely institutionalized. This study aims to identify why development representations are persistently technical in their form, and what blockages have existed for developing locally grounded and politically aware programmes. The article presents an ethnography of the process of developing the core elements of the governance portfolio in an (anonymized) DFID country office. Focusing on a key design workshop, the study is situated within a wider organizational ethnography. The persistently technical justifications for programmes are a result of the bureaucratic form itself, its accountability and approval processes. Political analyses represent countries in such a way that officials can prioritize selection from a repertoire of technical models. However, scepticism about the tractability of governance problems to such analyses and programming has led to an emerging understanding of politics that creates space within the bureaucratic form for politically aware practice. Politically aware programming should emphasize good operational practice over explicit analysis and should continue to emphasize technical models like the adaptive management models which create room for such practice.     

Uneven and combined development and sub-imperialism: the internationalization of Brazilian capital

This paper examines the political-economic outgrowth of Brazilian capitalism in the global south after the outset of the global financial crisis. In analysing the public-sector finance policy of the Workers’ Party (PT) during the crisis, I argue that a structuration of investment was established. Utilizing theoretical premises of uneven and combined development and sub-imperialism, this paper traces the motions of the industrial financing processes that perpetuate Brazilian capitalism outside of the boundaries of the nation-state to shed light on the relationship between ‘emergent’ economies, their state structures, and the developing world. I argue that such structures represent a policy to accelerate capital accumulation abroad.     

Clinical Social Work and Psychoanalysis: Introduction to the Special Issue

As clinical social work developed in America it was highly influenced by the concepts and techniques of psychoanalysis and many of its practitioners became interested in seeking psychoanalytic training. More and more psychoanalysts are now coming from a background in clinical social work due to the development of a network of interdisciplinary training institutes and the opening of the Institutes of the American Psychoanalytic Association to non-medical candidates. This special issue considers how psychoanalysis may be affected as more of its practitioners and contributors come from a background in clinical social work. This introduction reviews the history of the development of clinical social work and outlines the issues related to “lay analysis” in this country.

Welfare Reform in Indiana: The Political Economy of Restricting Access to Education and Training

This article interrogates welfare reform policies that restrict welfare reliant mothers' access to education and training. It focuses on how these policies have been implemented through the Indiana Manpower Placement and Comprehensive Training Program (IMPACT), Indiana's work first response to women's growing experience of poverty. Using methods of inquiry inspired by Dorothy E. Smith's articulation of institutional ethnography, a case study is developed to investigate the critical disjuncture that arises when welfare reliant mothers attempt to navigate these policies in the context of Indiana's extended political economy. It is argued that through these restrictive policies, welfare reliant mothers are forced into Indiana's unrelenting low-wage labor market, increasing the pervasiveness of poverty and further perpetuating the reproduction of inequality.     

Transborder Activism in the Americas: Exploring Ways to Better Assess and Learn from Less Powerful Forces,Towards Other Possible Worlds

Are we observing the emergence of a global civil society or a counter-hegemonic movement able to challenge the forces of neoliberal globalization? Is ‘Another World’ really possible and in the making, as World Social Forum (WSF) participants have suggested? Who could lead the movement toward a more just, democratic, and ecological world order? A growing number of scholars and activists are grappling with these questions. However, these questions mask other important aspects of transborder activism and political moments of resistance. Examining various cases of transborder activism in the Americas, this paper highlights the value and limits of a range of studies on contemporary forces promoting sociopolitical change, especially in the field of international political economy (IPE). The paper draws from field research and incorporates insights from activists' own situated knowledge to highlights the unexpected developments and political imaginaries that may emerge in the public realm during events like counter-summits or the World Social Forum (WSF) processes, for instance.

¿Estamos observando la emergencia de una sociedad civil global o un movimiento contra-hegemónico capaz de retar las fuerzas de la globalización neoliberal? Y es posible, como sugirieron los participantes del Foro Social Mundial (FSM), ¿“Otro Mundo” en formación? ¿Quién podría liderar el movimiento hacia un orden mundial democrático y ecológico? Un número creciente de académicos y activistas están enfrentándose a estas preguntas. Sin embargo, estas preguntas enmascaran otros aspectos de activismo transfronterizo y los momentos políticos de resistencia. Examinando varios casos de activismo transfronterizo en las Américas, este artículo subraya el valor y los límites de un rango de estudios sobre fuerzas contemporáneas que promueven el cambio sociopolítico, especialmente en el campo de la Economía Política Internacional. El artículo extrae de la investigación de campo e incorpora el propio entendimiento profundo de los activistas para destacar los desarrollos inesperados e imaginarios políticos que puedan emerger en el ámbito público, como por ejemplo, durante los eventos, como en las cumbres opuestas o en los procesos del Foro Social Mundial (FSM)

     

From armed group to movement: armed struggle and movement formation in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country

In recent decades, social movement scholars have expanded our understanding of ‘terrorism’ by analyzing a particular trajectory, movement to armed group, whereby movement demobilization spurs armed struggle. This article analyzes an alternative trajectory: armed group to movement. Once armed struggle’s limitations become apparent, armed groups often adopt an attritional military strategy suited to their capacities. To securely wage an attritional campaign, groups disembed through the adoption of insular structures, removing them from their milieux and from recruits and resources needed for organizational reproduction. To offset this, armed groups reembed through the development of politico-military movement structures: forming allied aboveground movement organizations; coordinating armed and unarmed activism; and creating a ‘movement’ identity. This offsets disembedding in three ways. First, collective action augments armed groups’ violence by expanding the struggle into new domains. Second, mobilized support provides armed groups political legitimacy, countering the ‘terrorist’ label. Third, aboveground movement organizations assist in recruitment, alliance-formation, public communication, and mobilization, facilitating armed groups’ organizational reproduction. This paper investigates the strategic decision to adopt movement structures by analyzing documents produced by militants linked to the IRA and to rival ETAs, ETA Politico-Military and ETA Military, allowing for the exploration of different aspects of the decision to adopt movement structures. From Irish republican texts, insights into the basic benefits of movement development are gleaned. Basque separatist documents, on the other hand, provide perspectives on the nature of interorganizational centralization and coordination within politico-military movements.     

