Theories of Change for Promoting Empowerment and Accountability in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings

Resource type
Author/contributor
Title
Theories of Change for Promoting Empowerment and Accountability in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings
Abstract
This paper explores the current state of thinking among a range of aid actors (multilaterals, bilateral, applied scholars and international non-governmental organisations) on how to promote empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence affected settings. It seeks to identify trends, gaps and weaknesses in that thinking, and propose research questions and hypotheses to test. Three underlying sources of confusion are identified that are hindering progress on both understanding empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence affected settings, and taking helpful action to promote it. They are: (1) theory of endogenous change (e.g. on how empowerment and accountability arise in situ) versus the theory of action of an external intervention; (2) fragility versus conflict: there is no clear justification for combining these different aspects into a single category; and (3) empowerment versus accountability: donor analysis and practice has been overwhelmingly weighted towards accountability, exhibiting limited understanding or interest in the nature of power.
Publisher
IDS
Date
2017-10
Language
en
ISBN
978-1-78118-405-9
Accessed
27/04/2021, 11:45
Library Catalogue
opendocs.ids.ac.uk
Rights
This is an Open Access paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International licence, which permits downloading and sharing provided the original authors and source are credited – but the work is not used for commercial purposes. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode
Extra
Accepted: 2017-11-21T13:51:12Z ISSN: 2040-0209
Citation
Green, D. (2017). Theories of Change for Promoting Empowerment and Accountability in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings. IDS. https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/13349