An Upside Down View of Governance

Sue Unsworth from the Policy Practice is one of the authors of a new book, ‘An Upside Down View of Governance’, bringing critical insights on the traditional approach to governance.

Traditional approaches to governance issues have centred on the transfer and replication of western models. However, in this book Ms Unsworth and her fellow authors, draw attention to local political processes, the incentives of elites and generally encourage aid practitioners to take a different view.

A five year research programme at the institute of development studies at the University of Sussex into what makes for effective accountable states, found that donors need to put aside their prefixed ideas of what makes for successful development and address the realities of their partner countries’ situation.

“New art students are told to get rid of their mental models of the things they’re trying to draw,” said Ms Unsworth, who wants to encourage donors and development practitioners to take a similar approach when assessing development challenges and planning.

Donors should not be working towards replicating models they are used to back home, she says, but instead need to learn to embrace and harness differences, like the prevalence of informal institutions in developing countries.

“A central message of the book is that informal institutions are powerful,” said Ms Unsworth, “And instead of always seeing them as a problem, maybe they’re part of the solution.”

To hear more from Ms Unsworth, click on the icon below:

A pdf of the book can be read and downloaded, here: http://www2.ids.ac.uk/gdr/cfs/pdfs/AnUpside-downViewofGovernance.pdf