Comments

Really interesting insight into contemporary rural Timor Leste. I wonder how much development can come from businesses other than resource exploitation, though? What are your thoughts on this?

Hi David, I think your comment is a bit dismissive of the potential of complexity, and just wanted to come back to share my thoughts on your points: 1. Some of the best complexity work in development has utilised models AND participatory processes - a number of which I reference in my book, and have been involved in developing. IDS is doing some especially interesting work in this area, led by Danny Burns, which has informed, among other things, the Participate programme: http://www.ids.ac.uk/participate 2. Some of the most powerful applications of complexity thinking have come from the private sector - use of agent-based modelling in strategy, system dynamics in supply chain management, network analysis in marketing and social media, etc. When I worked with DFID to apply some of these approaches in their programme on wealth creation, most of the people who came on board to support the work had long experience in the private sector. 3. Complexity science is being utilised in the West - and there many examples of programmes and funding streams. It's not mainstream, granted. But neither is it non-existent. To take just one example, the OECD Science Group published this paper in 2009, and has continued to develop this area: http://www.oecd.org/science/sci-tech/43891980.pdf 4. You are right that Western countries didn't need complexity to help their development. But taking this to its logical conclusion leads one to a rather odd place (a) we should only be using things in development that worked in the West and (b) we shouldn't have any methodological or theoretical innovation that is specific to the challenges we face in development. Moreover, if you are going to apply this particular empirical criteria to the entirety of development policy and practice, what do you think would be left?

I do agree with Dame Kidu. Woman in politics has done a 2-steps back. During her time there was talk about creating seats for 22 woman reps. This was received with mixed feelings, yet there was good support from male MPs. The current parliament has three sitting female MPs. The situation for woman and girls may have stayed the same. But, the situation for woman leaders is NOT represented well by those three women MPs, don't you think? Those three woman leaders CAN change public opinion on woman leaders in the country. But they have failed miserably in this regard. I still have lots of respect for Dame Kidu. She showed how a woman can make a difference. She topped her career off with being the only opposition leader and the only member of the opposition. She stood against the idiocy of males. She is forever to be remembered as the one woman opposition. PNG needs woman like her.

The positives of the idea of complexity in development, I think, are largely therapeutic. We get so bound up in our Newtonian model of the universe, that we come to think of our billiard-ball "logic models" as actually real. We start to fetishise them, doing what they tell us, and ignore the real-world signals on the ground. The negative aspect of complexity is that it proffers yet another mechanistic model, to distract workers from the real interactions and information that's available through deep engagement with the operating environment, of which 99% can be summed in this word: people. The image, of workers scrawling equations on a blackboard, encapsulates this negative. 1. It suggests to aid workers that they respond to failure by building yet another layer of modelling, so that the workers interact yet more with models than with real people and with real situations. This is nirvana for researchers and for people in HQ, because models are their stock in trade, and if this approach to aid is furthered, the value of their stock goes up. 2. At the same time, private enterprise is moving AWAY from these mathematical models, and towards deeper engagements with their customers, suppliers, and partners as the best way to win. Oddly, this is what aid has always been fairly good at: engagement. It would be sad at this time if we started to lose our strengths in favour of approaches that other social institutions are abandoning (and with good reason, in my view.) 3. From a moral perspective, I think it's dubious to sell to the world's poor products (complexity, in this case) that the world's rich are so far refusing to buy. If we're going to see if this stuff works, let's experiment with the OECD middle class first, not with the poor in foreign lands. When I see complexity being used to ACTUALLY solve some of the West's manifest social problems, then I think it will be okay to export it. 4. There's also an empirical problem. If development means the social changes we have seen since the Enlightenment—public health, education, equality, democracy, wealth, increased life expectancy and so on—then we in the West have achieved these without "complexity thinking". The claim that "complexity thinking" is suddenly necessary for Africa requires explaining away a lot of empirical evidence (the entire history of development in Western countries to date) to justify why it's all of suddenly necessary for Mozambique.

Steven, glad it is of some clarity. It may need an update in light of the recent events/cases. Bal

Thank you for this interesting piece, particularly on the need to find culturally appropriate ways to improve gender equality in PNG. You mention the need for girls to see more women in decision-making positions. Indeed, an interesting finding from our work on service delivery in PNG (PEPE Project) is that the share of female teachers (based on Head Teachers and Grade 5 teachers) has doubled over the last decade; there are now more female Grade 5 teachers than male. Hopefully this improvement will bring about positive change in itself but I wonder if it could be leveraged more. Teachers are educated, large in number (23,000 in primary schools), widely dispersed throughout the country, and now strongly represented by women. Could the school curriculum incorporate more discussion and debate on societal change, cultural values, and their impact on the lives of mothers, sisters, and daughters? Could schools be supported to host events which bring the local community together to discuss these issues and raise awareness?

