Political Context (Introduction | Integrated | Politics | Networks | Evidence)

The institutional, cultural and structural dimensions of international development are diverse, dynamic and overlapping. Policy makers and researchers cut across categories but their position of power, and the aims of the organisations they work for, can be identified. They are not only limited by macro political and economic structures but also the assumptions underlying them. For example, it is arguable that belief in the need for economic growth both rationalises and serves the global economic system. The way ideology is gendered reflects power relations as well; the global division of labour – with men dominating most policy making structures – explains why men and women have different degrees of room for manoeuvre.

Shifts in worldview – where an explanatory model meets a crisis and is replaced by an alternative – may take place at different levels of development discourse as a consequence of intellectual revolutions or campaigns of citizen action. But while researchers in academia and NGOs often see themselves as championing radical causes, staff within bureaucracies tend to resist fundamental challenges to the status quo.

Successful strategies for influencing policy makers and researchers have to take account of the various bureaucratic pressures limiting and enabling them, as well as those who commission or fund research:

• 'the urge to simplify: due to resource shortages;
• ‘giantism’: the bigger the budget, the greater the status;
• inflexible long-term project planning;
• fierce competition for funding: discouraging collaboration.

The complexity and diversity intensifies even further when researchers consider how policy is adapted, developed or distorted during practice. What influences policy practices will vary according to the priorities of street-level bureaucrats, local history, ideologies, and power relations.

Introduction / Next

These pages are taken from Bridging Research and Policy: Context, Evidence and Links. by Emma Crewe and John Young. ODI Working Paper No. 173, 2002, Overseas Development Institute, London, UK.