As a person working in the development field I enrolled on the course in order to gain knowledge that would help me understand development and its issues and hope to bring about change in the areas where I work. I have learnt that change is not predictable, anyone trying to bring about change cannot predict how it will happen. For there to be change in a society it involves slow incremental change coupled with effects of sudden unforeseeable events which disrupt social, political or economic power relations. The sudden unforeseeable events are often driven by crises and conflicts. To effect change one needs to understand and respond to these unforeseeable events and respond to the opportunity or threat that is created by them. According to Duncan Green in his book How change happens, “power lies in the heart of change”.

Power is an invisible force linking individuals and actors, in a state of constant flux and renegotiation. Power comes in four forms

• Power over: Refers to dominating power, power of hierarchy and controlling
• Power to: Capability to decide and capacity to act
• Power with: Collective power, collaboration solidarity and joint action
• Power within: Self Knowledge and self-esteem, personal self confidence

The four forms of power suggest more comprehensive approach to promoting change. People need to develop a sense of self confidence “power within” in order to have collective power, “power with and be able to demand, “power to”. Power within through empowerment can be the first step in achieving change.

Empowerment should be driven by marginalised people who will benefit from the transfer of power.  Globally a lot has happened in relation to women empowerment. The empowerment of women through improving their political, social, economic and health status is important in achieving development.

Women empowerment in Colombia

A case  study of women’s empowerment in Colombia, Since 1990, Colombia has made some noteworthy progress in women’s empowerment. The evidence of progress according to the summarised report is as follows :

• Colombia is home to the longest armed conflict in Latin America. In this context, women have mobilised effectively to influence emerging law on transitional justice mechanisms and to ensure that understanding the gendered experiences of conflict informs policy and law.

When we talk of empowerment, the fist thig that come to my mind is women empowerment. Empowerment is a process through which an individual becomes an agent of change. According to, Domigo et al , 2015 “Empowerment describes processes by which gendered power structures are contested and redefined; it results in a reallocation of power and resources”.  

• Colombia has more women in relevant decision-making positions than ever before. In 2011, 32% of the cabinet were women, compared with 12% in 1998; in 2014, 19.9% of parliamentarians in the Lower House and 22% in the Senate were women, compared with 11.7% and 6.9% respectively in 1997.

 • Girls’ enrolment in secondary and tertiary education outperforms boys’, while women’s participation in the labour market has also seen sustained progress. Women constituted 29.9% of the labour force in 1990; by 2012 this had risen to 42.7%

1. The drivers of change where the following Constitutional reform and political opportunity structures

The 1991 Constitution provided opportunities for women to engage in political life. dissent. It established institutional mechanisms and principles of equality, non-discrimination and social and political justice which, in turn, created the institutional and political opportunities for feminist action and women’s groups’ strategies in subsequent years.

• Collective action: women’s social movements

Women’s movements were not visible prior to the 1991 constitution amendment. There have since been active and there has been a change in the laws and policy influenced by these movements.

• International factors

International support to the women’s organisations ensured their survival

• Gains in gender equality: longstanding social and economic indicators of progress

There has been sustained improvements in gender equality related to education, economic and health indicators.

Although progress has been made and change happened, it has not been a linear process, a lot of challenges were reported. Progress has also been uneven. The main beneficiaries of the women empowerment were the well-educated women and those residing in urban areas while women in rural areas, who are often poor and illiterate, continue to lag behind and are also much more exposed to the risks of gender-based violence, discrimination and displacement. Colombian women continue to face major challenges to their more substantive and substantial empowerment.

References

Domingo, P., R. Holmes, A. Rocha Menocal and Hinestorza, V. (2015) ‘PROGRESS DESPITE ADVERSITY Women’s empowerment and conflict in Colombia: Case Study. London: Overseas Development Institute.

