Interventions as change management
Jeroen de Lange, January 2010
Summary
International development, humanitarian and military interventions aim to bring about change, but with mixed results. The fields of change management and complexity science offer useful lessons for those engaged in interventions in poor and fragile states. Diplomats, aid workers and the military involved in international interventions need to understand the type of problems they are dealing with, yet this phase is often skipped, sometimes with disastrous results. A possible framework for future interventions consists of five iterative phases: (1) understanding the system; (2) imagining the future; (3) sensing the urgency of change; (4) six strategies for implementing change; (5) and sustaining change.
Unless interventions are based on realistic visions and appropriate change strategies, with sufficient resources for as long as it takes, their achievements will always fall far short of expectations.
Introduction
Much has been written about what should be done to help poor and fragile states. What will spur economic growth? What is the best way to fight malaria? What will prevent state failure? Far less has been written about how to find out which solutions may work, or how to bring about and sustain a process of change.
Lately a series of articles has been published on complexity science and systems thinking that have dealt with the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of interventions by the international community.[i] They offer valuable insights into the complexities of interventions in other countries. But the challenge remains how to translate these insights into practical guidelines for people working in countries in distress, whether they are involved in development, humanitarian or military interventions.
The international community lacks an appropriate framework to guide interventions aimed at changing the structures and processes within a country, as well as individual behaviour, perceptions and values. The conceptual framework presented here could help ask the right questions and make interventions more effective. By regarding an intervention as a process of managed change,[ii] the framework brings together insights from the fields of change management and complexity science[iii] that are relevant for systems at any scale, from small organizations to fragile and failing states.
The change management literature offers many lessons that could be usefully applied to development, humanitarian or military interventions. Change management can be defined as a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams and organizations from an existing to a desired future state. Originally, the approach was applied to businesses that needed to change, but it has been increasingly applied to non-profit and government organizations. Many typologies have been used to describe strategies of change. Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria of the Harvard Business School, for example, identified two approaches to organizational change:[iv] top-down, using expert advice and financial incentives with a focus on planning, formal structures and systems; and bottom-up, focusing on learning from action and experience.
The framework outlined here contains elements that are common to most theories of change, and consists of five iterative phases: understanding the system that needs changing; imagining the future; sensing the urgency of the need for change; six strategies for implementing change; and sustaining change.
Understanding the system
Any intervention intended to bring about change must start with an understanding and framing of the system: What is the problem? Where are its boundaries? How do people within the system interact? How do local people perceive the things that are happening? What internal processes of change are taking place?
Those engaged in international interventions need to understand the type of problem they are dealing with, yet this phase is often skipped, sometimes with disastrous results.[v] If a particular problem is not recognized as such, stakeholders will be viewed in a certain way, or the wrong strategy and tactics will be used, and thus the opportunity to bring about positive change will be lost. In the case of Afghanistan, for example, according to some observers the Taliban have been so negatively stereotyped that any effort to try to transform their behaviour is bound to fail.[vi]
Different methodologies, disciplines and perspectives are needed to arrive at an understanding of a system or society that is the object of an intervention. Political economic analyses of the realities underlying government institutions will help understand what political forces are at work. An anthropological and action research perspective will help uncover people’s needs and interests as they themselves see them. First, however, a systems understanding of the society is needed. Most problems the international community is faced with are complex or even chaotic, which means they are not easily knowable.[vii] The actual outcomes of interventions in complex systems are often completely different from those envisaged at the outset. Continuous learning about the effects of interventions is therefore essential to deepen understanding and determine the course of action.
