Idea Transcript
Journal of International Development: Vol. 9, No. 5, 771±778 (1997)
POLICY ARENA USING GRASSROOTS EXPERIENCE TO INFORM MACRO LEVEL POLICY: AN NGO PERSPECTIVE CAROLINE HARPER* The Save the Children Fund, UK
Abstract: NGDOs and other development agencies advocate micro experience to inform macro policy in order to address negative impacts which can erode sustainable development eorts. However, channels to enable use of grassroots information, a commonly understood language, and the conviction from key players that grassroots information is actually necessary for macro policy design are all, as yet, undeveloped. Extrapolating from the micro to the macro raises issues of access, rigour and relevance, some aspects of which have begun to be addressed through RRA and PRA methodologies. An avenue requiring further development is the use of PRA as a tool of empowerment in policy design rather than simply a means of information extraction. # 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
J. Int. Dev. 9: 771±778 (1997) No. of Figures: 0. No. of Tables: 0. No. of References: 7.
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INTRODUCTION
The consensus that micro±macro linkages are necessary for eective policy design has grown from an increased understanding of the negative social impacts of macroeconomic policies on the lives of people, particularly the poor and powerless. Those people most critically aected by adjustment policies and the development agencies working with them now realize that participating in national and international level policy formulation is necessary. The impact of macro level policies can negate years of community eort or can impinge directly and speedily on the lives of an entire population. Policy initiatives, such as land privatization or dam construction, can
* Correspondence to: Caroline Harper, Save the Children Fund, 17 Grove Lane, London SE5 8RD, UK.
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undermine previously sustainable systems. Those NGDOs1 focusing at community level recognize that the eect of their work, however good, has limited relevance unless it is linked to policy in¯uence. Ensuring policy in¯uence takes place and widening the impact of project work has been a major preoccupation of NGDOs over the last decade with some success in policy areas (Edwards and Hulme, 1995). However, whilst NGDOs and the people they work with are concerned to engage in policy dialogue, the channels, mechanisms and methods to enable participation in policy design, a commonly understood language, and the conviction from key players that it is actually necessary are all, as yet, undeveloped. Clearly there are a range of policies which fall under the `macro' rubric. In this paper macro policies may be state sector policies regarding allocation of resources, policies concerned with exploitation of, or rights over, resources, and policies related to structural adjustment including those intended to stimulate free market mechanisms, for example through privatization and trade measures. Similarly there are a range of activities which may be described as linking the micro and the macro, including: macro policy makers correctly anticipating micro level eects; identi®cation of the channels and mechanisms which will transmit policy eects to the local level; micro level research and usage of local information to inform policies; and micro knowledge and understanding being used to actively advocate for change in policies. The role of NGDOs also varies according to the speci®c nature and purpose of the NGDO, which variously ranges from service delivery through to advocacy. In addition the NGDO can be local, regional or international. This paper will concentrate on micro±macro linkage to enable the eective use of grassroots knowledge and research, and the legitimate and productive ownership of that knowledge. It will thus focus on NGDOs, local or international, which have a speci®c interest in either ensuring local knowledge informs macro policy or being part of an alliance with that ultimate aim. The speci®c objectives of micro±macro linkage in this paper will focus on improving policy for the poor. The paper will address the issue of micro±macro linkage in three parts. Firstly the issue of convincing key policy makers of the importance of grassroots experience and research; secondly, the necessity of developing the quality of micro level evidence (balancing rigour and relevance) and the methods, mechanisms, channels and roles necessary for micro± macro linkages; and thirdly, the speci®c value of NGDO work in micro±macro linkages in terms of the productive use and legitimate ownership of this knowledge and commitment to advocacy and participation. The case study material which informs this discussion is drawn from the experience of Mongolia during adjustment (Harper, 1994). 2
THE VALUE OF GRASSROOTS TESTIMONY
Grassroots testimony for policy in¯uence is frequently identi®ed with NGDO experience and has been labelled as anecdotal and therefore of limited relevance to 1 The term non-governmental development organization (NGDO) will be used throughout to distinguish between developmental and other types of NGO. NGDOs are not easily de®ned entities and contain within them a spread of expertise ranging from activists to social scientists, sometimes economists. Thus, outside debates concerning the roles and legitimacy of NGDOs, their expertise and practice combines a range of disciplines and experience.