Green, D. (2016) How change happens. Oxford: Oxford University Press

This section of the module has made me realise that politics is not only about the state and governments, citizens can also be part of the political process not only through voting in elections but by getting their voices heard and being active citizens. In his book Duncan green describes active citizens as, ‘the unsung heroes of how change happens by putting demos (the people) into democracy’. People exercise their citizenship by engaging each other and the decision makers to seek improvements in their lives. Active citizenship enables people living in poverty to raise their voices to defend their rights and exert pressure for reforms to happen.  Social movements emerge when active citizens come together around a common cause in response to contentious situations of what they see as a deterioration of democracy. According to Tarrow 1994 , “Ordinary people often try to exert power by contentious means against national states or opponents’. They do this through the formation of social movements which are large informal groupings of people intending to transform power dynamics by demanding change from the bottom up. They seek change on behalf of the society that is excluded, marginalised or powerless. Social movements are not new they have deep historical roots from protest against the slave trade to women suffrage. Some characteristics of social movements are that they informal, complex, and impossible to predict as they can be triggered by an unplanned event. They grow or shrink in response to contentious factors They start small and can get really big in short time, they don’t have leaders and are granular. According to Tarrow 1994 social movements “emerge when political opportunities open up for social actors who usually lack them”. Social movements are not always progressive, they often succeed, but even when they failed, their actions set in motion profound political, social, cultural, and international changes.

Social movements have been known to promote improved governance. Organized movements in India for example challenged corruption. The Indian Aam Aadmi Party grew out of an anti-corruption protest organised by the Indian Against corruption movement which was a series of demonstrations and protests across India intended to establish strong legislation and enforcement against political corruption. The movement gained momentum in 2011 when anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare  began a hunger strike. The movement was nonpartisan and involved non-violent demonstrations, matches, hunger strikes, rallies and the use of social media to organise, communicate and raise awareness. The protest led to an introduction of anti-corruption legislation. Social movements evolve into political parties because as social movements they cannot represent the will of the people because they are not elected.

The South African National Congress emerged from a coalition of social coalition of social movements and ended apartheid and became a political party that is currently ruling. Under the apartheid system in South Africa various laws were passed to limit the political, civil and economic rights of non-whites in South Africa. This included the right to vote, right to own land and freedom of movement. The apartheid system classified South Africans into “White”, “Coloured”, “Indian”, and “African”. This classification determined where the different classes of people could live. In response to these restrictions, social movements developed and demonstrated against the Apartheid system. From the period between 1960-1970s demonstration against apartheid were held from the Sharpville demonstration and resultant massacre to the Soweto Uprising  and many others in between. The brutal repression against the social movements and activists saw a decline in protests for a while. By the 1980s more protests were held and the growing social movements pushed the South Africa’s Botha government into a state of emergency that resulted in talks and negations with Nelson Mandela. In 1990s Nelson Mandela was freed and democracy in South Africa was born

Another example is the Brazil’s workers party (PT) which was founded by independent trade unions, artists and social movements protesting against military rule in 1980 and later came to rule in 2003. Most recently social movements have brought down the oppressive governments of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Social movements enable participants to develop a sense of self identity and encourage citizen participation and voice. They bring people together and maintain the ability of people to feel connected so as to harness collective action that will help transform the shared grievances into collective power that can trigger change.

Social movements are powerful, complex and dynamic drivers of change, coupled with the use of the internet and social media which easily connects people there have an even greater platform of effecting change.

References

Green, D. (2016). How Change Happens, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Tarrow, S. (1994). Introduction. Power in movement: social movements and contentious politics: 1 – 28. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

When I started this MSc and especially this module I was surprised at how almost everything (Development, Politics, Democracy, change, the list goes on )we are studying is said to be complex, difficult to measure ,no clear definitions and is dependent on different issues and mostly relative to context. When the topic of Corruption came up , I didn’t expect it to fall into the complicated category as I thought that there was an agreed definition and agreed ways to measure. I then discovered that corruption is also complex and dynamic, rooted in economic, political , social and cultural factors. It is harmful yet sometimes beneficial and comes in a varied forms, from petty to grand in scale, political to bureaucratic, incidental to systematic. A victim today can be a perpetrator tomorrow. According to Rocha Menocal (2015, p 15) , “It opens up and closes down spaces for individuals, groups, organisations and institutions that populate civil society, the state, the public sector and the private sector”. In their study Rocha Menocal et al (2015) concluded that corruption disproportionately affects the poor as they depend more on state services, it keeps basic services out of their reach. Corruption causes vary and are mainly contextual however it is mainly caused by weak governance. In countries were governance is weak power is mainly centralized in the executive and there are poor accountability mechanisms. This gives the elites too much discretion which then manifests itself as corruption.