The agent interfering to develop the capacities of another is often referred to as the trustee. The trustee always faces the difficulty of bringing an intention to change or develop to bear upon a process of endogenous development. Change always entails the disappearance of the old, and the construction of the new.[viii] This insight is supported by complexity science: in any system there are always processes of self-organization and decay at work[ix]. There is thus never a clean slate on which to project and construct a new order.[x] Therefore any intervention in a given system will always upset ongoing processes and the existing interactions of forces that are at work. These endogenous forces are almost always much stronger than the outside forces the international community can apply. Development practice tends to pay very little attention to these forces that really determine the direction of change. Nor do we pay enough attention to the question of how these forces are affected by outside interventions, or how they use interventions by the international community for their own benefit.
Perhaps most important is to know when to act and when not to act. Many problems are resistant to policy. Some may resolve themselves more effectively if outsiders do not intervene. In such cases, interventions may do more harm than good. Edward Luttwak, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies,[xi] argued that war should be allowed to run its course, as it may achieve sustainable peace in the end. A military intervention may stop violence in the short term, but it can create problems for years to come. Development aid may cushion elites from pressure to reform structures and policies, in which case the country might be better off without foreign assistance. Short-term harm may be unavoidable in order to achieve long-term transformation. Clearly, these considerations have ethical dimensions. On what basis can one decide to save society instead of saving lives?
Imagining the future
Any effort to achieve change needs a vision of a future that is an improvement of the present. That vision will help to determine strategic goals and the principles to steer processes of change.[xii] For example, is sustained economic growth most likely to be achieved through agricultural transformation or by promoting export industries? In Afghanistan, is the goal to build a fully fledged democracy or to prevent new terrorist attacks on the West?
Interventions may either have as vision to achieve fundamental transformation, or to deliver direct results or relief for a target group. Another distinction is between a vision of top-down, authority-driven change, or of participatory bottom-up processes of change.[xiii] The most effective interventions combine different visions of change at different stages in the process.
But whose vision are we talking about? That of a poor farmer, a development NGO, or a country’s president?[xiv] The mantra is that developers should not start with preconceived ideas of how change should be brought about, but from the needs of the target groups and the realities on the ground.
Most change management theories recognize the need for a shared vision that resonates with people within the system as well as with outside stakeholders. A vision that undermines the interests of elite groups will backfire unless there is support and capacity to implement it. And without ownership of the vision by the very people the vision is for – often the poorest in a society – sustainable change will not happen. The wider the gap between the vision of the interveners and that of the local people, the harder it will be to achieve lasting results.
Any successful process of change starts with a guiding coalition[xv]. In change management literature a distinction is often made between (1) a group of employees who initiate the change - the original guiding coalition -, (2) a group of employees that is passive regarding the process of change, and (3) a group that actively tries to undermine the process of change. Statistically the passive employees are always a majority. The US Army manual on counter insurgency makes as well a distinction between three groups of people: ‘In any situation, whatever the cause, there will be an active minority for the cause, a neutral or passive majority, an active minority against the cause’[xvi].
The challenge for members of the international community is thus to build a guiding coalition of change that shares the same vision together with a group of people that wants to initiate and drive change in their own country. In the development literature, these people are often referred to as the drivers of change. Here, it is assumed that the interveners consist of one group, although in reality there are of course multiple interveners, which compounds the complexities of purposefully and effectively intervening.
Sensing the urgency to change
The tension between the current reality and the realization that a better future is possible creates a sense of urgency to change.[xvii] This is a core concept in change management thinking.[xviii] On one side, we have a group of people who understand their current situation, their needs and interests, and on the other we have a vision of a better future. Key to the creation of sense of urgency to change is thus the burden, the suffering, and the costs incurred by people in their current situation and the belief that an alternative future is possible. If people do not mind their current predicament and/or do not believe that an alternative future is possible, they will not feel a sense of urgency to change their lives and will remain apathic.
