Actor power

‘credible’ and ‘salient’.

In the context of aid, this credibility and salience must be understood in relation to the situation in countries that adds an extra layer of complexity towards building a salient and credible common frame. Stone (1989), in fact, shows how the political dimension of causal stories heightens the dichotomy between research and politics. While research tends to emphasise the complexity of causes, the political arena constantly seeks to simplify it:

‘Complex causal explanations are not very useful in politics, precisely because they

do not offer a single locus of control, a plausible candidate to take responsibility for a problem, or a point of leverage to fix a problem. Hence, one of the biggest tensions between political science and real-world politics. The former tends to see complex causes of social problems, while the latter searches for immediate and simple causes’ (Stone 1989:289).

These immediate and simple causes might contravene the need to understand violence as a complex, gendered phenomenon where multiple risk factors intervene at different levels and reinforce each other. Within such understandings, there are no scapegoats, but a deconstruction of causes and assumptions that requires time, effort, and collaboration. Finding a powerful frame that would be simple enough to fit ‘real politics’ while not denaturing the complexity at stake and the need for time and continuity is surely a real challenge for development agencies. More generally, it is important to understand that the way violence and its causes are politically framed can influence the legitimacy or relevance of development’ agencies’ role in that respect, as interpreted by both counterparts and the agencies’ staff and management. The questions surrounding cognitive frames lead to examine the power of the actors that hold, interpret, and eventually change them.

3.3.2 Actor power  

The second category of the framework examines the power of the actors that support the issue to give it visibility and institutionalise it within the organisation. Unsurprisingly, authors studying priority setting and mainstreaming systematically emphasise the importance of actors. All five frameworks identify ‘actors’ as key variables for priority

setting and mainstreaming. The expression ‘actor power’ is actually borrowed from Shiffman and Smith (2007). This is unsurprising because women and men in their different capacity bring organisations to life. But what are the characteristics of the actors that matter most in making an issue a priority and creating space for its institutionalisation? Based on the review of the five frameworks, I identify four groups that are all necessary to produce lasting change in the context of development agencies: (i) Supportive political leadership; (ii) Legitimate champions; (iii) Critical mass of in-house experts; and (iv) Interested local and national Government counterparts.

Supportive political leadership

Political leadership refers to the vision given by an individual or group of individuals in an organisation. Given that development organisations are often hierarchical, this vision is often held at the top, that is, at the highest hierarchical instance in the organisation. They are the shareholders, presidents, or managing directors. Their support opens the door for the organisation to work on an issue and facilitates catalysing forces to implement the mainstreaming process.

Shiffman and Smith (2009) cite the example of former Director of the United Nations for Children (UNICEF), James Grant, as a political leader who embodied the issue of child survival. From Levy’s identification of political commitment to donor government within governing bodies in Razavi and Miller (1995), to donors and boards of directors in Rao and Kelleher (2005), all emphasise the need for strong political will from the top of the organisations. As Hannan (2000:295) summarises: ‘strong political commitment is required which includes explicit senior management support.’ Beyond the five frameworks, Sietz, Boschütz and Klein (2008) and Gupta (2010) in the literature on mainstreaming climate change also highlight the need for the organisation’s commitment and leadership. As such, there is a consensus on supportive political leadership as a key variable for mainstreaming to happen.

Shiffman and Smith (2007), Levy (1996) and Razavi and Miller (1995) take a step further and discuss how this supportive political leadership can be pressured by external bodies to act. These include international NGOs through consultative status and lobbying donor

governments (Razavi and Miller 1995), but also a wider policy community as a network of individuals and organisations that are centrally involved with the issue at the global level (Shiffman and Smith 2007). In that respect, Shiffman and Smith (2007) draw attention to how the fragmented structure of a policy community with competing organisations, no formal coordination, and moving priorities can affect priority setting. When there are many voices for the same sector with none of them having the legitimacy to lead, priority setting and institutionalisation becomes more uncertain and confusing. What Shiffman and Smith describe for public health is very similar to the situation for violence prevention. Competing organisations deal with the issue (WHO, UN-Habitat, UNODC, UNDP, MDBs, UNIFEM and UNICEF) and none has a clear mandate to lead on violence prevention. More generally, the extent to which a strong and coherent external policy community exists might act as a lever or a constraint to influence political leaders within development agencies towards pushing the issue forward in the development agenda. In any case, political leadership itself is not enough, unless we adopt a very top-down autocratic understanding of how organisations work, which is not the case in this research. For an issue to emerge and then be institutionalised, it also needs to be embodied by legitimate champions.