I found the relationship between corruption and development interesting. The Transparency international measures corruption with a score from zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). On top of the ranking are strong democracies that is Denmark (88), New Zealand (87) and Finland (85). On the opposite end are failed and fragile states a very low score, Somalia (10), Syria (13) and South Sudan (14). This shows that corruption is a problem in the developing world and is worst in failed and fragile states. Corruption is prevalent and higher in political systems in transition than either fully democratic or fully authoritarian regimes. Resource rich countries tend to have high levels of corruption, these countries rich in natural resources tend to be highly corrupt and poorly governed, due to the incentive these extractive resources generate for the ruling elite. An example of this is Angola with a rating of (19) which is ranked one of the world’s most corrupt nations.

The complex nature of corruption makes tackling it difficult because it is not easy to separate it from social, political and economic dynamics because of its many interconnected causes and effects. For example a demand of a bribe or gift by a civil servant issuing passports from an ordinary citizen can be linked to a chain of expectation from a higher authority. They might be expected to pay their supervisors a certain amount for a certain period. In such cases corruption cannot be addressed at the level of the passport issuing office because there are many interactions at different levels.

Corruption and Development
The definition of corruption as “the abuse of public office for private gain” leads to the conclusion that that corruption has a negative effect on economic growth. When public offices make decisions based purely on their own personal interests, their decisions are not likely to be of benefit the public. Since large capital projects provide tempting opportunities for corruption, a civil servant may award a contract to an inefficient contractor simple because they offered him a bribe or they stand to gain in one way or another. Corruption affects development in many ways, it can lead to waste of resources, bribes can results in a higher expenditure. It takes money out of the economic system especially if the embezzled funds are taken out of the country, the money is lost and not invested locally. Corruption could imply less private investment since it is a barrier to investors, and therefore slower economic growth.

I learnt that not all corruption is bad, some countries have been able to advance in economic growth despite high levels of corruption. Corruption can also have a potential positive influence on economic development, it sustains public services that could otherwise collapse in its absence. People pay small amounts of money for services that are meant to be free thereby supplementing the public workers’ salaries and in turn receive services. Corruption can also allow bureaucratic procedures to be speeded up and allow businesses to launch valuable new projects that would have not been possible in closed economies.

Anti-corruption efforts
I found it surprising that despite the significant investments made by international donors to combat corruption, few strides have been made in tackling this monster. There is evidence that anti-corruption efforts have increased corruption levels. So far there has been little agreement on how to tackle corruption. The principal agent and collective action theories dominate the anti-corruption field of how corruption happens and how it can be addressed. The principal agent theory is the bases of how government functions, the principal delegates an agent who ensures that others comply with regulations. Corruption becomes solvable with policies that reduce discretion or increase the ability of principals to hold agents accountable. The collective action theory is based on the idea that non-corrupt behavior is in the group’s collective interest and that it is not clear that the principals will want to hold the agents accountable. People often participate in corruption because everyone is doing it, and it’s the only way to get things done. In such societies corruption is the norm and anti-corruption efforts have failed because it is difficult to change the norm. According to Marquette and Peiffer 2015, “both theories are in fact valuable, but both miss out an important third perspective, which is that corruption can serve important functions, solving difficult problems that people face, especially in weak institutional environments”.