At the point of intervention, some crucial questions need to be asked. Who feels a sense of urgency to change a given situation? Who owns the problem? Who cares about the problem – the aid workers, the local poor people, the local elite? Or are constituencies in the intervener’s country demanding action after seeing starving people on CNN? All too often, interveners end up becoming the owners and paymasters of a problem. Change management experience shows that if the client doesn’t care, very little will be achieved. Effective interventions start at places where there is urgency to change and match the level of ambition of the intervention to the level of ambition of those who want change. They follow on from an already started, bottom up process of change that fits within the vision of change. Next to the differences in the sense of urgency and the interests of the interveners and the clients, a distinction can be made between the long-term and short-term interests of different groups of stakeholders, and between the interests of society and those of individuals.[xix]
For an intervention to be effective, the interests of the interveners have thus to overlap with those of some groups in the society concerned. If the difference between the interests of the interveners and most groups in the society is large, the interveners have to apply massive capacity to succeed in their mission. A common challenge is that the interests of the interveners (e.g. effective service delivery and good governance) overlap with those of the poor, but not with those of local elites. For example, the interests of the local elites may be regime survival, for which they need patronage. If the interest of the interveners and the poor is to get more value for money in service delivery (better education and healthcare, for example, and thus less corruption) and the intervention is aimed at exactly achieving that goal, the intervention will run up against the willpower of the local elite who will protect its interests.
Can people be made to care, if they don’t already? Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, is an interesting example of a deliberate attempt to create a sense of urgency about the need to combat climate change. By introducing transparency and competition, and collective learning, people can be encouraged to become more aware of their interests. If an elite group feels threatened by competition from other elite groups, for example, they are more likely to want to take steps to maintain their position.
Without a good fit between the vision, implementation capacity and commitment, a vision of change is likely to be little more than a pipe dream. Sense of urgency has to be translated into capacity and commitment to change. In his book The Utility of Force, Rupert Smith speaks of the ‘end to be achieved, the way it is to be achieved and the means allocated to be used in this way to the end desired. … Means are being risked to achieve the end in the way intended. … If the end is not thought worth the risk to the means, then either the way or the end must be changed until a balance is achieved’.[xx] Politicians, however, often resort to the principle that ‘at least doing something is better than doing nothing’, even if there is insufficient capacity to achieve their strategic goals. But for any intervention, military or development, the credibility of the commitment to deploy resources until the ultimate goal is achieved, is crucial.[xxi] Otherwise, the support and confidence of stakeholders will be seriously eroded, possibly with dire consequences.
Implementing change
The drivers of change, then, are the shared vision held by those involved, alongside the level of urgency they feel about the need for change. But only in implementing and sustaining change will a different reality emerge. For these parts of the framework, the key questions are what to do to solve a problem, how to implement change and determine the sequence of actions to take. When faced with complex or chaotic problems, the international community often tries to apply linear approaches – analysis, best practice, blueprint designs and implementation – that will only work if the problem is known or knowable,[xxii] and to drive change from the top down. However, with complex problems, the most practical strategy is to analyze and interpret, to find patterns, learn from ongoing interventions and move ahead incrementally. For William Easterly of New York University,[xxiii] the only way to arrive at a solution is through experimentation and trying out what works.[xxiv]
Although Easterly’s ‘searching’ is an important method, it cannot answer all questions. For example, to know what should be done to spur economic growth in a country, a binding constraints analysis needs to be carried out. This could show whether it is the lack of good infrastructure or of financial markets that hinders economic growth most.[xxv]
An important insight from complexity science is that any effort to intentionally bring about development and change should be built on and link into supporting, self-reinforcing processes of endogenous change.[xxvi] These processes should be understood before an intervention is attempted. As Ben Ramalingam and colleagues at the UK Overseas Development Institute have observed, ‘One should be prepared to approach problems as patterns of self-organization, (…) so that more beneficial and robust solutions can emerge’.[xxvii] What immanent, endogenous processes lead to state building, to democratization, to economic growth? What processes drive a limited access order to become an open access order[xxviii]?
