Uncovering the Politics of Evidence

Rosalind Eyben

The issue• The current dominant framing of international aid as

‘technical’ best-practice interventions. • Exacerbates tendency to see people as subjects

requiring treatment rather than as citizens with political voice.

• Forecloses analysis and debate about the structural causes and consequences of inequity and how these should be tackled.

• Quick, easily-measurable results over long-term support to locally-generated complex processes of social change.

Outline• Ideological links between the discourses of

“results” & “evidence”;• Their influence in the development sector; • How they affect the sector’s support to social

transformation. • Why and how useful approaches mutate into

coercive instruments and who is coming under pressure;

• The organizational actors promoting them, and the need for challenge.

‘Evidence’ is....

• What works or doesn’t work;

• Derived from medical research.

• Relatively recent discourse.

Critique of the ‘evidence’ discourse

• The ‘how’ of context and process is ignored;• Assumes a linear cause-effect relationship;• Risks researching and evaluating social-

transformation as if testing efficacy of a pill;• Deflects attention from the ideologies and

values that shape policy and programming.

‘Results’ are....• What you can be

counted and delivered;

• Derived from private sector accounting practices.

• Dating back to the mid-19th Century.

150 years of ‘results’

VFMPBR

MBOCBA

RESULTSVFM

PBR

Critique of the ‘results’ discourse

‘Evidence’ and ‘results’ share...

• A common understanding of causality and accountability;

• An assumption that evidence pertains only to measurable facts and that other kinds of knowledge have no value;

• A reductionism that categorises, counts and objectifies people as individuals requiring intervention and treatment;

• Claims to objectivity that hide the ideological underpiining.

‘Dear Mr Gandhi, We regret we cannot fund your proposal because the link between spinning cloth and the fall of the British Empire was not clear to us.’

Why these discourses are influential in the development sector

• The urge for control as a pathological reaction to the complexity of a dynamic and uncertain world;

• The sector’s internal dynamics: competition for resources

• The politics of accountability • The prevailing ideology of the market.

The tools and protocolsResults

• Base-line data• Results reports• Progress reviews• Performance

measurement indicators• Logical framework analysis• Risk register• Theories of Change• Payment by Results

Evidence• RCTs• Systematic reviews• Cost-effectiveness

analysis• Option appraisal• Social return on

investment• Business cases• Impact evaluation

Instruments of power

What is their effect?

• Compliance• Resistance• Fabrication• Internalisation

The squeezed middle

Some of the actors promoting these tools and protocols in the sector

• Anglophone development agencies;• Accountancy companies - e.g. KPMG,

PWC – contracted to run large development programmes;

• Philanthro-capitalist foundations;• Sections of evaluation and development

research industries .

The Big Push Forward seeks to create the political space for discussion, debate and the exploration of approaches for supporting and assessing transformative development processes.

Conclusion

• Social development and poverty reduction are largely a consequence of changes in power relations;

• In the past the international development sector has provided many opportunities for supporting such changes directly and indirectly including through financing UNRISD.

• Active efforts are required for the sector to continue to provide such opportunities.