In both Nigeria and the OPTs, development interventions were subordinate to the wider diplomatic relationship between the UK government and the respective governments. The article draws on extensive interviews, programme reviews and newspaper articles to understand the process through which interventions were implemented, the substance of what was done and the way in which the staff of the programme ensured that work responded to the shifting political context.The result was that, from 2003, DFID's portfolio shifted to recognize the complexity of the political economy of the country by helping Nigeria better use its own resources. Second, they involve brokering constructive relations among key players to discover shared interests and smart ways of dealing with vested interests. conclude, PEA must tread a careful line between the hard‐to‐eradicate expectation that it is a short‐cut to “picking winners” and communicating its real value: shaping programming in a way which continually enables winners to be picked.The articles in this Special Issue all illustrate how analysis of the context and opportunities have influenced the levels of ambition of programmes. For externally funded teams to support locally driven reform, it is essential that they generate trust with the recipients of the assistance. FOSTER commissioned quarterly PEAs to understand policy areas in the oil and gas sector that might be amenable to reform, as well as broader changes in the socio‐political context. He can also demonstrate the financial gains from the reduction in external medical referral expenditure in the OPTs. DFID EACP Event on Thinking and Working Politically in the DRC. Programmes faced with such uncertainty need to build alliances with a range of different actors, navigating the political space to find pathways through which progress might still be made despite the unpromising formal context. Part of the inspiration for establishing the CoP was the Coalitions for Change program in the Philippines, which demonstrated the power of collective action. Reforms often occur obliquely, starting from an initiative that was not designed to tackle the more fundamental problems but, for precisely that reason, was more feasible.
Please check your email for instructions on resetting your password. The case studies provide convincing evidence that the ability to build trust with local partners is central to facilitating positive change, yet many funders still provide strong incentives for implementing organizations to form teams based on years of technical experience.In putting forward recommendations for further research, we are conscious that the recent review by Laws and Marquette (First, further research is needed into how success is defined and measured for interventions that are designed to achieve long‐term governance or institutional reforms. By 2015, FOSTER was implemented by an entirely Nigerian in‐country team based in Abuja (though overall management responsibility still lay with an international contractor). This Special Issue sheds light on what TWP means in practice by examining a set of initiatives undertaken by both development partners and government departments in Nigeria, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, China and India. Pijuan describes how the Palestinian Governance Facility took time to understand the political economy context and build a web of relationships to enable it to operate. Thus, Pijuan shows how a significant improvement was achieved even though senior management and political support were still tenuous.But what does local ownership look like in practice in TWP programming?