Western countries have learnt something about the processes that can lead to state building[xxix] and democratization,[xxx] such as the crucial role of taxation in building accountable government institutions[xxxi] and the role of war-making in building states. Charles Tilly, who coined the famous phrase that ‘the state made war and war made the state’, asserted that state- and war-making are in fact forms of organized crime.[xxxii] As Andrew Mwenda, editor of Uganda´s weekly ´The Independent´ states: ´Domestic accountability has never been the product of administrative reforms alone, but the outcome of political struggle[xxxiii]´.
The most effective interventions thus build on these immanent processes of change that lead to political stability, accountability and wealth. Donors who undermine these local processes probably do more harm than good in efforts to build a state accountable to its citizens. There is widespread disappointment with the performance of the good governance agenda in Africa. Some academics, such as Tim Kelsall of ODI, recommend ‘going with the grain’ of African societies: ‘The question is how to redirect development efforts so that they stop working against and start to build upon, the extant notions of moral obligation and interpersonal accountability’.[xxxiv] Patrimonial power structures should perhaps be accepted as effective ways of organizing power that prevent (renewed) violence. Some have argued that the international community should perhaps shorten a civil war not by fighting all parties and trying to impose a liberal democratic order but by choosing sides, and helping one party to attain military victory.[xxxv]
One issue that is often overlooked concerns sequencing and timing – determining what to do, and when. People and systems need to be ready for change. Harvard economist Dani Rodrik argues that the ‘scarce political capital of reformers’ should be used as efficiently as possible by proposing the right sequence of reforms, beginning with tackling the most binding constraints to growth.[xxxvi] Depending on a country’s phase of development, some interventions will be more effective than others. Paul Collier of the University of Oxford has argued that development aid is most effective in the immediate post-conflict reconstruction phase, and that attempting to introduce multiparty democracy in a fragile society can often lead to renewed violence.[xxxvii] In undemocratic societies, ensuring inclusiveness in a political system is often more important than the results of premature elections.
Six strategies
In its efforts to implement change, the international community may use various strategies, either alone or in combination. Based on the approach developed by Léon de Caluwé and Hans Vermaak of the Twynstra Group,[xxxviii] these strategies differ in terms of who owns the problem, who senses the urgency to change, who initiates the intervention, whether the change is driven from the top down or the bottom up, whether change links into intrinsic motivations versus change that uses extrinsic motivations, and so on. They can be seen as points along a continuum, ranging from those imposed by outsiders, to those driven by the objects of the intervention, who thus become subjects of their own process of development and change.
The first, most extreme, strategy involves forcing a solution – mostly likely through violence – on a system or people, most of whom do not share the vision of the interveners. In order to achieve this in a conflict situation, the will of the people who are the object of the intervention and who resist it, needs to be broken.[xxxix] Examples include military interventions, containment and embargoes. Change is brought about from the top down using extrinsic motivations to change the behaviour of the people concerned. A critical success factor is ‘escalation dominance’ – local militias need to be convinced the outsiders are willing and able to destroy them if they do not obey orders. The failure of Dutch troops to prevent the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995 is a painful example of the lack of credible escalation dominance.
In old-fashioned wars, strategic goals would be achieved by military means. In a war between citizens, however, such as the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, military means alone cannot achieve strategic objectives, but need to be part of a broader enforcement strategy using additional methods such as the so-called ‘3D approach’: defence, diplomacy and development.[xl] Counter insurgency could thus be seen as a very complex and difficult form of change management.
The second strategy, conditioning behaviour, involves using positive and negative incentives to change. Examples include promises to provide or withhold budget support or access to markets, and the conditionalities attached to the structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and IMF.[xli] The local people are forcefully persuaded, with the right incentives, to change their behaviour, systems or structures. The intervener initiates the process, owns the problem and feels the urgency to act. The incentives need to be strong enough to change behaviour and outweigh the costs – of the extra effort that is required to change a government policy, for example. Donors may offer a huge sum of money to persuade a government to introduce a specific, well defined policy reform, like pension reform, that would not happen without a strong incentive. And any threat must be carried out, and the proposed cuts large enough to hurt.
