What is Success in Development?

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12/12/2014

What is Success in Development?

I have been having some discussions with folks about success in development. Some have been by twitter, where questions have come fast and furious: how do you measure success? what is a 'good' institutuon? and more

I find this an interesting line of questioning. On the one hand the question addresses something that needs to be answered...and everyone is impatient to get an answer. On the other hand it is an issue that is terribly hard to answer. Any answer requires contextualization: what is it that is being done? who cares? what values and norms are involved in the discussion? where are you in the process of doing things (at the start, where completion is far away, or near the end with victory in sight) and more.

Imagine if the road to success was so clearly marked?

I draw on a variety of literatures when thinking about an answer. These include literature on organizational effectiveness, institutional effectiveness, and political settlements. Given such reference points, I focus on two main dimensions of success: legitimacy and functionality. Legitimacy concerns center on the degree to which a reform process of development intervention enhances support and credibility of key agents (people and organizations) involved. Functionality relates to the degree to which problems prompting reform or engagement have been solved.

You can't specify what success means (in terms of legitimacy or functionality) in a conceptual way, as both ideas are deeply contextual--defined within relational contexts (legitimacy for whom? functionality for whom?) and within historical contexts (where are we and how did we get here?) and more.

I think that every time a reform or development is done we should ask about both, be clear about who is involved, formalize our assumptions about history and the potential for change, etc. And we should ensure rapid and ongoing feedback about these issues so that our views on 'success' are adaptive.

These are some of my musings between classes... Hopefully we will have more folks providing better ideas on the doingdevelopmentdifferently.com website, where an open forum asks for comments about success...add your voice.

Posted at 04:56 AM in Doing Development Differently | Permalink

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My course at Harvard: See the series of lecture materials here

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The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development

12/12/2014