This is an insightful and important presentation by Dame Carol. I was recently in PNG. Have been working from the ground up, and a comment was sent to me by the International Red Cross reflecting much NGO work in PNG: "It was interesting to see the contrast in meeting someone like yourself working at ground level to enact change vs the 'large agencies' who are also trying to enact change. You seem to have a small footprint but big results as opposed to other international agencies that appear to have a large presence / budget but much smaller everyday effect on assisting those coping with sexual and other gender based violence." As an Aboriginal woman I work from a cultural base. Outside others don't get it.

Interesting observations Kolinio Meo considering the article had been written towards the end of 2013. It is now November, 2014 Post Fiji 2014 Election. The recent outcome of Fiji Auditor-General’s 2007-2013 Report just released gives us an inside view of what transpired Post 2006 coup up to 2013. The budget presented in 2013 for 2014 appears not to be included in the 2007-2013 Fiji Auditor Genral's report. The report is now showing clear evidence of alleged mis-spending and mis-appropriation of funds as per the Auditor General's report. I have attached some prelimiray links for your information below this comment as attachments. A Committee now tasked to look into this is led by Dr Biman Prasad M.P.. His comments alone is adequate to tell Fiji taxpayers and those with vested interests of the financial state of affairs Fiji has had post 2006 coup – 2014. It does not look promising for 2015 and beyond. Elisapeci Samanunu Links: <a href="http://www.fijileaks.com/home/khaiyums-aunty-milked-taxpayers-to-the-last-drop-regime-paid-nur-bano-ali-over-half-a-million-dollars-to-re-structure-rewa-cooperative-dairy-company-ltd" rel="nofollow">Khaiym's aunty milked taxpayers to the last drop</a>: Regime paid Nur Bano Ali's Aliz Pacific over HALF A MILLION DOLLARS to re-structure Rewa Dairy Company Ltd!~Fiji Leak 4/11/2014 <a href="http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=285417" rel="nofollow">Fiji Government ministers' salaries were paid through chartered accounting firm Aliz Pacific Limited from 2010</a> - Shalveen Chand <a href="http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=285517" rel="nofollow">Fiji Public Accounts Committee to sit for the first time to scrutinize report</a> - By NASIK SWAMI

The article is a well researched one that spells out clearly the political events that are occurring in PNG without takings sides. Keep it up Bal because most of the commentary on most social networks and pages are for one side or the other and readers are totally confused about who is telling the truth.

A lot of the discussion around (and practice of) capacity building is focused on the process, rather than the outcome. This has been touched on by Tony and Deborah. As aid practitioners, we spend a lot of our time within the process of working with our counterparts, and don't often take the time to step back and examine what it is we are actually aiming for. This is also a difficult issue for our partners, who we tend to keep occupied with a lot of consultations and esoteric project management, most of which seems to involve arranging our capacity building inputs. However the question constantly needs to be asked - "building capacity for what?" The two most successful programs that I've seen, in more than two decades of working in this area, have occurred when the aims of the intervention coincided with a policy imperative or urgent need on the part of the partner government. One case involved a partner agency adopting and implementing a particular community forestry approach because there was no financial alternative, and the other came about in bilingual primary education because the provincial governments were required to meet school enrollment targets set by the national government. The interesting thing is, once these organisations had decided upon the course of action, or been forced into it by external circumstances, latent expertise and knowledge was suddenly freed up, staff became highly motivated and domestic resources became available. Unfortunately the success of these projects was due almost entirely to good luck, rather than good planning or a coherent system of "policy engagement" or "skills transfer". The aid provider just happened to be in the right place at the right time with a good model (and the requisite technical advice), and both interventions took off with a minimal amount of persuasion or "incentivising" going on. I'm not completely sure what the lessons are from this, other than making sure that we properly understand our partners' priorities and motivations, and that we are flexible enough to respond to opportunities as they occur. This requires being much more strategic with aid resources, and perhaps being more innovative in how those resources are used. "Capacity building" might not be a standard investment, it might be more akin to venture capital.

While a simpler analytical framework to Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development (which Gibson, Andersson, Ostrom and Shivakumar used in the Samaritan's Dilemma), I enjoyed 'The Institutional Economics of Foreign Aid' by Martens, Mummert, Murrell and Seabright. They apply the principal-agent model to the question of why aid agencies rarely achieve their goals, examining incentives from the donor agency, to consultants, to recipients.

I really like April's summary. Complex adaptive systems approaches (which were one of the frameworks that informed the IAD methodology used in the Samaritan's Dilemma) are one way of improving our frameworks and theories. The problem with many social science methodologies, especially those prevalent in aid, is that they are not designed to understand and navigate complexity, but rather to reduce it. As Prof Ostrom put it in her Nobel speech: "To explain the world of interactions and outcomes occurring at multiple levels, we also have to be willing to deal with complexity instead of rejecting it. Some mathematical models are very useful for explaining outcomes in particular settings. We should continue to use simple models where they capture enough of the core underlying structure and incentives that they usefully predict outcomes. When the world we are trying to explain and improve, however, is not well described by a simple model, we must continue to improve our frameworks and theories so as to be able to understand complexity and not simply reject it."