Social exclusion presents various challenges for donors. There is considerable variation amongst developing countries in the availability of information, as well as important contextual differences in terms of the nature of exclusion and if/ how the concept is understood. National level census and survey data and poverty monitoring often fail to provide much information on excluded groups. Donor organisations are also usually large and dispersed, and need time to embed social exclusion approaches across their work. Developing indicators for and monitoring and evaluating programmes is also a challenge.
Gaynor, C., & Watson, S. (2007). Evaluating DFID’s Policy on Tackling Social Exclusion: Baseline, Framework and Indicators. London: DFID.
How can DFID improve its strategy to address social exclusion in its planning, partnerships and programmes? This paper develops a framework for assessing progress on social exclusion against planned commitments, and lays the foundations for a fuller evaluation of the results of DFID’s work.
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Betts, J., Watson, S., & Gaynor, C. (2010). DFID Global Social Exclusion Stocktake Report (Evaluation Report EV707). London: DFID.
This stocktake, conducted in 2008-2009 by external evaluators, explored how DFID had acted on its 2005 policy to tackle social exclusion. It found very poor take-up and traction of the policy. There was a growth in quality activity on exclusion (e.g. in analysis, research, and funding for civil society). But this emerged in response to development contexts and discourses, rather than from DFID’s policy, systems and incentives. Activity on exclusion was neither comprehensive nor part of a strategy. The evaluators suggest options for improvement, to mitigate risks to DFID’s reputation, efficiency and accountability.
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Geiser, U., Bottazzi, P., Epprecht, M., Fokou, G., Fritschi, A., Ramakumar, R., … Strasser, B. (2011). Access to Livelihood Assets: Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Reality of Development Interventions. In Wiesmann, U., & Hurni, H. (Eds.), Research for Sustainable Development: Foundations, Experiences, and Perspectives. Bern: Geographica Bernensia.
Does gaining access to assets such as land, water or education, in itself improve poor people’s livelihoods? This summary paper from a North-South research network presents findings about rural land issues from West Africa, Latin America, and South, Southeast and Central Asia. It shows there has been a disconnect between development interventions and the social and political dimension of livelihoods. Rural incomes stem from a variety of complex livelihoods, so people aspire to an array of assets. Assets and access are embedded in everyday practices, and in unequal social structures, power and agency. The interplay of markets, state regulations, and local relations are key factors. But local structures of inequality (such as ethnicity, income groups, and caste) largely determine access to assets and their use.
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In addition to developing programming that directly targets social exclusion, donors must ensure that their general interventions do not serve to exacerbate processes of social exclusion. The article below argues that the donor-supported state reform programme in Sri Lanka, which focussed on promoting a market economy and the devolution of power, did not adequately consider the impact of these reforms on socially excluded groups.
De Roldán, K. S. (2012). Social Exclusion, Social Cohesion: Defining Narratives for Development in Latin America. Journal of International Development, 24(6), 728–744.
International aid agencies’ focus on economics has sometimes contradicted and superseded their support for social inclusion, as shown by this mixed-method content analysis of an annual report by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Between 1999 and 2010, in The Social Panorama of Latin America, the social narrative on development ended up being subordinate. The focus was on quantitative, top-down, technocratic and homogenizing economic performance and growth. At the same time, there were qualitative gaps and silences on income concentration, social fragmentation, heterogeneity and local contexts. The author calls for renewed attention to quality of life and to social dimensions.
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Bastian, S. (2009). Politics of Social Exclusion, State Reform and Security in Sri Lanka. IDS Bulletin, 40(2), 88-95.
How can the interests of the socially excluded be better addressed through state reforms in Sri Lanka? Making use of the two dimensions of capital and coercion, this article analyses the processes of state reform that have ensured the social exclusion of large sections of the population and set the stage for conflict. It argues that the current orthodoxies of state reform – supported by the international community – do not address issues of social exclusion and need to be rethought in order to avert violence and ensure long-term stability and security.
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Nadiruzzaman, M., & Wrathall, D. (2014). Participatory Exclusion – Elite capture of participatory approaches in the aftermath of Cyclone Sidr (UNU-EHS Working Paper Series No. 3). UNU.
This ethnographic analysis looks at the political economy of aid distribution in a locality in Bangladesh after a cyclone in 2007. It finds that humanitarian interventions channelled resources through established power networks that were based on kinship, wealth, social networks, and political affiliations. These networks favoured ‘the relatively well-off over the structurally poor’ (p. 3). Elite capture of community participation thus led to exclusion, affecting access to relief, rehabilitation, and development opportunities. Aid reinforced power structures, and produced marginality and unequal resilience.
