CHAPTER 4: METHODS: CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS
4.1.5 Actors‘ analysis framework
The component the most difficult to analyze is the one of ‗actors‘, constituted by organizations in the context of this study. There is an entire discipline built around organizations, which we need to get acquainted with, before proceeding towards the question of ―how‖ to analyze them.
From this section, I outline the process I went through to build my own conceptual framework for the analysis of the actor‘s component of aid coordination policy analysis. I mainly combined three disciplines to arrive at the final framework: management sciences, organizational theory and sociology. The reader might feel frustrated at first sight, but it is only the illustration of how definitions in each field were patchy and needed to be combined with definitions and frameworks from other disciplines, in order to get to a sufficiently comprehensive framework, which will be used in this study.
Actors
Situational factors: conflict and post-conflict Cultural factors Exogenous factors: development aid Structural factorsDefinition of an organization
The functioning of organizations started to be theorized in the late 1900s. During the industrial era, companies began to be transformed from small and familial
organizations to national or international ones, thus rendering their management aspect crucial.
Organizational theory is a branch of management sciences. Management is a science of action, which borrows its methods and results from other fields, such as organizational sociology, micro-economics, psycho-sociology and philosophy, in order to lead organizations. Organizational theory gains inspiration from these disciplines to increase the efficiency and efficacy of organizations (Rojot 2005). There are different streams in organizational theory, with the common factor being the improvement of companies‘ productivity. But since the birth of organizational science, there has been huge difficulty in defining what exactly an organization is, despite multiple attempts (Bourricaud, Parsons, Khandwalla, Presthus, Litterer). Again common to them all is that they all include the concepts of ‗actors‘, or ‗relationship‘, or ‗objectives‘, or all of them.
Crozier and Friedberg were the first to introduce the concept of power relationships into the organizational theory (Crozier and Friedberg 1977). They defined the creation of an organization as ―a response to the problem of collective action‖ [(Crozier and Friedberg 1977), pp. 19]. Rather than defining ‗organization‘ by its content or its operating system, they defined it through its necessity of existence (Crozier and Friedberg 1977). According to Crozier, organizations were created to respond to the necessity of a collective action, but simultaneously, their creation created new problems, inherent to organizations, to their efficiency and survival (Rojot 2005).
“Basic to the theory of organizations is the premise that all organizations need coordination; coordination means integrating or linking together different parts of an organization to accomplish a collective set of tasks”.
[(Van De Ven, Delbecq, and Koenig Jr. 1976), pp. 322]
When applied to context of aid for development, actors for development organized themselves, or were organized, into ‗organizations‘, to be able to act in an efficient
Therefore aid coordination can be seen as coordination of organizations which provide, receive and implement aid, or similarly, as coordination of recipients‘ and donors‘ organizations. Aid coordination might be defined, therefore, as a collective action towards a common goal which was set to be development – keeping in mind that ‗development‘ itself is a contested concept and practice; a point I will come back to later in the study.
In the health sector, the recipient organization supposed to take the lead in aid coordination would be the MoH, according to OECD principles on aid effectiveness, extrapolated for the health sector (in (Buse and Walt 1996), pp. 180).
How to analyze organizations
Actors – organizations in our case – are usually analyzed using a stakeholder analysis which is ―a tool for generating knowledge about actors - individuals and organizations - so as to understand their behavior, intentions, interrelations and interests; and for assessing their influence and resources they bring to bear on decision-making or implementation processes‖ [(Brugha and Varvasovszky 2000) pp.1].
In addition to seeking to analyze the position, values and interests a stakeholder has towards a given policy, stakeholder analysis includes a thorough power analysis (Brugha and Varvasovszky 2000). Power analysis either increases chances of success when conducted prior to a policy implementation for instance or enables a retrospective understanding of why a certain policy has been undermined or another has succeeded.
Things get complex when it comes to assessing power, however, and there are different definitions of power in the policy making arena. Some of the main authors and their definitions follow.
Power definition
Overall, there seem to be ideological and philosophical battles over definitions of power, understood either as a coercive and controlling force leading to conflict and inequality or as an enabling force leading to collaborative actions. Hereafter I
presented few authors‘ definitions, which were inclusive of the notions of ―control‖ or of ―ability‖, to fit the topic of this study, aid co-ordination. The aim was not to cover all the existing definitions of power, which is out of the scope of this study.
Dahl defined power as a capacity (power over) which is similar to Foucault who defined a power relationship as ―an action over actions of others‖, thus adopting a dominant-dominated relationship approach (Foucault 1994). By contrast, Arendt defined it as an ability (power to), which enables a given person or institution to act in a certain way (Buse, Mays, and Walt 2005; Pettit 2013).
Hydén‘s definition of power, for policy analysis purpose, derives directly from Dahl‘s: ―the capacity to exercise control and influence over others by the use of means –soft or hard – […]‖ [(Hydén 2006), pp 15]. However, he stressed the fact that there is no need to distinguish ―power over‖ and ―power to‖, since the ―power over‖ leads to ―power to‖.
Power analysis frameworks
Besides, and derived from, these theoretical considerations over the definition of power, there are also methodological issues around power, making power analysis challenging (Walt et al. 2008). Indeed, due to the numerous definitions of power, ways to measure it are also numerous. Some are very theoretical while others are based on the perceptions of the assessor and are therefore not easy to apply in a reproducible way because of the inherent subjectivity. These challenges might lead to results that lack robustness.
Despite these challenges, some authors managed to develop practical tools, amongst which the most detailed for the health sector is the ‗policy toolkit for strengthening health sector reform‘ which drew on earlier work by Brinkerhoff (Crosby and Brinkerhoff 1994). It is noteworthy that the definition of power in this toolkit is very close to the one entailing capacity, proposed by the Brinkerhoff (Brinkerhoff 2010).
According to the toolkit, the working definition of power is a combination of
resources (or capital or means in Hydén’s sense), the ability to mobilize these
take the lead in coordination. Each component of this definition is analyzed thereafter:
• The various forms of resources/capitals identified are economic/financial
resources, human resources, political resources and ‗other‘ types of resources. There are no specific methods of measurement attached to each type of
resource. While ‗hard resources‘ - such as economic/financial ones, or even human ones –
• are easy to define and therefore to measure and to compare across
stakeholders, the definition of other ‗soft resources‘, such as political ones which fall into the category of social capital, remains more elusive.
• In the toolkit, the ability to mobilize resources is defined and scored, based on the decision making capacity a stakeholder has on the use of its resources [(Crosby and Brinkerhoff 1994), pp. 39]. It is understood more as a capacity related to a particular position/function held by the stakeholder, in the organization or in the hierarchy. But resource mobilization capacity does not rely solely on the position of a stakeholder; while they might well hold a legitimate decision-making position, they might not be able to use this capacity given a lack of self-esteem, vision or leadership.
The definition of leadership is ―the willingness to initiate, convoke, or lead an action for or against the policy‖ [(Crosby and Brinkerhoff 1994), pp. 41]. Intended for policy analysis, this definition classifies stakeholders as having leadership or not. While an understanding of leadership might be relatively intuitive, it has a number of
limitations when one want to apply it, however. For instance leadership might not be limited to just a ―willingness‖; some stakeholders might be ―willing‖ in thoughts and words, but not put this into action. Leadership is also very difficult to measure in practice. The definition provided by Lowder and presented in the literature review might be very useful since he proposed practically measurable criteria.
Hence one of the biggest challenges when dealing with health policy analysis applied to aid coordination resides in the absence of clear methodological tools to measure power and its constituents.