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policy design. Both these suppositions carry some validity. However, the grassroots experience is not just that of NGDOs, nor is it just a vignette or case study. The experience is also that of local government, peoples organizations, associational groups, indeed any group operating at the grassroots level. The potential for understanding grassroots reality, therefore, depends on any agency accessing a repository of knowledge at the local level and doing so over a period of continuous time, preferably with a historical perspective. Grassroots testimony itself ranges from a super®cial case study to an in-depth case study of a particular experience framed within an understanding of the local cultural, political and sociological setting. It is argued by macro policy makers that the potential for extrapolating and generalizing from such information is limited. The fact that an isolated experience may not re¯ect experiences elsewhere is a legitimate supposition, and certainly the case with super®cial analysis. However, there are levels of generalization and levels of analysis and therefore some possibility for generalizable conclusions to be drawn from in-depth case study material. Outside of the validity of generalizing from the speci®c to the general, isolated testimony can be used as a reality check on the perceived potential of policies (Edwards, 1996). This may reveal (especially in poverty alleviation) that the potential of the macro level policy was overestimated and broader variables are more important, or it may reveal unforseen negative eects of macro level policies. Micro level analysis may also reveal unanticipated limitations in the linkages necessary to transmit policies such as access to information, appropriate institutional structures or human resources. All of these are important variables related to macro-policy formulation and are broadly relevant in a wide range of situations. Grassroots analysis can thus be used to enhance macro policy formulation and impact by identifying important variables such as policy linkages and potential unforseen impacts. It can also challenge assumptions about how policies will work, what policies are needed, and how societies are constructed as the following discussion of poverty alleviation mechanisms describes. Macro policy for poverty alleviation is frequently designed on the assumption that measures to protect the poor are safety nets, services and support for the resources that provide their incomes. As a result livelihood security and individual well being are related only to income or services, and consequently macro policy related to poverty frequently focuses speci®cally on these dimensions. However, micro level analysis reveals that livelihoods are about more than income or services alone. The broader social arena related to secure livelihood includes participation in decision making, the right to information to inform choices, individual rights, security from con¯ict and, importantly, traditional household welfare strategies. These all may have longer term implications for societies eective functioning than social policy or income protection as commonly de®ned. Macroeconomic analysis often restricts social policies to welfare, social safety nets or human resource development.2 The instruments of these policies are pensions, welfare payments, social services such as health and education and direct payments to alleviate poverty. Whilst these policy instruments are necessary they are insucient in themselves. Similarly a macro analysis which emphasizes the importance of income is not erroneous, income is 2 These `social policies' are de®ned in relation to economic determinants: welfare through re-distribution is economic policy put to social ends; social sector policies are distinct but dependent on economic policy (i.e. public expenditure); and safety nets compensate for economic policy by mitigating its eects.
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certainly important and fundamental to household survival, however, the analysis cannot stop here. The limitations of orthodox macro analysis can be illustrated through speci®c cases of women under conditions of adjustment, as revealed by grassroots analysis placed in its cultural and sociological setting (Woodward, 1992; Harper, 1994). In order to try and maintain income, women will make considerable sacri®ces in relation to nonincome earning uses of their time which involve other productive, family and community activities. By neglecting these other activities costs are transferred and absorbed by other household members and communities as a whole. Measuring a households welfare rather than its income is therefore essential. In times of economic crisis and change when in¯ation rises, unemployment is high, cash crops have no market, or food is scarce, women and men seek second jobs, alternative incomes, queue and search for food and fuel, look for accommodation, etc. As women struggle to maintain income they give up other activities such as child care, cooking nutritious food, informal child education, caring for the elderly and relatives, reciprocal community action, and so on. Many of the costs of adjustment are not recorded in national accounts including increased child labour (as children care for siblings, the elderly, cook, or undertake income earning activities), increased crime, child neglect, ill health due to poor nutrition (lower incomes, higher food prices and less cooking time), and alcohol abuse. If the situation continues for years, children miss out on education and miss opportunities. As a result a poverty spiral continues. By using qualitative analysis, Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) techniques and case studies, it is clear how the costs of adjustment are absorbed by families and that, in the process, essential informal social support systems are undermined. These informal but essential systems and their building blocks, such as community relations and women's time, are rarely analysed and valued. Other direct social eects of economic policies and the impact on women are also illustrated in sector resource allocation and adjustment privatisation policies. For example, in Mongolia, making savings on what was previously a widespread pre-school system directly aects children and indirectly their mothers by increasing demands on women's productive time for child care or, if the mother cannot pick up the responsibility, reducing child care activities. Adjustment policies in the Mongolian case, which included fast privatization of property and assets, saw inequitable allocation and a resultant increase in poverty, especially among women, as men assumed rights over previously communally owned means of production. This profoundly aects women's current and potential welfare, particularly in a situation of high divorce, with substantial numbers of single parents and inadequate or undeveloped legislation to protect women's rights. Micro level analysis, therefore, reveals a much broader range of factors in¯uencing household welfare. These challenge macro-level assumptions concerning the eectiveness of poverty related policies or the social impact of economic policies, and reveal unforeseen eects such as the undermining of existing social support systems. Although all policies are not social policies, all policies have social impacts. The social impacts of economic policies may well con¯ict with the aims and visions of substantial groups of people and may create the very problems which welfare or social polices are designed to mitigate. NGDOs can thus use their grassroots testimony as a reality check on the claims of macro policy makers. They can also demonstrate the inadequacy of the assumptions J. INT. DEV. VOL.