Legitimate champions

Champions are those that push for the issue, develop a vision, articulate cognitive frames in a way that resonates with the organisation’s mandate and staff members’ interests. In other words, champions are those that ‘make the case’ of the issue so that it will rise high on the agenda and stay there to produce change. They are the internal advocates par excellence. Champions need to be legitimate for the advocacy work to be effective. By legitimacy, I mean professional respect (in terms of seniority, expertise and /or experience).

Razavi (2009:145) supports the importance of senior advocates to advance the implementation of mainstreaming when she recalls how ‘many studies […] show that little can be achieved when junior staff members with little or no resources at their disposal and few specialised skills are given the task of gender mainstreaming (in addition to their other responsibilities that remain unchanged).’ In a recent study making the synthesis of an e- discussion among gender practitioners and experts, Sandler and Rao (2012) also highlight that a key parameter to push forward the agenda of mainstreaming is to support

‘transformational leadership and the work of internal ‘change agents’ - that is, individuals who make change happen.’ They also highlighted two dimensions to the issue of leadership: the willingness to transgress norms and values and ‘the price to be paid for this’ (Sandler and Rao 2012: 555). In the case of violence prevention, this might imply that an organisational leader be selective in the kind of projects the organisation supports and eventually refuse to do some projects that are not in line with the positioning of the agency in terms of inclusive violence prevention, despite organisational and recipient pressures. This might also imply putting on hold the promotion of staff members who are investigated for perpetration of violence in its various dimensions either in the home or in the workplace. Such organisational leaders willing to take those risks are needed, according to Sandler and Rao (1012) to change organisational culture. However, on their own and even with political leadership, these champions cannot implement the mainstreaming process by themselves. They need a critical mass of in-house experts.

Critical mass of in-house experts

A vision must be translated into practice to gain credibility, survive and expand. For this, staff members must be interested and knowledgeable enough to translate this vision into policies, programmes and projects. For mainstreaming to take place and produce a paradigm shift on how violence prevention is understood and dealt with in the development agenda, it requires professionals in each sector to take the issue on board in their sector agenda. As Sandler and Rao (2012) have pointed out, this requires double and even triple expertise in the case of inclusive violence prevention, for staff members need to know about their sector, violence prevention, and gender.

Razavi and Miller (1995) and Hannan (2000) explicitly discuss this variable (existence and capacity of internal advocates and entrepreneurs). Razavi and Miller in particular highlight the importance of staff ‘willing’ to promote a new issue and ‘able’ to do it. That is, a critical mass of staffs needs to be equipped with relevant skills (technical, analytical, brokering, bargaining) and knowledgeable about mainstreaming and the issue to be mainstreamed. These policy entrepreneurs are the ones who are able to actually do the work at different levels of the organisation and in different sectors, and primarily at the operational level. They are also the ones who engage in policy dialogue and technical

discussions with governments. These governments and their interest in engaging on the issue are essential for the mainstreaming process to take place. This is the fourth variable of actor power.

Interested national and local Government counterparts

Development agencies fundamentally depend on the dynamics of donor-recipient relations; as such, the demand from governments is incontrovertible. If counterparts do not express interest in working with development agencies on an issue like inclusive violence prevention, the mainstreaming process will be more difficult to implement, if at all. In fact, change occurs through practice, and practice in the context of aid depends on donor- recipient relations and their operational collaboration. This operates at the planning level through negotiations with the Ministry of Finances or Planning that have an overview of the country’s development strategy, which is essential to support a mainstreaming approach. It also occurs at the sector level, in specific ministries where collaboration might take place to mainstream the issue within sectors. At the local level, counterparts’ interest is also crucial, for implementation happens when local actors have the corresponding will and capacity. National government, local government and citizens complicate donor- recipient relations, for they imply triangular dynamics between the donors, governments (at different levels) and citizens (also referred to as beneficiaries). Levy (1996) has underlined the importance of donor-recipient relations in the web through two dimensions: policy and citizen spheres. In the policy sphere, Levy highlights the need for political commitment, policy and planning at the country level, while the citizen sphere refers to women and men’s needs and interests that need to be voiced through political constituencies, and heard and advocated for at the political level to lead to scaled-up change. Rao and Kelleher (2005) mention the pressure from women’s constituencies who push for the issue at the country level, and Shiffman and Smith (2007) argue that strengthening the link between the initiative and grassroots movement generates more support at the national and local level, therefore increasing or maintaining the momentum on political leaders (both in governments and in development agencies), as it was for the case for AIDS for example. This shows the interrelation among the different variables in the actor power category. These actors and their respective power also need operational knowledge to act, for ‘deep change requires practice’ (Rao and Kelleher 2005:64).