Scale shift in international tax justice: comparing the UK and Australia from 2008 to 2016

ABSTRACT

International tax justice issues, such as corporate tax avoidance, have gained particular salience over the past decade in an environment of financial instability and government austerity. Civil society involvement has ranged from trade unions and NGOs calling for parliamentary inquiries to civil disobedience by less established actors. Since the international financial crisis, how have levels of contentious collective action around these issues waxed and waned? Is contentiousness associated most with domestic politics or global media events like the Panama Papers? This paper uses an original hand-coded dataset from five national newspapers in the United Kingdom and Australia between 2008 and 2016. Political claims analysis (PCA) was used to collect all instances of claims around international tax justice and compare the types of actions and the different frames used by civil society actors. In both countries, mobilising grievances are generated most strongly in the period after domestic austerity policies are introduced. The qualitative coding provides evidence of accompanying frame alignment in these periods, as international taxation is problematized in terms of national revenue, demonstrating scale shift from the global to the national political stage.     

Intellectual spaces of practice and hope: power and culture in Portugal from the 1940s to the present

This paper examines configurations of power, authority and culture in Portugal in the twentieth century, and intellectual practices and spaces related to those configurations and in opposition to them. Portuguese national history and essentialized versions of Portugueseness are analysed in the work of such distinguished and influential intellectuals as António Sérgio, António José Saraiva and Eduardo Lourenço, in articulation with the role of high culture in the process of nation building throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One particular structure of attitude and reference, constructed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, is foregrounded with reference to the History of Portugal by Oliveira Martins, in the context of the persistent contradictions and conflicts between progressive and conservative, modernizing and traditional, ‘historical’, formations and projects. In such a context, moments of oppositional, alternative and independent projects are worth looking into. Two decisive moments of social change in the second half of the twentieth century were the 1940s, and the late 1960s and early 1970s. The paper pays attention to the politics of culture of Neo-Realismo in the 1940s and its consequences for high and popular culture over the following decades, especially in the years leading to the democratic revolution of 25 April 1974. A brief analysis of the 1990s is articulated to the study of the change-producing projects in the 1940s and 1960s as part of the cultural studies practice the paper argues for.     

Participation in cross-national learning assessments and impact on capacity development: Programmes,practice, structures and teacher competency. Case study of Kenya,Tanzania and South Africa

This research is one of the few attempts to employ the conceptual framework of "technology transfer" to analyze the extent that participation in cross-national learning assessments has had on capacity development, particularly in the development of official public structures, by equipping educationists and influencing teachers’ competency in Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa. The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with key informants drawn from the Ministries of Basic Education, national examinations councils, civil society organizations and curriculum development institutions in the three countries. The in-depth interviews were complemented by relevant literature on this topic. The study established improved technical capacities in the public education sector in South Africa and Kenya to design and conduct independent large-scale learning assessments. This important research demonstrates a certain level of commitment by African countries to establish official structures necessary to design/implement and sustain a culture of monitoring learning outcomes through public funded large-scale learning assessments. The research potentially contributes to the body of knowledge as far as ‘summative’ evaluation and analysis of the theory of change underpinning the participation in cross-national learning assessments espoused under the Education for All (EFA) Framework of Action     

Systems thinking: fostering collaboration and connections to strengthen the field. A conversation with Umberta Telfener

Umberta Telfener is a highly respected figure known for her diverse contributions to various facets of family and systemic therapy. Her leadership style has earned her a reputation as somewhat of a ‘cultural anthropologist,’ reflecting her aptitude for creating connections, establishing relationships, and developing partnerships. Her unique ‘Umberta style’ is known for boundless energy, active leadership, and fierce commitment to challenging the status quo. Despite being in office for just a year at the European Family Therapy Association (EFTA), Umberta has conceived and developed numerous projects, establishing networks with practitioners, and systemic thinkers across the world. Rooted in classical philosophical training, her pursuit aligns with the systematic study of fundamental questions about existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. Umberta's role reminds one of a ‘Chasqui,’ a Quechua term for a ‘messenger,’ which aptly describes her agile networking skills. She actively communicates and shares vital messages, supporting the international community of systemic practitioners. This paper is based on an in-person conversation held in July 2023 at Umberta's country home in Tuscany. Our discussion delves into her extensive professional experience, from training at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, being mentored by Boscolo and Cecchin in Milan, to her leadership role as the current EFTA president. Umberta reflects on early pioneers who influenced her thinking and her impactful work with systems.     

‘..It takes a lot of brain space’: Understanding young carers’ lives in England and the implications for policy and practice to reduce inappropriate and excessive care work

This qualitative study, undertaken in England, explored young carers’ perspectives on the nature of their caring responsibilities. The findings are significant, particularly in the context of England's Care Act 2014, which seeks to prevent children engaging in ‘excessive’ or ‘inappropriate’ caring. Our research placed children at the heart of the debate on what constitutes appropriate care. The findings raise key questions regarding effective implementation of contemporary child policy, duties of care towards children in caring roles and priorities for child protection and family support policy and practices, with the potential to inform thinking around child's well-being in wider contexts.