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on which macro policy is designed, for example the sometimes minimal impact of income on overall welfare, the limitations of conventional social policies and the complexity of social support systems. However, can they use this information as more than that Ð as qualitative data to inform policy design? 3
RIGOUR, RELEVANCE AND ROLES
Data for policy design needs to be rigorous and generalizable. At the same time research for policy design cannot be of long duration but should be timely with results delivered according to the local urgency. Sample surveys are often undertaken but are less revealing than qualitative analysis, which however, of necessity, has less breadth of data. Ultimately the policy makers must understand the analysis in order to make policy decisions. Recognition of the constraints of revealing but long-term anthropological analysis and the demand for a rich database in a shorter time frame led to the development of RRA in the 1970s, which later led to Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) methods. RRA drew on the less structured investigations of anthropologists to elicit in-depth information and the random sampling investigations of sociologists to attempt greater generalization. Many development practitioners working for international development agencies and international and local NGDOs adopted RRA and PRA techniques to assist programme appraisal, design, implementation and evaluation. The goal was to design more locally relevant and thus successful development programmes. For external agencies the techniques of RRA and PRA allowed powerful insights into local realities and needs, particularly for locally speci®c policies. As demonstrated in the previous section it is clear that for eective policy design information must also be interpreted within a framework which includes the local social, political and cultural context. The outcome of many policy recommendations at a local level depends on the distribution of local power and local political organization. Policy design which does not take account of how a society is constructed and how local culture adapts to change over time will not be appropriate policy. Indeed much of the value of NGDO work at the grassroots level has been to reveal the local complexity and facilitate its incorporation into the design of speci®c development policies. The evidence indicates that NGDOs have been active in research which is not just anecdotal, but which draws on a continuous presence, a joint experience and a combination of PRA and RRA techniques and anthropological and sociological traditions. As a result demonstrable changes in development agendas are attributed to the role of NGDOs in research: `NGOs . . . have an important research function which is barely acknowledged and poorly supported . . . for 30 years NGOs have been valuable laboratories for public health, credit for the poor, the involvement of women in development, environmental issues and a wide range of other initiatives which have been taken up by government and donor agencies' (Smilie, 1995, p. 165). Current initiatives from NGDOs to play a part not just in locally speci®c policy but in macro level policy builds on this rich experience. The progress in, and acceptance of, RRA methods represents one important step in the development of eective micro±macro linkages. The RRA methods developed have been argued to `deliver comparable information to formal sample surveys . . . This role of RRA may be called veri®cation and may eventually allow such methods to # 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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displace sample surveys for some purposes . . . but in addition to veri®cation, RRA may also involve debunking Ð that is providing a dierent picture to that given by surveys' (White, 1996, p. 11). However, many of the problems of extrapolating from the speci®c to the general and linking the micro and macro in policy design still remain. Whilst PRA and RRA have proved to be important tools for analysis, there are still diculties in extrapolating from what some see as limited data sets and questions and dilemmas in the way data is collected and in the reliability and accuracy of interpretation. There is currently signi®cant inappropriate use of PRA as a method to extract information rather than, as was originally intended, a method to empower. Using PRA methods as a tool of empowerment in policy design would mean going beyond using PRA just in analysis. It would entail an attempt to marry macro-policy with grassroots realities throughout the process of policy design. In adjustment environments where policy is often made quickly and is conditional for loans the issue of people's participation in decisions which aect them is critical. 4
PARTICIPATION IN POLICY DESIGN