Anti-corruption tackling needs people to understand the complexity, domestic context and factors driving corruption, and should be driven by context and not theory. A coordinated approach should be used that takes into account the principal agent problem, collective action problem and that corruption as problem solving. Many anti-corruption campaigns aim to target corruption directly and publicly. This makes it easy for the corrupt system to adapt and reform and emerge as new forms of corruption . As a result, short-term successes are recorded but become unsustainable and sometimes generate negative effects in the long run. There is thus an argument to combat corruption quietly through projects that are not seen as anti-corruption but those that address the many facets of the socio- political systems.

References

Marquette, H & Peiffer, C 2015 ‘Corruption and collective action’ Developmental Leadership Program, University of Birmingham.

Rocha Menocal, A., et al. (2015). Why corruption matters: understanding causes, effects and how to address them. Evidence Paper. London: DFID.

Z

Coup not a coup

November 2017 marked the beginning of what many thought would be the long-awaited road to democracy after the military assisted removal of Robert Mugabe who had brought the country to its knees through a repressive dictatorship. Prior to this, Zimbabwe had maintained an outward appearance of a multi-party democracy since it gained independence from the minority rule in 1980 yet, in reality, it was a one-party dictatorship. The world over, Zimbabweans included, hoped that finally, Zimbabwe had begun its journey towards democracy. For the first time in four decades, civilians and the armed forces were on the same side. People viewed the army generals and the soldiers as their saviors, social media was buzzing with people excited that Mugabe had been ousted, people were posting selfies with the soldiers and some even having the audacity of climbing on top of the army tankers and posing for a photograph. The euphoria was amazing, hope was restored the long walk to freedom had come to an end and it was the beginning of a new era, a new Zimbabwe, a new dispensation. Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been up to this point Mugabe’s right-hand man nicknamed “the crocodile” due to his ruthless nature was the man behind the Military takeover, assisted by the Generals, they managed to orchestrate a “coup that is not a coup”. Coups are considered illegitimate and a violation of international norms.  They managed this intervention with the people on their side and no violent takeover.

The Election

To legitimize the change of government elections were scheduled. Elections are an instrument of democratic and peaceful transfer of power thus the transitional government quickly declared that election would be held in a few months after the military intervention. The euphoria was still present and the election campaigning period was filled with messages of hope were both Emmerson Mnangagwa and the main opposition Candidate Nelson Chamisa promised democracy, development and the end of Mugabeism. Emmerson Mnangagwa needed the election to go well in order to gain international credibility. He did this by allowing international electoral observers, allowing the opposition free access to media and not having a violent campaign period, unlike his predecessor. Election turnout was high, with over 70 percent of the eligible voters participating. Emmerson Mnangagwa won with a disputed 50.8 percent which was enough to avoid a run-off.  The opposition disputed the election and protested, there was a crackdown from the armed forces resulting in the death of at least 6 unarmed citizens. The country had managed to run a peaceful election but only a day after the traits of an Authoritarian military government were fully displayed.

Authoritarian rule

According to Svolik 2012, “all authoritarian regimes must resolve two fundamental conflicts. First, dictators face threats from the masses over which they rule, second a separate challenge arises from the elites with whom dictators rule”. In the case of Zimbabwe, the second challenge is what Robert Mugabe succumbed too. Emerson Mnangagwa just a day after the elections succumbed to the first challenge, he faced threats from the opposition and in true dictator and authoritarian style he unleashed the army to the civilians.

Where the electoral system lacks integrity the public loses interest in the election and faith in its outcome and the government formed remains weak and has no support from the public. After the elections, the spirit of democracy was dampened and government formed was authoritarian as the one of its predecessor under Robert Mugabe. Authoritarianism in Zimbabwe survives because a coalition of political and military elites stands ready and willing to employ violence when opposed by civilians.