Incentives are often only effective if they strengthen the position of an internal group trying to bring about change, and if the vision of change is shared by powerful groups. In Kenya, for example, the government was offered several incentives to change certain policies, but each time, as soon as the promised incentive was received, the reforms of public finances and public service management were turned back. The reforms were clearly not in the best interest of the key power holders.
Coalition building, the third strategy, sees the world in terms of power, conflict and interests – in a word, diplomacy. Different groups are brought together in a political process of negotiation and consensus seeking. The intervener takes the initiative but focuses on building a coalition for change with stakeholders. The intervener has to be accepted by all parties, and any deal codified in an agreement. The assumption underlying this strategy is that change will not happen if it is not supported by a coalition of the powerful. Examples include the special envoys and peace brokers involved in international negotiations, such as IKV Pax Christi in northern Uganda. Embassies too can bring together different parts of a government that do not normally meet around a table.
Direct help, the fourth strategy, is self-explanatory: the intervener takes care of a concrete problem, becoming a co-owner of the problem. The goal is to achieve a result: to deliver humanitarian aid, to save a rainforest by buying it, to build a road. The aim is not to transform behaviour, structures or systems, but to provide direct relief.
But direct help has its downsides. Large, costly projects driven by international agencies without an understanding of local needs and problems are doomed to fail because the people themselves do not care about them. Africa is littered with such failures. Direct help can create a culture of dependency – witness the refugee camps in northern Uganda – and can also cushion elite groups from pressure to change. Humanitarian aid can remove the urgency of real transformation.
The strategic goal of the fifth strategy, direct support, is transformation. The intervention is also a means to achieving further goals – an intervener provides direct support for the host government and becomes co-owner of the problem and co-initiator of change. This can be effective when, for example, a donor works closely with government officials who need outside support to implement change. These inside drivers of change are willing, but lack adequate capacity to design, coordinate and implement reforms. The interaction between donors and Ugandan Ministry of Finance officials is a good example. The downside of interveners playing a prominent role is that it hampers local ownership and the long-term effectiveness of change.
With the sixth and final strategy, facilitating change, the local people are the sole owners of the problem. They take the initiative and are wholly motivated. They want change but may lack specific knowledge or capacities to bring it about. The intervener acts as a process consultant giving feedback, offering ideas, knowledge and financial and technical assistance if needed. The assumption is that sustained change happens through learning, and that learning happens only when people decide they want to learn. A good example of a facilitation strategy is the advisory service of SNV (A Dutch development organisation), whose aim is to strengthen the capacity of local governments. A department within a central bank that seeks advice and support from a donor, or a law reform commission that wants to learn from experiences in other countries are other examples of opportunities for facilitation of change. A facilitation strategy thus assumes a certain level of commitment and urgency to real change. Neo-patrimonial states in Africa do not fit that picture. The priority of the elites who have captured the state is their own survival. Fundamental change can only undermine their comfortable position. These states thus find themselves in a low level equilibrium situation. Societal change then has to start elsewhere, outside the direct influence of the neo-patrimonial state. By supporting the private sector for example, donors may be more effective in facilitating fundamental change and development than by supporting the state. The challenge is to facilitate reforms that are in the self interest of elites but that lead to the creation of impersonal rights and impersonal relationships between them. In the long run this can foster fundamental political and social change.[xlii] Examples are the introduction of a stock market and setting up a system for registering ownership of land.
Sustaining change
Once the intervention has set in motion a process of change, ‘quick wins’ and easy successes are important to maintain the momentum. And successes must be communicated. Those not yet convinced – members of the passive majority - need to be shown that positive change is achievable, and that they can make the leap to a different future, thereby enlarging the coalition for change. At the same time the guiding coalition has to stop those who oppose change from doing harm. As the coalition for change grows, more complex and challenging problems can be tackled.
