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Home»Approaches»Institutions & social norms

Institutions & social norms

Community-based social protection

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
October 2013

This report reviews the use and effectiveness of community-based social protection (CBSP) mechanisms, and examines how they are integrated into formal social protection schemes and what impact this might have. It begins with a loose definition of the terms used, followed by a section on the evidence on how effective CBSP appears to be. The following section presents the main ...» more

Donor support of African parliaments

Helpdesk Report
  • Sumedh Rao
September 2013

Parliamentary strengthening can be focused on MPs, parliament or other aspects of the political system. One way of looking at the activities undertaken is to divide them into direct support or indirect support. Indirect support is the support of specific policy issues, such as health and education, which subsequently strengthens the parliamentary process. Direct support is work ...» more

Women’s access to finance in Mozambique

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
September 2013

Access to finance in Mozambique is very low across all sectors of the population; 77 per cent are deemed to be financially excluded. The most excluded are those with the lowest levels of education, lowest income and in the most remote locations. This report reviews the barriers for women's access to finance, their current use of financial services and products, and the specific ...» more

Promoting national identities

Helpdesk Report
  • Siân Herbert
July 2013

Most Somalis share the same ethnic group, genealogy, language, customary law, culture and religion. Despite possessing many characteristics of national identity, clanship and contract are fundamental for Somali political units. Somalia has many of the traits of what is defined as a nation, and also of national identity. However, the failure of the central state to provide and ...» more

Current thinking on capacity development

Helpdesk Report
  • Brian Lucas
June 2013

Capacity development (CD) emerged in the 1990s from a reassessment of earlier approaches to technical cooperation. (Pearson 2011b, p. 10) It is now “gaining greater prominence in international discussions on the performance and future of development cooperation” (Keijzer et al. 2011, p. 7) and continues to be identified as key constraint in development analysis and political ...» more

Conflict and development in Sudan Key research institutions

Helpdesk Report
  • Róisín Hinds
May 2013

There are a limited number of UK-based research institutes that include a focus on conflict and development in Sudan. Experts indicate that the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) is the main organisation involved in Sudanese research. Other research institutes that incorporate Sudan or South Sudan in their programming include: the Royal African Society; the Royal Institute of ...» more

Aid to national human rights institutions

Helpdesk Report
  • Siân Herbert
April 2013

National human rights institutions (NHRIs) are institutions with a constitutional and/or legislative mandate to protect and promote human rights – they often take the form of human rights commissions, ombudsmen or specialised institutions that protect the rights of a particular group (UNDP-OHCHR 2010). Key findings Most NHRIs have been established over the past 20 years - and ...» more

Land transparency programmes and land data platforms

Helpdesk Report
  • Oliver Walton
January 2013

Key findings: Land administration in developing countries often fails to be pro-active, service-oriented, inclusive and pro-poor. These failures can lead to a range of issues including corruption, fraud, extortion and human rights violations. Several countries are currently reforming land policies and introducing new approaches to land administration. These efforts generally ...» more

Effectiveness of demand-led technical assistance and cooperation on public sector reforms

Helpdesk Report
  • Sumedh Rao
October 2012

Key findings: No cases demonstrate unambiguously that improved economic governance and inclusive growth has been the result of demand-led technical assistance. However, existing literature that evaluates technical assistance and public sector reforms in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region shows that public sector reform (PSR) can remove constraints on inclusive ...» more

Changing attitudes and behaviours in relation to gender equality

Helpdesk Report
  • Huma Haider
June 2012

This helpdesk report surveys literature on strategies and initiatives designed to increase awareness and to change attitudes and behaviours in order to promote greater gender equality. The structure of the report is based on the following areas: religious influences; community-level processes, alongside media and social campaigning; and activities targeting men’s attitudes and ...» more

Police reform evaluations

Helpdesk Report
  • Freida M'Cormack
March 2012

Police reform often comes under the remit of broader security sector reform (SSR). The two are increasingly promoted in post-conflict, transitional and fragile states as a means of providing a stable environment within which wider social, economic and political development can take place. Despite this, however, researchers and practitioners argue that there is very little ...» more

Literature and debates around behaviour change

Helpdesk Report
  • Sumedh Rao
February 2012

There is a large literature around behaviour change, drawing from a number of disciplines including psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, and neuroscience. Within these disciplines there does not seem to be a particularly outstanding group of literature or debate and it is highly contestable what the strongest groups of literature seem to be. There are a number of ...» more

Communication initiatives to change attitudes/behaviours

Helpdesk Report
  • Huma Haider
March 2011

Key Findings: Behaviour change communication has been widely used in health education, and much of the literature included in this report is related to the health sector. Initially, communication initiatives adopted a diffusion approach, aimed at changing individual attitudes and behaviour. More recently, attention has also been paid to face-to-face and participatory ...» more

Community Empowerment Outcomes – South Asia

Helpdesk Report
  • Huma Haider
December 2010

Key findings: The vast majority of the literature focuses on the empowerment of women in the community. Of these, some evaluate the contribution of the underlying activity (e.g. micro-finance) in promoting empowerment outcomes, rather than assessing the outcomes of empowerment programmes, more generally. Nonetheless, outcome findings do overlap for both and there is value in ...» more

Donor Experience Working with Traditional and Religious Institutions

Helpdesk Report
  • Sumedh Rao
December 2010

Donor experience with traditional and religious institutions is poorly documented. Donors generally seem reluctant to engage directly with religious institutions, with the notable exception of USAID. Where donors do work with traditional and religious institutions this tends to be through local or international NGOs. When working on women’s issues in an Islamic context this is ...» more

Development Finance Institutions and Development Outcomes

Helpdesk Report
  • Brian Lucas
October 2010

Evidence about the development impacts of DFIs is limited. DFIs carry out evaluations of their investments, but these are generally limited to examining direct outputs and economic impacts; comprehensive evaluation of impacts is complicated and expensive, and is very rarely undertaken. DFIs argue that financial performance and development outcomes go hand-in-hand, as ...» more

Local Government Capacity and Leadership in Fragile Areas

Helpdesk Report
  • Sumedh Rao
October 2010

There are a range of tools and methods available to measure, assess and monitor local governance, based on assessment by citizens (single stakeholders), by local government institutions, or by multiple stakeholders. In terms of specifically assessing capacity there are tools which produce capacity assessments for the purposes of Capacity Development (CD). For example ...» more

Critique of Governance Assessment Applications

Helpdesk Report
  • Sumedh Rao
July 2010

Governance assessments are based on subjective indicators (or measures), objective indicators or a combination of the two, known as composite indicators. Composite indicators are the most popular and are used by international organisations, donors, investors and the media (Arndt, 2008). Of these the most popular seems to be the World Bank’s World Governance Indicators (WGIs). ...» more

Domestic Politics of Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry

Helpdesk Report
  • Brian Lucas
April 2010

Indonesia is the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world (after the USA and China) and about 85% of the country’s emissions are related to land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF), making it the source of one-third of global LULUCF emissions. The main proximate causes of deforestation and land use change in Indonesia are logging (both legal and illegal), ...» more

Performance of Civil Society Organisations

Helpdesk Report
  • Brian Lucas
January 2010

There is no clear consensus that civil society organisations necessarily perform better or worse than private sector, government, or multilateral organisations. Few studies make direct comparisons of performance, but those that do show mixed results. This is not surprising, considering the wide range of organisations and country contexts.This report focuses primarily on the ...» more

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    • Institutions & social norms
      • Communication & behaviour change
    • PEA / Thinking & working politically
    • Results-based approaches
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    • Theories of change
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