Brandeis University Proseminar presentation by Oxfam's Duncan Green from March 2012. (2/6)

1. Day 2: First let’s recap. In pairs,
discuss:
 Where we got too yesterday
 Any questions/comments/suggestions
 What topic you have chosen for your
case study
– Then let’s go round the room

2. Active Citizens, Effective States and
Change
Duncan Green
Brandeis Proseminar
March 2012
Lecture 2

3. Main messages
 Rights and dignity are a crucial part of development and
well-being
 Achieving these requires involvement in power and
politics
 Ability to exercise rights requires access to essential
services, information and knowledge
 Active citizenship, including civil society organization, is
essential to development
 Effective states play a central role in development
 The interaction between Active Citizens and Effective
States is crucial, complicated and doesn’t always follow
the script!

4. And rights are about power - Picture
Development is about rights

5. Development is about rights
 Rights are long-term guarantees that allow right-
holders to put demands on duty bearers
 Capabilities = rights + ability to exercise them
 Involves crucial shift from treating poor people as
‘beneficiaries’ to seeing them as active agents
 Rights = lawyers and scholars; development =
economists and engineers

6. And rights are about power
 Power over: the power of
the strong over the weak
 Power to: the capability
to decide actions and
carry them out
 Power with: collective
power, through
organisation, solidarity,
and joint action
 Power within: personal
self-confidence

7. First build the people…
 Education, healthcare, water, sanitation and
housing are basic building blocks of a decent life
 Education: need improvements in both quality and
quantity (esp. for girls)
 Health: maternal mortality as example of gender
and wealth-based inequalities
 Control over fertility is both a rights and health
issue
 The state must be central to provision

8. Then ensure access to knowledge and
information
 Steady improvements in access to knowledge,
e.g. radio, mobiles, internet
 Technology holds enormous potential
 But current incentives bias R&D against the needs
of the poor
 And intellectual property rules act as a barrier to
technology transfer (pharmaceuticals, biopiracy)

9. And the right to organise
 Increasing range and complexity of civil society
organizations
 Role of CSOs as catalysts and watchdogs
 Intrinsic and instrumental benefits of CSO
involvement
 Civil society activism waxes and wanes
 Civil society is very involved in decentralization
processes

10. States are at the heart of development
(and growing in importance)
 Nation states play a core role in providing essential
services, rule of law, economic stability and upgrading
 Successful ‘developmental states’ (Chalmers Johnson):
– Govern for the future
– Promote growth
– Start with equity
– Integrate with the global economy, but discriminate
– Guarantee health and education for all
 But the politics of developmental states are tricky
– Embedded autonomy (Peter Evans)
– Strong ‘national bourgeoisie’ and elite alignment
 Globalization and orthodoxy make building effective states
harder

11. And Ineffective States are one of the
biggest problems in development
 Fragile and Conflict Afflicted States
(FRACAS)
 Clientilism and patronage are the
opposite of ‘embedded autonomy’
 What leads to a new ‘political
settlement’?
– Leadership (Botswana)
– Shocks (Rwanda)
– Strong civil society (Ghana)
– Can be gradual, led by progressive elite
fractions (Taiwan)

12. How do Active Citizens and Effective States fit into
our model of change?

14. Looking back/from the outside:
Four Components of Change
 Context
– Technology, environment, demographics,
globalization
 Institutions
– Culture, ethnicity, religion, attitudes and beliefs
– Civil service, judiciary, electoral democracy,
essential services,
 Agents
– Social movements, elites, leaders, private sector,
media
 Events
– Wars, disasters, confrontations

15. Dynamics and Pathways
Cumulative and
Chaotic Sequential
Events, tipping
points and Path Dependence
lightbulb
moments
Demonstration Accumulation of
Effects forces

16. How change happens:
the Chiquitanos

17. How change happens: the Chiquitanos
 3 July 2007: Chiquitanos win title to 1m hectares
of traditional lands in Eastern Bolivia
 Lived in near-feudal conditions up to 1980s
 Activism began on margins of football league
 Marches to La Paz forged links with highland
Indians and built ethnic identity
 Chiquitanos elected as mayors and senators
 Evo Morales’ 2006 election, the turning point

18. How change happens:
winning ‘pond rights’ in India

19. How change happens:
winning ‘pond rights’ in India
 Fishing ponds crucial to 45,000 families in
Bundelkhand
 Technology change (new fish varieties and
stocking) prompted a new wave of seizures by
landlords
 Protests got support from state government for
fishing cooperatives – basis for mobilisation
 Dirty tricks and some violence were a turning point
 NGOs brokered relations with police and
politicians
 100 ponds now under fishers’ control

20. Dilemma: are Effective States
compatible with Active Citizens?

21. Or is it more often like this?

22. How do Active Citizens interact with
States?
 Democracies:
– Produce more predictable long run growth rates
– Produce greater short term stability
– Handle shocks much better
– Deliver more equality
 But legitimacy is an issue even in non-democratic states
 And change is seldom completely peaceful - cycles of
conflict and cooperation are the norm (Fox, Gaventa)

23. And how do Effective States interact
with citizens?
 Nation builders are often undemocratic, but
autocrats often fail and societies may be
becoming less tolerant of ‘benevolent dictators’
 Taxation is key to the state-citizen compact
 Are ‘democratic developmental states’ feasible in
early stages of development (‘inclusive
embeddedness’ Edigheji)
 Or is it only in later stages – Brazil? South Korea?
Botswana?

24. My (tentative and uncomfortable)
conclusion
 There are probably trade-offs in early stage
development between achieving the kind of
developmental state best suited to achieving fast
economic take-off and the ‘democratic developmental
state’ that can achieve wider development – freedoms
‘to do and to be’
 But those trade-offs are likely to change over time,
hopefully in a positive direction – growth and freedom
will become more aligned

25. HOW DO YOU GET ALL
THAT INTO A 3 MINUTE
VIDEO?.........

26. Buzz in Pairs
 Any questions, comments on what
you’ve just heard?
 Anything you disagreed with or felt
worried about?

27. Groupwork
 In pairs, take it in turns to present your
case study
 Apply HCH analysis to it (context,
institutions, agents, events + pathways)
 Identify any gaps in your understanding
of the case study/questions for further
research
 Be prepared to report back on
– the ideas and questions that emerged
– What HCH added to your thinking about
your case study