But sooner or later resistance to change will emerge as the system ‘pushes back’.[xliii] Change is upsetting. Some groups will lose out and oppose it. Interveners must continually strive to recognize and understand the warning signs. Why is the system pushing back? Have the interveners become the sole owners of the problem? Have the interests of those in the system changed? Perhaps the implementation strategy needs to be changed?
Interveners should be aware that some implementation strategies, if used in combination, can undermine each other.[xliv] Donors cannot expect government officials to be open to learning after cajoling them into accepting a policy by threatening to cut aid. The negative consequences of an enforcement strategy are self-evident. Military forces that have just bombed a village will find it difficult to win hearts and minds if they then support the local administration. Seen from this perspective, the 3D approach to counter an insurgency will always be extremely difficult to implement successfully.
Since the processes of change are never linear, there is often a tipping point, a point of no return, when, for example, a new power configuration makes it impossible for those resisting change to turn back the clock. Some observers argue that in certain situations sequencing of implementation strategies is to be preferred to simultaneous use of different strategies. In Afghanistan the Taliban have to be first militarily defeated – and thereby creating a new power configuration – before development can begin, since lack of security frustrates all development efforts. In this case enforcement comes before facilitation of change.
Ultimately, sustainable change can only be brought about by winning hearts and changing mindsets. Change needs to be supported by the intrinsic motivation of a large enough coalition of people. Enforcement, conditioning, coalition building and direct support are in essence all power strategies: the intervener drives the change. Such strategies may be needed in some situations to change the power configuration and to enable processes of bottom-up change. In the long run, however, change can only become sustainable by facilitation, by enabling people to learn, by supporting them to discover solutions to problems themselves and by making sure they become (again) the owners of their own problems and drivers of their own change.
At least do no harm
Why have so many interventions fallen short of expectations? Many have suffered from unrealistic visions that feed unreal expectations, or go too much against the grain of the system, or lack the persistence and commitment needed to apply enough capacity. Others have been carried out by fragmented groups of interveners with different understandings, visions, interests and objectives. The international community clearly does not exist. Another reason may be that, all too often, interveners fail to employ the right change strategies. Despite the rhetoric about ownership, empowerment and capacity building, power strategies have been used more than real facilitation.
The international community could achieve more than it does now if it were to base its interventions on the framework presented, instead of on grandiose policies and plans. But given the messy reality of interventions by a fragmented international community, their complex nature and the manifold preconditions that have to be met for interventions to be effective, the chances that the framework will be applied in full are slim. However, deeper insight into the complexities of purposeful interventions in other societies should lead to simpler, less ambitious policies and interventions. When the conditions for effective interventions cannot be fulfilled, no intervention is better than upsetting endogenous processes of change. The least we can do is do no harm.
An earlier version of this article was published in The Broker, February 2010 (www.thebrokeronline.eu)
Jeroen de Lange is a senior economist currently working at the World Bank. From November 2006 till December 2009 he was senior macro economist at the Netherlands Embassy in Kampala. Between 2003 and 2006 he was head of staff of the city manager of Amsterdam, in which capacity he supported him in changing the city administration. He is co-author, with Erik Gerritsen, of Smart Governance (Reed Elsevier, 2007), a book about change management and local government. He has worked in Rwanda as First Secretary at the Netherlands Embassy on the post genocide reconstruction phase of the justice sector and in the Middle East as human rights consultant.
Notes and references
[i] Complexity science and systems thinking have been the subject of several articles in recent issues of The Broker. See in particular Alan Fowler (2008) Connecting the dots: Complexity thinking and social development, The Broker 7, April; Willemijn Verkoren (2008) Debating complexity: The value of complexity theory for development, The Broker 9, August; Jim Woodhill (2008) Shaping behaviour: How institutions evolve, The Broker 10, October; Bob Williams (2008) Bucking the system: Systems concepts and development, The Broker 11, December.
