This background paper, written by and for development practitioners who are working in fragile, failed (and flailing) states, addresses some of the challenges facing fragile states. The paper articulates four generic features of how the standard approach to development interacts with fragile and post-conflict states in ways that are conducive to failure: emphasising form over function and allowing de jure changes to be counted as success; not acknowledging the very long time to build capability (as it involves a transition across rules systems); promoting pre-mature load bearing in the scope and intensity of actions expected; and using inappropriate or inadequate ‘big’ or ‘small’ approaches to development. It does this by introducing four unique phrases into the development context.
The first is isomorphic mimicry, taken from evolutionary theory (that animals sometimes use deception to look more dangerous than they are to enhance survival). The paper explains that it is much easier to create an organisation that looks like a police force—with all the de jure forms (organisational charts, ranks, uniforms, buildings, weapons)—than it is to create an organisation with the de facto function of enforcing the law. Isomorphic mimicry is dangerous because it creates the powerful dynamic in which the institutions that survive are not actually functional but merely camouflaged as capable organisations.
The second phrase the paper explores is wishful thinking, and differentiating it from optimism. It determines that much of the planning for fragile and conflict states is premised on false assumptions about the speed at which state capability can be built. This wishful thinking ends up doing more harm than good.
A key danger of wishful thinking is pre-mature load bearing, which is a phrase taken from medicine. It refers to injuries which require the patient to refrain from putting weight or stress on the injured appendage for a time until enough healing has occurred. Pre-mature loading of stress on an injury can reverse whatever healing has happened, and perhaps worsen the original injury. Asking fragile states to move forward too quickly, even with very desirable steps, risks creating pressures that collapse what little capability has been created.
The paper concludes by examining whether there is a middle way out of the big stuck. The ‘big stuck’ is the combination of unfavourable domestic conditions plus unhelpful external actors that can create an environment in which fragile states remain fragile, with low capability and at risk of recurrent conflict, for a very long time. Both ‘big’ and ‘small’ approaches to development have failed in their own ways, and the question is whether there is another approach that is ‘just right’.
Key Findings:
The starting point of a middle way approach might be to refine accountability around outcomes, where outcomes include the capability of the system. One needs a combination of outcome targets that includes measures of both immediate outputs and outcomes but also how equipped the system is to continue to deliver those into the future.
The essence of a ‘middle way’ is to measure system performance and set realistic goals for achieving that performance and then allowing much greater scope for local autonomy and flexibility in meeting those goals. This has at least three key differences from the implicit theory of change.
- A ‘middle way’ approach emphasises that leaderships are plural—it often takes many people, situated in many different positions and with impartial agreement and commitment—to drive reform.
- Training is about building systemic or organisational capability, which is not necessarily about the capacities of individual agents. Learning has to be able to scale laterally through diffuse networks rather than being first centralised and then disseminated. Ultimately, usable knowledge is co-produced within the organisation, as people learn how to achieve objectives.
- Perhaps the single most difficult issue with reaching a ‘middle way’ is addressing fiduciary accountability. If the goal is to create institutions in fragile states that are domestically legitimate and accountable, this can be frustrated by insisting on external accounting that makes the primary objective of accounting the accountability for inputs to external agents.