The authoritarian government has recently shown its true face again after another crackdown on the civilians when they were protesting a threefold fuel price increase. On top of the crackdown, the government shut down the internet and social media as a way of controlling the situation which is also a trait of an authoritarian government. This has wiped out any hope that this is a new dispensation and any hope for democracy. Potential international investors are shying away and development

All things being equal democracy is preferred to authoritarian rule, the jury is still out on which one is better for development. Studies by Kelsall, 2014 have shown that in fragile states authoritarian rule is better for development and democracy might make things worse. However, even though some occasional authoritarian growth miracles such as Korea, Rwanda, and Ethiopia do emerge, the risks are all too high. If Zimbabwe is to recover and sustainably grow as an economy and develop, there is a need to address the bad history of human rights abuses and to transform the leadership have progressive policies and improve governance.

 As an African lady who comes from a developing country (Zimbabwe) which is currently struggling with political instability and recessed development for the past two decades, I am very keen to learn more about Development Politics. The introduction to the module where we had to learn about the link between the Development and Politics was an eye-opener. It was great to see the different views of my fellow colleagues who come from different backgrounds and have different views on the subject. It was interesting to note that we all seemed to agree on the importance of politics in the development of countries.  When I was reading Duncan Green’s book, How Change Happens, I came across this definition by the Amartya Sen who defines development as the ‘progressive expansion of freedoms to be and to do’.  As simple as this definition can be, one might think that achieving development is simple and linear and a matter of following a step by step approach.   I have come to realise that development is a complex subject and is a result of an interaction of many diverse and unrelated factors.

Early literature on the subject of development was focused on issues to do with better planning, providing more funds and following what other countries did in essence following the modernisation theory. The Modernisation theory emerged in the 1950s and it tries to explain how development happened in the North America and Western Europe. The theory argues that societies develop in fairly predictable stages through which they become increasingly complex. Development depends primarily on the importation of technology as well as a number of other political and social changes believed to come about as a result. What was surprising was that even with these ideas laid out and other countries’ models taken as blueprints development didn’t happen as expected. Scholars noticed that politics also played a part, in the 1990s institutions, governance and democratisation entered into the debate of development, as an important part of development success. There was an emphasis that politics and economic development are closely connected.  A major proposition was that politics either creates limits or facilitates the course of development. Donors began to play an advocacy role by promoting good governance as a priority and a prerequisite for foreign aid. In the cases of countries battling with corruption, Anti-corruption programs were funded by donor agencies in a bid to create functioning political entities where the state upholds the rule of law and be accountable to its citizens. The expectation was that this would, in turn, promote development. It may be argued that corruption has been a strong challenge which has inhibited and stifled development objectives of various countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is the part of the world where I come from.

Democracy was also the core agenda of development agencies. What I found interesting is the link between democracy and development, particularly the fact that countries that are more democratic seem to be better developed compared to their undemocratic counterparts. It may be concluded, therefore, that promoting democratization and good governance in both countries and institutions may be one of the ways of achieving development. From my personal experience, taking the example of Zimbabwe, I am of the opinion that the failure to embrace principles of democracy coupled with rampant corruption has been the key factor in the underdevelopment of the country.  The system of corruption that is thriving in the country has led to many development partners and potential investors staying away. Corruption results in the political elite making irrational decisions that are meant to protect their interests even though they are not for the good of the country.

In studying this subject I have also realized that development challenges are complex and are always evolving depending on the circumstances that a particular jurisdiction faces. I agree with this since change is unpredictable it requires people and organisations involved in development to embrace the political element in their work and to adopt more flexible, iterative approaches to achieve development which is what is called thinking and working politically. Since no two countries are the same, every country has to find its own way to translate political power into change for the public good. There is need for politically smart locally led programming as there is evidence that they produce tangible results compared to the old way of doing things. It’s interesting to me that even with all the theories and studies there is still no clear path to development, it appears to be a function of trial and error and what works in one end of the world might not work in the other contexts. The contextual element needs to be understood together with the recognition that change happen does not happen fast, what is key is to be able to adapt and reform within the current situation.

References

Leftwich, A. (2008) “Developmental states, effective states and poverty reduction: The primacy of politics”. Geneva, UNRISD.

Menocal, AR (2014) Getting Real About Politics: From Thinking Politically to Working Differently. ODI, London