[ii] See, for example, Peter Senge (1999) The Dance of Change, Nicolas Brealey Publishing.
Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria (2000) Cracking the code of change. Harvard Business Review, May-June: 133–141. http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2000/05/cracking-the-code-of-change/ar/1
Léon de Caluwé and Hans Vermaak (2006) Leren Veranderen: Een handboek voor de veranderkundige, 2nd edn. Kluwer. First edition translated as (2003) Learning to Change: A Guide for Organizational Change Agents. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
[iii] Peter Morgan (2005) The Idea and Practice of Systems Thinking and their Relevance for Capacity Development. Maastricht: European Centre for Development Policy Management. http://www.ecdpm.org/Web_ECDPM/Web/Content/Download.nsf/0/6F116D3970F90A41C125709F00385C52/$FILE/Morgan%20-%20systems%20thinking-%20fdraft%20-feb%202005.pdf
Ben Ramalingam et al. (2008) Exploring the Science of Complexity: Ideas and Implications for Development and Humanitarian Efforts, ODI Working Paper 285. http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/download/583.pdf
Chris Mowles, Ralph Stacey and Douglas Griffin (2008) What contribution can insights from the complexity sciences make to the theory and practice of development management? Journal of International Development 20: 804–820. http://mande4mfi.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/mowles-et-al-complexity-and-devman.pdf
[iv] Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria (eds) (2000) Breaking the Code of Change, Harvard Business School Press.
[v] Thomas E. Ricks (2007) Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, Penguin Books.
On skipping the phase of analysis in a process of change management, see Hans Vermaak (2008) (1) Kies de juiste strategie!, Kluwer Management, May/June, p.3.
There are many painful examples of development, humanitarian and military interventions where the international community skipped the phase of understanding. Thorough analysis before an intervention is undertaken seems to be the exception than the rule.
[vi] See, for example, the interview with Willem van der Put: ‘De Taliban waren goedwillende boertjes’, NRC Handelsblad, 31 January 2009. Van der Put, director of Health Net TPO, believes that the Taliban have been framed in such negative stereotypes that made any engagement with them to try to transform some of their behaviour impossible from the start.
[vii] The Cynefin framework is a model used to describe problems, situations and systems. It distinguishes between known, knowable, complex and chaotic problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin
[viii] M.P. Cowen and R.W. Shenton (1996) Doctrines of Development, Routledge, pp.438–440.
[ix] Peter Morgan (2005), p.20
[x] Martine van Bijlert (2009) Imaginary institutions: State building in Afghanistan, in: Doing Good or Doing Better: Development Policies in a Globalizing World, Scientific Council for Government Policy. Amsterdam University Press, pp.157–175. Van Bijlert, who has worked as an advisor and consultant in Afghanistan since 2004, states that the international community acted as if there was a clean slate: ‘But the excitement of many nation builders to be working on what they considered a tabula rasa, meant that they were barely aware of, or interested in the existing institutional structures, cultures, traditions or memories’.
[xi] Edward N. Luttwak (1999) Give war a chance, Foreign Affairs 78(4): 36–44. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/55210/edward-n-luttwak/give-war-a-chance
[xii] Gerritsen, E. and de Lange, J. (2007) De Slimme Gemeente, The Hague: Reed Business Overheidsmanagement.
Léon de Caluwé and Hans Vermaak (2006), p.42, note that often no choice is made between conflicting strategic goals, which leads to ineffective efforts to change.
[xiii] Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria (2000), pp.3–6; Peter Senge (1999), p.41
[xiv] Robert Chambers (2007) Ideas for Development, Earthscan, pp157-158
[xv] Peter Senge, 1999, p. 39
[xvi] Headquarters Department of the Army: ‘Counterinsurgency – FM 3-24’, December 2006,
p. 1-20
[xvii] Peter Senge (1992) The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Doubleday, p.148.