Understanding how people organize themselves, what their needs are, how policies will impact on populations and what linkages are required is a complex task. Policy designed by urban based government ocials and foreign experts cannot be expected to be relevant to local conditions without extensive consultation at a local level. Nevertheless these ocials and experts are frequently given sole responsibility for developing policy in limited time frames and isolated circumstances. As discussed RRA techniques have helped to sensitize policy makers and analysts to local level complexities and realities. PRA, involving participation in the research process is, however, dierent from PRA which allows people to analyse their own information and take action as a result or feed back appropriate changes to suggested policies and, policy mechanisms. Those involved in policy design are frequently more concerned with rigour of analysis than participation. They may thus, for example, be more interested in ensuring the accuracy and spread of data sets than in questioning who owns and believes in the information and who therefore will act on it or ensure its relevance. Rigour is clearly important but attention to ownership of analysis will ensure that policy is actually appropriate, relevant and implemented. To enable ownership, the process of policy formulation has to allow for local participation. The policy needs to be designed so that it can adapt to local conditions, thus local consultation is essential. Most importantly, the approach to policy research and design must incorporate capacity building and participation as explicit objectives. The main constraint is allowing an adequate time frame within which participation in policy preparation can take place. The principle of participation in policy design is enabling country nationals at all levels and in all types of policy to play a greater role in in¯uencing decisions which aect them. This may range from capacity building for local researchers, policy analysts or government ocials; promoting the views of indigenous peoples; enabling greater participation from perceived `weaker' ministries in debates on resource allocation; to allowing citizen participation in issues such as debt and trade. It has been observed that `grassroots organisations seldom if ever achieve policy change in their favour without the participation of other social groups, such as J. INT. DEV. VOL.
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NGOs, churches, professional groups and academia' (Covey, 1995, p. 168). Grassroots people's organizations, civil society groups, local government institutions or NGDOs can work on sustainable development alternatives to suggested policy or on more eective design and delivery of policy. Local NGDOs or other civil society groups can develop analytical skills and be involved in policy advocacy. In the absence of a strong civil society (as in many transitional countries), local government and traditional forms of association can also be involved in developing analytical skills and seeking a role in policy design. International NGDOs or research institutes can facilitate this dialogue and train relevant groups. This process also requires international policy experts to recognize the balance in rigour and relevance between expert knowledge and local knowledge; it requires policy makers and policy analysts to seek more genuine participation and pursue the principles of listening and consultation in policy design; it requires more local people to be equipped with research and analytical skills. It requires changes in the expert consultancy culture in favour of skills transfer and enhancement of local capacity over a longer time frame. 5
CONCLUSION
The methods of micro±macro linkage advocated involve recognition of the variety of uses of grassroots data, balancing rigour and relevance, strengthening a range of institutions so that they can be involved in policy design, recognizing appropriate roles and enhancing participation of concerned parties. The speci®c role of NGDOs (both international and national) in all the above will vary according to their speci®c skills and mandates and their local or international legitimacy. As stated not all NGDOs have the same interest and skills in policy advocacy or research. Those that do have skills can provide grassroots evidence and should advocate with and on behalf of groups using that evidence. Many have the skills to advocate for greater participation in policy design, and can support local institutions in developing skills so they competently enter dialogue. And NGDOs can play a key role in improving dialogue between grassroots organizations, local government, national NGOs, research institutions, development assistance agencies and policy makers by insisting that micro±macro linkages are ®rmly on the development agenda. Clearly if grassroots analysis is to be convincing `it must be on a par with the analytic capacity of the decision makers that NGOs and others are trying to in¯uence' (Covey, 1995, p. 167). NGDOs must continuously strive to improve the quality of their research. However, at the same time as working for greater rigour, relevance must be put on the agenda of development researchers and policy analysts. For all players participation in policy design must reach beyond information extraction into a more genuine process of dialogue and mutual learning between policy makers and the people they ultimately serve. REFERENCES Covey, J. (1995). `Accountability and eectiveness in NGO policy alliances'. in Edwards, M. and Hulme, D. (eds) (1995). # 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Edwards, M. and Hulme, D. (1995). Non-Governmental Organisations Ð Performance and Accountability. London: Earthscan Publications. Edwards, M. (1996). `Linking grassroots experience with macro-level policy and research: summary of the discussions', SAF Newsletter, No. 6. Harper, C. (1994). `An assessment of vulnerable groups in Mongolia. Strategies for social policy planning', World Bank Discussion Papers, 229. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Smilie, I. (1995). `Painting Canadian roses red'. In Edwards, M. and Hulme, D. (eds) (1995). White, H. (1996). `The use of participatory techniques in poverty assessments', SAF Newsletter, No. 6, and unpublished mimeo. Woodward, D. (1992). Debt, Adjustment and Poverty in Developing Countries. Volumes I and II. London: Save the Children Fund (UK).
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# 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.