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The following paper analyses the experience of an aid agency staff member and a national consultant involved in designing a project to tackle social exclusion. It argues that donors failed to create meaningful space for civil society to influence emerging relationships between government and development aid. As a result, the architecture of participatory institutions and institutional norms that emerged could not overcome the deficiencies of many social services, nor could it tackle the social exclusion that is reproduced through the administrative management of the state, the instruments of politics and its styles of implementation.
Eyben , R., & Leon, R. (2003). Who Owns the Gift: Donor-Recipient Relations and the National Elections in Bolivia. London: DFID.
Similar concerns are noted in the following volume. It finds that success in reducing embedded horizontal inequalities in seven post-conflict countries has been limited, patchy and inconsistent. Further, progress towards redressing horizontal inequality in post-conflict countries may in fact be ‘offset’ by new forms of inequality generated by the introduction of economic and neoliberal reforms.
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Langer, A., Stewart, F., & Venugopal, R. (Eds.). (2011). Horizontal Inequalities and Post-Conflict Development. Palgrave Macmillan.
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See the editors’ four-page CRISE ‘In Brief’ version: Have post-conflict development policies addressed horizontal inequalities?
Minoia, P. (2012). Included or excluded? Civil society, local agency and the support given by European aid programmes. Fennia, 190(2), 77–89.
This article evaluates an EU programme to support local non-state actors in Cameroon, Georgia, Palestine, Rwanda and Zimbabwe (including two qualitative case studies on Rwanda). It finds that partnerships favoured already strong NGOs. This reproduced North-South, top-down, and urban-rural power inequalities, thereby marginalising the capacities and assets of community-based organisations. EU structures created bureaucratic or thematic biases in funding and project formats, and paid insufficient attention to local participation, impact and sustainability. The author recommends that donors operate and learn in a more tailored way, starting from local priorities and agency rather than the aid industry.
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Zahid, F., Rohain, S., Maâni, K., Mohamed, S., Fernandez, M., & Aw-Hassan, A. (2014). Exclusion of Women from Local Development Initiative Doomed to Failure: The Case of the Middle Atlas Community of Maâmar in Morocco. In Gender Research in Natural Resource Management: Building Capacities in the Middle East and North Africa (pp. 205–228). Routledge
Development actors themselves can produce and reinforce social exclusion, as shown in this qualitative study about a rural development project in a Moroccan village. Women had a role and voice in traditional structures, though in subordinate positions. However, the project created organisations with mixed membership. This shift away from women-only spaces dispossessed women of individual and collective agency, pushing them to spaces and processes where they had little voice, symbolic status, and capacity. The project failed to include women in empowering ways. The authors recommend working from the specific contexts of women’s inclusion in social cohesion, networks and institutions.
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Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSPs)
The extent to which excluded groups have been included in Poverty Reduction Strategy consultation processes has been heavily scrutinised, particularly by civil society organisations. So too has the inclusion of issues relating to excluded groups in PRSP documents. Questions have been raised about whether inclusive consultation processes are enough to ensure that excluded groups’ interests are adequately represented.
In some cases, donor support has helped governments build measures for social inclusion into their PRSPs. In the case of Nepal, for example, preliminary work by DFID and the World Bank helped identify the excluded through a national Gender and Social Exclusion Assessment (GSEA). In other cases, attention to issues of exclusion has been the direct result of lobbying by civil society organisations representing excluded groups.
Booth, D., & Curran, Z. (2005). Aid Instruments and Exclusion. London: Overseas Development Institute.
To what extent have Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) addressed exclusion issues? How can the new aid modalities be used to encourage anti-exclusion policies in the developing world? This paper surveys PRSPs worldwide to ascertain the responsiveness of the new aid modalities to excluded groups. It argues that donor countries should promote participatory consultations and national ownership of anti-exclusion policies in PRSPs, while monitoring the use of new funding instruments to encourage action on exclusion.
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Dube, A. K. (2005). Participation of Disabled People in the PRSP/PEAP Process in Uganda. London: Disability Knowledge and Research Programme.
What are the lessons learnt from disabled people’s participation in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) process in Uganda? This paper finds that time constraints, among other things, limited the involvement of Disabled People’s Organisations (DPO) in the PRSP process. Sustaining a policy environment conducive to disabled people’s involvement requires substantial capacity building of DPOs, including recruitment of skilled staff to implement strategic programmes.
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Tomei, M. (2005). Indigenous and Tribal Peoples: An Ethnic Audit of Selected Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. Geneva: International Labour Office.
How effectively have Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) addressed the needs of indigenous and tribal peoples (ITPs)? This paper surveys 14 PRSPs from countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to evaluate the extent to which they address the varieties of economic, social and political exclusion faced by these communities. It argues that improved targeting, data-collection and ITP participation in PRSPs are required if they are to tackle poverty more successfully.
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