[xviii] See, for example, Harvard Business Review, 1998, p.3; Peter Senge (1990) pp.147–152: Senge talks about the necessary creative tension between current reality and vision.
[xix] Dorothea Hilhorst (2007) Saving Lives or Saving Societies? Realities of Relief and Reconstruction, Wageningen University.
[xx] Rupert Smith (2006) The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, Penguin Books, pp.210-211.
[xxi] Robert Chambers (2007), pp. 14-20
[xxii] C.F. Kurtz and D.J. Snowden (2003), p.468; Léon de Caluwé and Hans Vermaak (2006), p.74. Vermaak and de Caluwé call one of the five change strategies they have discerned ‘blueprint thinking’. Blueprint thinking is based on the assumption that problems can be fully analyzed and that change can be rationally designed, planned and implemented using clear milestones and indicators. This strategy clearly only works when applied to known or knowable problems.
[xxiii] William Easterly (2006) The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, Penguin Books.
[xxiv] Although there are many political economic reasons for donors not to rigorously evaluate the impact of their programmes; see Lant Pritchett (2008) It pays to be ignorant: A simple political economy of rigorous program evaluation, in: William Easterly (ed) Reinventing Foreign Aid, MIT Press, pp.121-144.
[xxv] Dani Rodrik (2007) One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions and Economic Growth, Princeton University Press, ch. 2 on growth diagnostics.
[xxvi] Peter Senge (1990) pp.13–124; Ramalingam et al. (2008) pp.15–19.
[xxvii] Ramalingam et al. (2008), p.50
[xxviii] Douglas C. North, John Joseph Wallis, Barry R. Weingast (2009) Violence and Social Orders, A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, Cambridge University Press, pp. 25-27
[xxix] See Charles Tilly (1990) Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990-1990, Oxford: Blackwell.
[xxx] Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (2007) Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Cambridge University Press; Charles Tilly (2007) Democracy, Cambridge University Press.
[xxxi] Deborah Bräutigam, Odd-Helge Fjeldstad and Mick Moore (eds) (2008) Taxation and State-Building in Developing Countries: Capacity and Consent, Cambridge University Press.
[xxxii] Charles Tilly (1985) War making and state making as organized crime, in: P.B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol (eds) Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge University Press.
[xxxiii] Andrew Mwenda (2009) When corruption is accountability, in: The Independent November
3 - 9, 2009
[xxxiv] Tim Kelsall (2008) Going with the grain in African development? Development Policy Review 26(6): 627–655.
[xxxv] Isabelle Duyvesteyn (2005) Clausewitz and African War: Politics and Strategy in Somalia and Liberia, Frank Cass, London, pp.113-114.
[xxxvi] Dani Rodrik (2007) pp.56–57.
[xxxvii] Paul Collier (2007) The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, Oxford University Press, pp.115-116.
Paul Collier (2009) Wars Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, HarperCollins,
part I.
[xxxviii] These strategies are modelled on the approach to change developed by De Caluwé and Vermaak: (1) negotiation and coalition building; (2) rational planning and top-down implementation; (3) conditioning using positive and negative incentives; (4) learning; and (5) open facilitation. Léon de Caluwé and Hans Vermaak (2006) Leren Veranderen: Een handboek voor de veranderkundige, 2nd edn. Kluwer. First edition translated as (2003) Learning to Change: A Guide for Organizational Change Agents. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
[xxxix] Rupert Smith (2006) The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, Penguin Books, p.2
[xl] Headquarters, Department of the Army (2006) Counterinsurgency. US Army Field Manual FM 3-24; Martin van Creveld (2007) De evolutie van de oorlog – Van de Marne tot Irak, Spectrum.
[xli] See, for example, IMF (2007) Structural Conditionality in IMF-Supported Programs, IMF Independent Evaluation Office.
[xlii] Douglas C. North, John Joseph Wallis, Barry R. Weingast (2009), p 25.
[xliii] Peter Senge (1992) p.60.
