The previous section demonstrated the complexity of capacity development processes, even in a fairly restricted fi eld such as educational planning and management. It is evident therefore that developing strategies that can address such a complicated and interlinked set of issues is particularly challenging. It is useful to keep in mind that for several decades, governments and international agencies have looked for successful capacity development strategies and that so far nobody has yet come up with a workable formula for guaranteed success. The simple reason is that such a formula does not exist: both the complexity of processes and the diversity of contexts preclude such a formula. This obviously does not imply that nothing can be done and that one simply has to wait for capacity to grow autonomously. Nor does it mean that there is no distinction between strategies. Some strategies have proven to be more successful than others; and some fi t well with the mandate of international organizations such as UNESCO and their comparative strengths while others do not.
This part will propose a number of strategic principles and a series of strategies that can help improve the impact of capacity development. These principles can apply to all international organizations. The strategies have been thought out with UNESCO in mind. They may therefore be of particular relevance to UNESCO, but will probably be of interest to others. While the focus will be on educational planning and management, the chapter may form a source of inspiration in other fi elds, precisely because many challenges are not specifi c to any fi eld.
While this paper makes suggestions for the implementation of several strategies, two diffi culties with making such proposals are worth emphasizing again. Firstly, the relevance of a strategy very much depends on the context of each country and, to some extent, each organisation. While this is a general rule, there is a more specifi c need to adapt strategies to the context of fragile states. Though here again, it should not be forgotten that each fragile state is to some extent unique. Secondly, the ideal capacity development strategy forms a package of different interventions. The total possible effect of such a package is worth much more than the simple sum of the different interventions.
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Box 12. Adapting strategies to context: a complex endeavour
A general statement on the need to adapt strategies to context may not be of great use to policy-makers who want to improve their national capacities, or to international staff wanting to support them. A more precise answer could be found in a matrix that relates the characteristics of a country (for example, the effectiveness and attractiveness of the public administration; the legitimacy of the state; or the level of political commitment) to appropriate capacity development strategies. Some efforts have been made to put more details on this ‘fi tting’ process. A study on Latin America (Fiszbein, 2005: 57-59) identifi es four key dimensions: the state’s overall strength and formality, the prevailing type of political representation, the degree of social and economic inequality, and the present characteristics of service delivery. Two key characteristics, used increasingly in the context of fragile states, are political will and capacity (Teskey, 2005; Brinkerhoff, 2007). On this basis, a distinction can be made between four types of fragile states, or more precisely, four scenarios of fragility: deterioration, post-confl ict transition, arrested development and early recovery.
While such distinctions are useful, an actual matrix linking groups of countries to sets of strategies may encounter several problems. It is tricky to assign countries to a specifi c group, for political as well as conceptual reasons. It may lead to a fairly mechanical and not always appropriate application of recipes to a specifi c country. It may also result in bypassing the process of institutional analysis undertaken by the local actors, which in itself can be a genuine capacity development exercise. We suggest a simpler approach that may nevertheless be helpful, as the following example shows. This approach is less demanding because it starts from a clearly defi ned constraint in terms of capacity development and not from a set of global country characteristics.
Three countries face a similar constraint, namely the planning department fails to undertake its work in a competent manner. To understand the reason, we need to look at the different levels, as follows:
Country A Country B Country C
Individual Lack of competences Lack of competences Suffi cient competent staff Organizational Mismatch between
competences and tasks
Match between
competences and tasks; the right person is in the right position
The leadership does not encourage the use of skills for better planning Institutional No signifi cant challenges No signifi cant challenges Reward and incentive
structures do not recognize performance
In country B, training is an effi cient capacity development strategy, because the potential of translating individual training into organizational performance is higher than in the others. In country A, a change in staff management rules need to accompany training. In country C, training in planning may have little impact until the problems at a higher level are solved.